Only a third of small business owners have a website. It was this data that propelled us to start Small Biz Express focusing on inexpensive website design and online marketing. We spoke to several business owners and found that the barriers were

No web education: Business owners thought that website design was all “techy”

Expensive: Professional website design through a local agency can be expensive

As we launched, we expected most of our customers to be business owners without a web site. Surprise! Almost half our customers had attempted some sort of website design. Many of these sites did not look professional. So they ended up coming to us.

Players in the industry have attempted to make website design easy through templates and other tools. But there are a number of skills that one needs:

- Website Design skills: Even with templates, business owners try to change the color to meld with the logo or change the layout around. Website Design is ?design?- there is art involved and web designers spend years learning it.

- Copy writing skills: Most business owners we know hate writing copy. We started our website design business trying to get business owners give us copy and soon realized that we would not launch anything if we waited for them to write the copy. Our standard website design process now involves an interview ?with owners for 20 minutes and have copywriters write the copy

- Technical skills: To use the internet for business, you need some tools that will make it useful for the clients or even for yourself. For example, as a part of all the small business website design packages, Small Biz Express routinely offers an application called “Refer a friend”which will help customers refer your business to their friends and let you know so that you can thank the referees (verbally or in form of a discount). Our photographer website design packages offer the ability for photographers to post pictures (with watermarks) and enable customers to order them online. To make website design business centric with applications requires some technical skills.

As much as players are trying to push the ‘do it yourself’ website design, most businesses are better off using professionals. At $25 per hour, Small Biz Express actually charges less for website design than what your local handyman does and we know there are others (free lancers mostly) who are as good and as cheap.

Here is a website of a restaurant in New York City we recently launched and I think it is apparent that having a professional,design and develop a website makes a difference.