Website design to support your business
Meirav Dulberg established her business Webby Web Design 14 years ago, when she became a Mum and needed more flexible working hours. With a background in corporate strategy and IT experience, her husband suggested becoming a web designer and she started working with some community groups at first and then slowly built a client base.
As part of the Lunch Bites series The Business of Food held during May 2020, Jane Del Rosso spoke with Meirav to understand more about her approach to web design and gain tips for those establishing or running a food business.
Over the past decade Meirav has seen lots of website style and technology changes, especially the move to mobile formats and search engine optimisation (SEO) changes. The constant changes allow Meirav to keep learning herself to move with the times for her clients benefit. As many are start ups, Meirav usually creates a basic website or landing page with social media links, which is enough for the first 18 months of operations as a customer base is established.
About three years in, a business will have a detailed knowledge of their customer and matched marketing/selling options, this is the best time to significantly upgrade a website to support the business structure. For established businesses, Meirav is usually part of a team building the website which includes a copy writer, photography, brand designer and technical information matched to the legal business structure.
The more knowledge her clients share about their business operations and customer base, the more effectively Meirav can build a website that fully meets their business needs as an effective marketing tool that is integrated into relevant sales platforms or customer databases. At the same time Meirav will ensure a website matches the relevant industry type, for example with a food business, the brand needs to be clearly delivered across the site with consistent visuals featuring professional product photographs.
Meirav shared lots of advice for start ups on what to think about when setting up your website to ensure it matches to your business goals. You can hear them by watching the full episode on our YouTube channel.
Meirav also shared with us her top 5 things for people to think about when moving to online sales:
Have a plan and be clear of your delivery footprint. How are you going to deliver? Through a third party or by your staff? Your new service model will direct changes to your IT set up
How do you want to take payment? Lots of options, so work out which suits your business model best (matched to your delivery options), then research the fee structures as they differ a lot depending on the volume of sales your business has
Check if your existing website platform has an option to set up an e-commerce platform. Not all do – you need to check this via your domain host. Be clear of the initial and ongoing costs to set up an online shop through your website or through a third party ie Shopify. It might be cheaper and easier to establish a stand alone shop site for a couple of months turned off when not needed anymore
Remember that customers don’t usually care what the shopping platform is – so long as it is quick, is easy to use and has a secure payment option
Be clear in your communication of what your product/service is so customers don’t get confused and make complaints which are bad for your business in the long term.
If you have a food business and are looking to pivot read our blog and listen to the entire lunchtime session with Meirav. We also discussed alternative ways the food industry has adapted during the shutdown and how changes to their websites and sales platforms have assisted to deliver new services.
To view other lunchtime bites session go to The Business of Food You Tube channel and of course get in touch if you need assistance through a strategic coaching session.