After spending a year and a half designing the website for my wife’s small business, I decided to delete the whole thing.

During those 18 months, I learned quite a bit about website design, search engine optimization and lead conversion.  Enough to confidently delete the website and start over with WordPress.

I had originally built the site with WebsiteTonight from Godaddy and although I was very pleased with how the site looked, there were too many advantages to converting it:

• I was able to have the blog and website all on one domain
• WordPress is the best blogging software
• The code for WordPress and frugaltheme is clean, fast and search engine friendly
• The on-page search engine optimization is built in
• I was able to install plugins to improve search rankings, such as All in one SEO Pack, Google XML sitemaps, Google Analytics for WordPress, and Yet another Related Posts
• It is easy to add new content
• Creation of categories and tags to improve search engine rankings
• Installed good-looking web 2.0 contact form for lead conversion
• Ability to interact, leave comments and subscribe to the site

The biggest obstacle is that you do not want your commercial business website to look like a blog.  I decided to go with frugaltheme because it is easily customizable and has a minimalist design.  I was able to create a static homepage and have the actual blog as the 4th page in.  The layout is very simple including a basic description, contact form and testimonials.  Take a look at how it turned out.

For more small business marketing tips subscribe by email or RSS feed.

photo by koka sexton