Joomla for Small Business

After our posts on Joomla for law firms and Joomla for universities, we wanted to write a post about Joomla for small businesses, since this is where Joomla really shines…

Almost every week, we receive 2 or 3 phone calls from new clients. The calls usually go the following way:

New client: “Hi”
Us: “Hi”
New client: “I heard that you are experts in Joomla”
Us: “Yes we are, how did you know about us?”
New client: “Word of mouth!”
Us: “That’s great! How can we serve you?”
New client: “I want to know if Joomla is good for my small business”

At this point we start discussing with the client the nature of his business, and, we always reach the conclusion that Joomla is good for his small business. In fact, we are now confident that Joomla is good for any small business, here’s why:

• Joomla ensures a small business gains an online presence cheaply and rapidly

  If you have a small business, you are now expected to have a website, just like the “big guys”. Websites are no longer a want for small businesses, they are now a need. People just expect you to have a website that tells them more about your business. But since you’re a small business, you know you can’t afford paying tens of thousands of dollars for a company to develop your own website. So what do you do? Well, Joomla comes to the rescue: If you have some technical skills, then you can install Joomla and start your Joomla website in a week or so. This process will cost you nothing. If you want, there are some companies (including us) that will take care of the process from A to Z (install Joomla for you, ensure it works, ensure that you content is placed and everything is functioning as it should) in only 2 to 3 days. Note that if you go with the latter option than you have to provide this company with the content of your pages.

• You don’t need technical skills to update a Joomla website

  We know that, as a small business, you probably can’t afford to hire someone full time to update your website, regardless of his or her salary. We also know that you feel it’s better (and safer) that you update your website yourself. After all, who can understand your business more than yourself. If you use Joomla, you will be able to do just that: you will be able to add more pages on your website, update old pages, and hide some pages. After all, Joomla is not that hard, if you only want to update content.

• A Joomla website doesn’t need a lot of maintenance

  We know what a small business wants: a website that needs little or no maintenance at all. While every website needs to be maintained from time to time, Joomla websites are famous for their low maintenance: You only need to make sure that everything is OK (security, efficiency/speed, functionality) with your Joomla website once every 3 months or so. At itoctopus, we will soon release a “maintenance package”, available for small businesses using Joomla. Stay tuned!

• Joomla provides an easy shopping cart for small businesses

  There are many extensions (an extension is a functionality that integrates with a Joomla website) for Joomla that will allow small businesses to sell their products through their websites. All aspects of the online store creation and management can be done: The creation of the store, the creation of the categories, the creation of the products, the pricing of the products (including taxation and shipping), the processing of the payments, etc… One of the very prominent e-commerce extensions for Joomla is VirtueMart, which allows you to do just that (and more), and, what’s even better, is that VirtueMart is very easy to use. Just create your store, add your products, and see those payments coming…

• Joomla websites can be easily integrated with social networks

  It’s hard to live in a vacuum nowadays and ignore Facebook, Twitter, and the likes. As a small business, you need to make sure that your website easily integrates with these social platforms so that your visitors can easily like/tweet your pages/products. Joomla has many extensions that allow you to integrate social networking, so that you will be always closer to your clients.

• Joomla doesn’t generally require programming expertise

  If, as a small business, you go with a custom website (non-Joomla) then if you need a new feature, you should be prepared to either do some coding yourself or to hire someone that will do the coding for you. Both are not very good options, especially if don’t know how to code or if you’re not budgeting to pay a programmer. Now if you’re using Joomla, then this new feature that you want to install on your website might’ve been developed by someone else before and released as an extension which you can install on your website.

• Joomla is a true and tested CMS

  Some small businesses reach a point where they rely partially or completely on their websites to generate income. This means that they need a secure and stable website. Joomla is just that, Joomla is installed and tested by many small businesses, as well as large non-profit organizations.

• There’s always someone who understands Joomla

  When a small business owner asks a company or a programmer to develop a custom website, he’s always afraid that, one day, the company or the programmer vanish into thin air, and then he’ll be stuck with a website that nobody understands how it’s coded (and thus nobody will be able to maintain it/expand it). If the small business uses Joomla, then there are many companies that do Joomla consulting that the small business can hire to work on its Joomla website.

Now how does a small business website look like?

From our experience, here’s what a small business website contains:

• Homepage: The homepage includes some basic information about the business.
• About Us/Who we are page: A page that describes, in details, what the business is.
• Our team: A list of the people who work in this business. Usually this page consists of a picture and a small blurb (role in the business, hobbies, etc…) about each person working in the business.
• Contact Us page: A page that contains information about the location of the business, and that includes a form that the visitor can use to contact the business.
• Legal terms/Privacy Policy/etc…

The above is the skeleton of any small business website. The website may also include other pages featuring its main products/services, a page about its partners, a page about its current clients, etc…

Additionally, the website of a small business may include an online store, as well as some interactive features (depending on the business itself).

So here goes, we have explained, in details, why Joomla is a good choice for small businesses… Now if you own a small business and you need a website, then maybe you should consider Joomla for the above reasons above. If you need any help installing/extending your Joomla website, then we are here to help you: just contact us and you’ll see for sure how genuinely interested we are in your own business. We are very fast, our fees are very reasonable, and we even have a 24/7/365 Joomla emergency hotline that you can call anytime.