Earlier this summer, an NYT article about small businesses starting to experiment with social media included this surprising tidbit:

To be sure, the majority of smaller concerns have not caught the online wave. In its monthly index, Discover noted that 62 percent of businesses still do not have Web sites.

Did I read that right? 62%?? In this day and age there is no reason your business shouldn’t have at least a basic web site, no matter what size you are or industry you’re in.

This shouldn’t be news to anyone, but: your customers are looking for you online. It doesn’t matter if you’re a local shoe store, a machine parts manufacturer, or an aircraft repair service. Yes, you used to get all the customers you needed from the yellow pages and word of mouth and local advertising. If that hasn’t started to change already, it will.

You don’t have to be a techie and you don’t have to spend a mint to get a basic, good looking site. For one thing, there are plenty of free web site building tools out there.  Many Internet service providers also offer site building tools to their customers.

While those tools are designed to be easy for anyone to use, you don’t have to do it yourself. It doesn’t cost much to hire a freelancer or web development shop to put together a basic web site. Try our free request for quotes service and we’ll connect you with several qualified web designers. For a relatively low cost, you’ll be able to get your business online, just so potential customers can find you.

By the way — when you start thinking about what you want on your web site, keep these small business web page design basics and these three web sins in mind. No point in putting up a new web site that already makes basic mistakes!