For small businesses especially it has become a fact of life and an incredibly helpful tool in developing brand awareness and loyalty. Fact is, there are many benefits of having a website for your small business. Here’s why yours could do with one too:

• Increases credibility. Everyone likes transparency and your customers are no different. Today, consumers expect companies to have a web presence and might be turned off by businesses that don’t. Additionally, professional contact details are often a customer’s quickest way of vetting a company’s legitimacy at-a-glance. With a website, you can create your own custom email addition a touch of professionalism to your address.

• Extends your reach. Studies show that, in 2017 over half of humanity will be online. That means that your website has the potential to reach billions of people, some of which are potential customers. Especially if you have products to sell, a brick and mortar shop just can’t compare to the power, accessibility and visibility of a digital storefront. Your website can extend well beyond the local market and appeal to clients on a global scale.

• Cost effective. Unlike a physical retailer or print advertisement a website is always open, always available, and can be updated with the click of a button. Considering its reach, websites are endlessly more cost effective, especially if you use a website concierge service, which can save you both precious time and money, turning your website into an affordable commodity instead of a large investment.

• Great communication tool. Think of your business website as an online brochure or catalogue. You can use it to keep your clients up to date and informed about your company. Yet, in contrast to other media, you are able to use many different ways of communicating and engaging your customer base including videos. Plus, websites are great networking tools and a way for others to get in touch with you.

• Effective customer service. Since most customers nowadays expect you to have website, not having one is doing them a disservice that might drive them to the competition. In addition to that, you can create a lot of extra value for consumers by providing additional information such as FAQs, press releases, tips on how to use your products and much more.

As you can see, there are endless reasons to have a invest a little in building a site. What is a website if not the communication tool the 21st century?  Businesses who are not present online are sure to miss out on a lot of opportunities, visibility, and ultimately, customers.

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Market yourself ahead of the competition: According to a recent study, a whopping 60% of small businesses in the UK don’t have a website. Allow your current customers and prospective clientele to get in touch with you easily. The site can be an elaborate platform or a simple explainer website, highlighting the key aspects for your business and opening the door of communication between your business and the public. A polished, user-friendly website will provide you with a competitive advantage.

Better customer service: Information about your business on a public platform and aspects to a website such as FAQ’s will save you time as a business owner and prospective customers will be able to answer their own questions. Provide information for your growing client bases. Even local companies and small businesses can benefit from maintaining an active and appealing web presence.

Gain valuable credibility: With over 2 billion people using the Internet nowadays, it is inevitable that your future customers will Google search your business’s name. Boost your site’s potential with regular SEO updates and maintenance. The first search result would be your business’ website, demonstrating that you are up to par with the basics of contemporary business models and particularly if your website is optimised for SEO.

Key to your PR strategy: Show off your specialities and allow your potential clients to understand the core of your business. Build your own professional portrait. A user-friendly website with clear branding is a PR tool in itself – investment in your web presence can change the way you do business forever.

Open 24/7: With a comprehensive website, your business will be a source of information for your customers around the clock. A well-rounded web presence including a detailed and itemized section can help your customers during off-hours.

The Reality of Managing Your Own Website

Time-Consuming: Creating and managing your own website is more than just making a pretty interface with some basic options. The technical expertise needed in order produce a website that will not only enhance your online presence and boost your company’s SEO, but will also drive your sales and ultimately, the success of your business.

Unprofessional Look: After spending endless hours following do-it-yourself guides to making your website, you may find that your end product will lack the professional and sleek look that you desired. The various pages, images, and text may not match from one part of the website to the other. The absence of customisation options and the difficulty of website management upkeep can be a major obstacle for business owners. It is important to keep in mind that the appearance of your website will critically impact the buying decisions of when a prospective customer discovers your online presence.

Lack of Technical Support: A website is a fantastic and essential part of a marketing and sales strategy, however, good quality, professional website management does necessitate a significant amount of support by technical professionals. There are various aspects of a website that could fall into disrepair that an experienced IT support team can assist with.

Possibility of Making Mistakes: On the surface, website management for a small business seems easy. It is a common misconception that basic HTML and CSS skills will successfully launch a website. The reality of taking the do-it-yourself route is the possibility of faulty buttons, dead links, thin pages, and much, much more. Moreover, a do-it-yourself approach will most likely not contain the details needed in order to create a user-friendly and mobile-responsive experience. 

How Website as a Service Works 

Business owners may find it more amenable to leave their website hosting needs to the professionals. Tech companies strive to provide website as a service (WaaS) to customers that cannot afford a designated IT department. The benefits of WaaS include a live responsive website that features key, in-built SEO techniques as well as strategies that will boost rankings in search engine result pages (SERPs). Other benefits include the integration of design and development, breaking down the usual obstacles and barriers involved. Another significant feature that is included in website management is the consistent maintenance and upkeep of your web presence. Overall, the assistance of an external IT partner will result in the sleek and professional website your business necessitates and more money in your pocket.

