South Side Chamber Presents Website Essentials for Small Businesses

The South Shore Chamber, Inc. organized a website workshop because of an obvious need for website and online education within the South Shore business community.
The South Shore Chamber, Inc. organized a website workshop because of an obvious need for website and online education within the South Shore business community. Photo by Lee Edwards.

On Monday, the South Shore Chamber, Inc., 1750 East 71st, hosted the “Art eVentures: Essentials of a Small Business Website” workshop presented by Norman L. Lawrence, Jr., founder & CEO of Arts eVentures. The event’s focus was to provide small business owners with a comprehensive understanding of how to create, update and sustain an effective business website, regardless of the size of their company.

“The purpose of the talk [was] to tell people what kind of website they should have, what should be on it, how to market it, how to maintain it, etc.,” said Lawrence. “The most important thing on your website is the content, the information, that’s the only reason people come to the website. You have to make sure that it’s relevant, the kind of information that people want and that it’s always fresh, current and up to date.”

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Photo by: Lee Edwards

Norman L. Lawrence, Jr., founder & CEO of Arts eVentures provides information to small business owners about the essentials of creating a business website.

Based in Chicago, Lawrence founded Arts eVentures in 2000 and currently has clients in over 25 states across the nation and abroad. Arts eVentures works almost exclusively with small businesses and nonprofit organizations on custom design websites, online marketing, e-mail marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and local search marketing.

“You could have the greatest website in the world but you have to be found. If [people] can’t find you on Google, can’t find you on Yahoo!, can’t find you on major search engines, it’s no use, your website is a failure,” said Lawrence.

During the workshop, Lawrence offered the following key points.

• Video is the #1 driver of internet traffic.

• Never tell when you can show.

• Tell your visitors what you want them to do.

• Make a good first impression.

• Instantly and intuitively communicate what you do beyond your first page.

• Websites should contain relevant, fresh, up-to-date information.

• Offer a simple uncluttered use experience.

• There has to be someone in charge of the website and maintenance.

• Know the purpose of your website.

• Know your target audience.

Alan Ford of Bryford School Solutions attended the event found it “surprisingly” helpful.

“I like to be informed and it was great presentation about building a website, building your business and I thought it was very informative, it was well presented,” Bryford. “At the end there were only a few questions because [Lawrence] covered as much information as possible and I think everyone was pleasantly surprised.”

Allyson Scrutchens, South Shore Chamber Program Manager, organized the website workshop because she saw an obvious need for website and online education within the South Shore business community.

“[Lawrence] addressed a need we are constantly noticing in the South Shore community, that our businesses don’t have websites, let alone e-mail addresses, so it was very important for him to come out and talk to them about the benefits,” said Scrutchens. “I think he did a great job, he touched on the importance of Google Analytics, description tags, maintaining your small business website, etc. His presentation was great and the information he presented was very valuable to our businesses.”

For more information about Arts eVentures visit http://www.artseventures.com/. For more information about the South Shore Chamber visit http://www.southshorechamberinc.org/.

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