By Elizabeth Jamieson, Guest Blogger and Word Press Expert

Small Business Websites Don't Work

Entrepreneurs are sometimes disappointed by the internet. This can happen after a carefully commissioned website fails to deliver the expected stream of new customers or enquiries. So, what's the story? Read on because we're going to tell you exactly why this happens and what you can do to prevent it happening to you.

Meet Jane – a Small Business Owner

Imagine the following situation. The details may vary somewhat, but it tells a familiar story. Jane, blonde, 47, runs a ski business in mountains of France, not far from the border with Switzerland. She lives in the charming ski-resort town of Morzine, famous for its Alpine tree-lined pistes, gourmet eating, traditional French lifestyle and large British ex-pat community.

Jane owns a stunning mountain chalet with 10 en-suite bedrooms and snow-capped mountain views.

Jane's Business

During the ski season Jane and her family offer catered skiing vacations in their home. Guests sleep in cosy rooms, ski every day and relax in spa baths. They enjoy log fires and fabulous traditional home-cooked meals with wine included. Guests are driven door to door to the various ski areas in the Portes du Soleil and even have the option of expert snow board tuition from Toby, Jane's son.

Jane also provides transport to and from Geneva airport so her guests can avoid the extra expense and hassle of hiring a car. She's thought of everything. Her ski package is just brilliant.

Jane's Dilemma – Each Year It Gets More Difficult to Fill Rooms

Despite Jane's superhuman efforts to create the perfect winter get-a-way, there's a problem. It takes the form of competition from many of her neighbours who also run chalets and who, unbelievable as it may seem, offer similarly luxurious ski packages. Worse still, there're some large impersonal winter vacation companies that specialise in the bulk buying of rooms in lower quality, independently owned chalets.

These ski supermarkets offer thousands of cheap packages on a single, searchable, well constructed, website. Further, they spend a small fortune on pay per click advertising. Undeterred, Jane believes she can compete with these big, aggressively promoted sites, by getting a web site of her very own. She is adamant that her website design should accurately convey the serenity, beauty, home-cooking essence of Jane-ness that make a stay in her chalet special. In short her website must look like an extension of her very being.

Build It And They'll Surely Come

With all these requirements in mind, she writes a brief describing her project. In it she also lists the 10 pages she wants and adds (just to make sure the web designers don't forget) that she'd really like the site to deliver more clients too.

Getting Web Design Quotes – A Typical Outcome

The first two web design agencies quote prices over €6000 and suggest extra services they feel she'll need. €6000 is way over Jane's budget and she's not interested in any extra services – she just wants the site!

Frustrated, Jane approaches a local web designer named Pierre. Pierre says he can put the site together with a nice design for just €1500. Now although he mentioned something about hosting being extra, to Jane's delight, he didn't try to sell her any special add-on services. Finally she realises she's found someone who's not determined to rip her off.

But just to be absolutely sure, Jane asks to look at Pierre's previous work. Having done that she concludes that in her opinion his graphic design skills are excellent so she signs the contract and buys.

Three weeks later Jane is the proud owner of a visually stunning, alpine themed website complete with tiny animated snowflakes, each of which twinkle on and off on a 20 second repeating cycle. She is beyond thrilled.

Jane shows off her new site to her family, friends and everyone in her gmail address book. They are universally impressed. She is now convinced that when people find her site they'll love it so much, they'll want to book a holiday immediately. All is well in the world.

A Reality Check

The problems start to manifest three months down the line when Jane realises that bookings for her ski holidays have not improved. She has no idea if the telephone and email enquiries she's receiving are due to the fabulous new web site, one of her numerous off line advertisements, or by word of mouth.

After grappling with some notes taken during a meeting with Pierre, Jane manages to work out how to check her website statistics. Her stats appear to indicate the site's getting 500 hits per day. Although she's not sure, Jane thinks five hundred visitors seems quite a lot, so she concludes her site must be working . . . or is it? Doubt creeps into Jane's mind, and she begins to suspect that her web designer Pierre, whom she trusted, has let her down. What on earth is to be done?

Do You Recognise This Story?

This is such a common scenario. Can you see where the problem lies? Will Jane confront Pierre? Can Jane find the answer to the question? Will Jane work out what the question actually is? Find out in the next gripping installment of The Site that Jane Built.

If you can't wait that long, visit our web site for details of our web services. We think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Elizabeth Jamieson
Power Blog Service
www.powerblogservice.com