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Design & Branding

Branding a business properly is essential to building s successful brand and implementing an effective marketing strategy. The brand will become a symbol and represent the image of what a business does. The imagery, designs, and phrases associated with a brand can help a business gain, and maintain a loyal clientele. Our WaaS packages provide the support of a graphic designer as well as a brand expert that will assist with the visual details of your website. Customers tend to stick to what they know and expect consistent and unique branding that will make your business memorable.

Colour: The colours that are selected to represent a brand typically come with subconscious undertones from the perspective of the consumer. Think of some popular brands and what their colour schemes represent and the message the brand is trying to convey. Companies such as Virgin and Coca Cola exert a sense of energy, passion, and confidence through their bold, red logos. Other companies like The Body Shop, Lacoste, and Starbucks utilise green in their branding to exemplify a feeling of balance, growth, and equilibrium.

Consistency: Consumers generally like to see consistency in a brand, and a memorable sequence of imagery such as logos or certain designs is an effective method. The repetition of important details on a website as well as any key phrases or slogans will reinforce the strength of the brand’s power.

Mobile Responsiveness

According to a recent forecast, the number of smartphone users worldwide will reach 2.4 billion by 2018. In the UK, approximately 76% of adults have a smartphone and over 32 million smartphones are purchased annually (source?).As a result, the need for a mobile-friendly website is key to maintaining a steady pool of clientele. Mobile responsiveness has now become an essential feature and a definite expectation for smartphone users throughout the world. Google and other search engines heavily penalise websites that are not mobile responsive meaning that those which are not, risk falling behind the competition and loosing business. WaaS provides the ability to effortlessly adjust the page from desktop to mobile.

SEO Readiness

With WaaS, your website’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will be updated on an on-going basis. There are certain strategic aspects of SEO that should be incorporated right from the start when developing a website in order to create a successful SEO and online campaign.

Keywords: Selecting suitable and appropriate keywords to place on your website are also crucial to a successful SEO strategy. The right keywords will not only drive traffic to your site but also increase the amount of prospective customers. SEO- friendly keywords can be added to various places on your website including anchor texts and links, page titles, or captions related to multimedia content. Choosing the right keywords will increase the amount of relevant traffic that will reach your website and ultimately, the fluctuation of sales.

Meta descriptions: A key aspect of your description should be on your business’ competitive advantage and unique selling point(s). What differentiates your business from your competitors? From an outside perspective, why would they click on your site in Google search as opposed to many others? What makes you stand out? Are you a non-profit? Keep in mind that a value proposition simplifies SEO. Are you an exceptionally user-friendly e-commerce site? Do you provide top-class customer service? Do you offer high quality products discounted prices? Free shipping? These are examples of important details to include in keywords and meta descriptions.

Maintenance

One of the most important aspects of a successful web presence lies in the maintenance and upkeep of the relevant technology. The Website as a Service model allows for regular maintenance and updates to be included in the overall package. With the fast-pace of technology in today’s world, it is often difficult for business owners to keep up with the ever-changing cycles of technical innovations, updates, and changes.

Website Hosting

The foundation of a website lies in the server that it will be hosted on. Our Website as a Service model boasts Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud hosting as our partner. AWS offers secure, reliable services to a multitude of clientele including Expedia, Unilever, Airbnb, and many other large companies.

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1. Branding & Design

Convey the brand suitably and creatively. Your website design should reflect the business the way you envisage it and how you would like it to be perceived by the public including prospective customers. Think of your website as a 24/7 public relations representative. Your website design should encompass the mission and vision which can be displayed in the user experience. When designing your website, consider the user journey and what your ideal customer should learn and/or do when they leave your website. Don’t underestimate the importance of good company branding.

2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Readiness

Keywords: Keywords are an essential aspect of search engine optimisation that you frequently hear about. Keywords are relevant words or phrases that your prospective customer may enter into search engines to find your website. You should consider the incorporation of keywords in your website design.

Body Text: The body of your web page should be informative, describing your product or service with relevant keywords that your website is eligible to rank for.

Page Loading Speed: Slow loading times can highly effect search engine optimisation. Factors such as a low-quality host server and an overload of large images reduce the loading speed. It is also essential to make sure that any media on your website is optimised and has a satisfactory loading speed. You can test your page loading speed on GTmetrix. A good webpage combines fast loading speed with an appealing website design.

Page Titles: The page title is one of the most significant aspects of a website . Every page on your site should have a title starting with a relevant keyword and it is important that the context of the title matches the content of the page. Page titles should help you rank for a keyword and make users click through to your website.
The length of the page title shouldn’t exceed the recommended amount of characters. We usually advice page title not to exceed 65 characters where your focus keyword is at the beginning.

H1 Headings: An H1 tag or heading will usually be the title of a post and the most significant text on the page. The H1 heading is not to be confused with the page title, which is the title that is shown on the SERPS. There should be only one H1 heading per page.

