Often I’m contacted by small businesses without a lot of money who need a website.  They are usually put off by the costs associated with building a quality, SEO friendly website.  They just want their business online.

While I agree that they are missing most of the potential of being online, I also see that these business owners may simply be getting online because of a knee-jerk reaction to something that happened recently in their life:

• A customer asked (or many customers ask) about their website.  They had to admit they didn’t have one.
• A business colleague mentioned that he got his website up and running, and is excited about it.
• A rival business launched their website
• At a recent Kiwanis/Chamber/Seminar they heard about the great conversions online retailers are getting.

There are plenty more, but these are the core reasons that I’ve heard over time which ‘kicked the business owner into gear’.

So what do we (web developers and SEO geeks) do with these customers when they are recognized?  Do we simply state a minimum budget and leave them with a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude?  Should we simply refer them on to one of our friends that do crappy work on the cheap?

No! We take the gig.

If you have a potential client who wants a website, but really has no clue what they want, it is our duty and our assignment to explain to them what they need – an online presence that creates leads and sales!

Now I’m not saying take every gig that calls.  There are some business owners out there who want everything for nothing.  They are usually more demanding than serious business owners, and they waste a ton of your time on frivolous things.  Those customers you dump off to your web designer friend (or enemy).  But those business owners who have a viable and profitable business in an industry that lacks serious SEO competition, and just need a brochure website – take them.

I often take these clients simply because I see the potential.  If you can build them a website that won’t take a lot of time and can be easily optimized, why not?  When they start seeing leads trickle in, you’ll be in a great position to explain what you do and how you can increase that traffic tremendously.  It’s leverage.

So what’s the secret of setting up one of these ‘brochure’ websites without spending a ton of time doing so?  Wordpress.

Even though it’s main function is blogging, you can still use it as a great foundation for what your business owner needs.  Creating pages is extremely simple, and finding a template for them is seriously quick.  Within just a few hours you can have them a website up and running – to the tune of whatever you quoted them (I’d say $600 bucks including 1 year of hosting and a domain name would do the trick).

The good news is, if they call you in a few months and need to add things, all you have to do is create a new post/page on the site, and its up.  It’s linked.  It’s ready to go.  No backend coding, no huge amount of time spent doing markup.  Copy. Paste. Publish. Done.

And if they turn into a serious SEO customer, you’ve already got a nice foundation to build upon.