How to make small countryside companies visible online. And why Squarespace sucks.
Recently I changed the big city for the countryside, I’m a freelancing developer/designer that mostly work remote so it was an easy adjustment. One thing I aspired to do was more local work, especially when I noticed that plenty of companies lacked a website. It’s weird because you could argue that a business in a small town(below 50k) is in an even bigger need than the big city companies to be visible online. After all, they don’t have as many people walking by their store window. A website could attract out of town customers to the company.
But the companies are afraid to contact a web agency, if you are running a small neighborhood coffee shop it’s hard to calculate your potential winnings of having a website. So It’s too insecure to spend money on. Naturally, they search for other options, the biggest ones are Facebook and Google businesses which helps a lot for their visibility on the internet. But naturally, you cannot expose your brand on a Facebook page or on Google.
If the company wants a more personalized website they go after tools like Squarespace and WiX. The problem with these tools is that they are way too hard to use for most business owners. Hell, I even see people tagging themselves as “Squarespace designer”, that is probably the biggest sign that your product is way to hard to use for your target audience. Or maybe their target audience is young professionals with high technical and design skills that run creative businesses, who the fuck knows. Both Squarespace and WiX got bad performance too, the sites they are creating are so slow(see below for lighthouse test on one of their highlighted websites).
What’s needed for small business owners is a tool that:
- Works on both mobile and desktop. Plenty of business owners use their phones for everything in their business today. They should be able to edit their site from their phone too.
- Guides them through the entire setup process. Explains to them important web-fundamentals like what SEO is and how it can be adapted.
- Streamlines the setup process after their industry. The website needs to be able to adapt to the needs of its owner. The setup process for a restaurant and a law firm shouldn’t be alike.
- Updates over time. The web is constantly evolving. The website needs to change with it.
- Have a great performance. It should work great on old devices and for people with slow internet access.
- Works together with Google Analytics and displays user trends in an easily comprehendible way.
We need to find a solution for the countryside companies, we owe it to them. They didn’t get a seat on the internet revolution train. The small indie stores in the countryside got so much to bring to the table if we can only make them visible on the web so people from wheresoever can find them.
Please join me on the journey to find a solution. If you got any good ideas on how to solve this issue please contact me at william@agenly.se. We got so much to benefit from if we can demonstrate the appeal of the countryside.