URL Structure: A clear and concise URL structure should be in line with your page title and H1 heading. For instance, https://mbj.london/products/ has a crisp URL structure and clearly displays the content of the link.
Meta Descriptions: A descriptive text explaining and summarising the content of the page. The main purpose of a meta description is to get people to click through from search engines. We recommend meta description to be between 135 and 160 characters. Meta descriptions should be unique, it is better to leave them empty than copy/paste or have irrelevant content. If it is not filled, then Google will pull a snippet from the text containing the keyword used.

3. Social Media Integration

With 2.3 billion social media users in the world, it is safe to say that a thorough social media strategy is essential for businesses. In addition to a well designed website, a social media presence is important when attracting and maintaining customers.

4. Blogging

Bringing your brand name into the blogging world allows you to establish yourself as a credible source and a knowledgeable leader in your industry. Both on-site and off-site blogging are advantageous for SEO.

5. Maintenance

Developing and managing your website through a subscription-based Website as a Service (WaaS) option ensures that your web presence receives ongoing maintenance. Regular upkeep typically includes long-term (quarterly and yearly) updates to your web presence to ensure your website is running smoothly. Other important aspects of web maintenance include fast page loading, fixing any broken links and backlinks, as well as web analysis through Google Analytics and MOZ.

Bonus Tip – Hosting

The quality of your cloud hosting will also determine your website’s SEO ranking. Server Speed: Although the optimal loading time for a website is under 3 seconds, if the loading time exceeds 10 seconds, visitors are more likely to leave your website and go to one of your competitors. Speed and security are vital to the amount of traffic on your site.

Downtime: It is important to minimise downtime and make sure that pages do not become overloaded. This can interfere with potential customers reaching your site as well as search engines accessing it for crawling purposes. Amazon Web Services (AWS): At MBJ, we use AWS as our preferred hosting partner. Popular companies such as Netflix, Expedia, Coursera, and UniLever use AWS. It is the world’s largest and most secure cloud services provider.

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MoonROK – Winner

MoonROK is one of the only English language media outlets dedicated to Korean pop music (K-Pop) in the world. K-Pop has one of the largest fan bases of any genre in the globe, with many of its artists boasting hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions of views on their videos.

Ever since winning the MBJ LaunchPad competition MookROK have gone from strength to strength. Not long after returning to their native USA from the MBJ LaunchPad final, MoonROK won the KIC Challenge competition in Washington D.C. As well as a $10,000 cash prize, the team won one year of office space and accommodation in South Korea. They are due to move their headquarters from New York City to Seoul in June 2016.

MoonROK also recently returned to the UK in April 2016, having got to the final of yet another competition. This time it was for the Business Rocks event in Manchester. Whilst the team did not win the overall cash prize of £50,000 for their category, they came fourth out of several hundred finalists. Being in the UK also gave MoonROK the chance to pop into the MBJ office for a couple of days and work alongside our growing team.

To top things off, the team look set to have closed their first seed round of investment. As they continue their upward trajectory, we strongly advise you to keep a close eye on MoonROK.

moonrok.com

Beep Beep – Runner Up

BeepBeep, like most startups, have gone through several makeovers. The team has now found a winning formula: “On Demand Valet Parking”. They are initially focused on serving the city of Amsterdam, and soon, The Hague with further expansion planned in the pipeline.

When the Beep Beep team came to London for the final of MBJ LaunchPad the team was comprised of three co-founders: Scott Moran, Karan Bagai and Shashank Batra. Since graduating from their MBA program, Karan accepted a sought after position with an investment bank. Shashank took a position at one of the Big Four accounting and consulting firms. Scott has remained CEO of Beep Beep and has since taken on three (soon four) new members.

The revised Beep Beep business model offers users the ability to drive up to anywhere in city centre, call a Beep Beep Expert Valet, who will whizz along on a scooter to meet the user and park their car for them in a local partner garage. When the user needs their car back, Beep Beep will guarantee its return within 15 minutes to anywhere in the city centre. Users can track the whereabouts of their car through the app to ensure that it is where it’s supposed to be at all times.

Avennu – Runner Up

Avennu is an online market place based in New York City whose vision is to connect professionals and businesses to urban spaces suited to their unique needs. They cater for a multitude of potential requirements such as weddings, photo shoots, charity events, and many more.

Since MBJ LaunchPad, Avennu has made big strides, partnering with London based Sofar Sounds. Sofar Sounds has a large presence in NYC hosting over 100 intimate music shows per month. Furthermore, Avennu has partnered with a 2000 sq. ft. event space in downtown Manhattan. They plan to use the space as a laboratory to try out several new technologies that will strengthen the business and its product offering.

Avennu are currently seeking new partners that share their commitment to community and creative industries.

www.avennu.com

After the huge success of MBJ LaunchPad 2015, the project was put on hold for 2016. This enabled the MBJ team to focus on growing the company internationally and to implement MBJ’s new Websites As A Service (WaaS) product model. Waas offers high quality, fully managed websites to small and medium sized businesses at affordable rates.

MBJ LaunchPad will make a big comeback in 2017. The MBJ team has already begun putting some stokes in the fire so keep an eye out for updates!

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