So you want your website to make you look big. More power to you.

But the business experts say small is cool with customers, too. Small businesses, they say, have a personality, flavor and sensibility that big businesses can't match. And when it comes to what you put on your website, they urge: Don't be afraid to tout your smallness.

"Small businesses can have more fun with their sites, more so than large corporations," says Alice Bredin, president of Bredin Business Information, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, company that helps large business-to-business companies market themselves to small businesses. "A small-business site needs to include something that reflects the creativity and personality of its owner."

Maybe you're a couple working side-by-side in a spare bedroom or a fourth-generation entrepreneur working to someday hand it over to a son or daughter. Maybe you're putting yourself through grad school. Or you operate from a remote site in the hinterlands and you use only recycled materials. Presented well on a home page and/or an "About Us" section, all of these may have unique selling points to customers.

"People want character; it has meaning," adds Kelly Cutler, chief executive of Marcel Media, a Chicago-based Web advisory firm. "How folksy you get depends on your industry." An attorney may not want to project an image of him or her working on a leather sofa with a dog curled up nearby. But that may work well for an artist or craftsperson, even an architect, Cutler and others say.

Whatever your industry, "Tell your story online," Cutler says. Customers want to know who you are and, if you lead a team, who is on it and what they do. "You must talk about the team," Bredin seconds. "When there is nothing [on your site] about who you are or who's on your team, people wonder about whether you are a good company to buy from."

Here are the 10 most important things these experts say customers want to know:

1. How your business is unique
   Answer the question "Who are you?" as interestingly and compellingly (and honestly) as possible. This includes writing management bios that mention your expertise, years of experience and any unique attributes or details that may set you apart from others.
   
   You need to answer, Bredin says, "What is unique about your business? Why should I buy from you?" This is missing from many business sites because the owners haven't done the strategic thinking necessary to figure that out, she says.
   
   Be concise, too, Cutler adds. "You don't need to write a novel."
    
2. A clear sense of what your company offers
   "It's incredible how many sites you visit and you're not sure what the company offers," Bredin says. Make it a priority on your home page to provide at least general information about your products and/or services, with links to specifics on a Products page.
   
   Many service-oriented companies, Cutler says, are concerned about divulging too much information about their offerings, for competitive reasons. Some also feel that consumers will have no reason to contact them by phone if they get all they need from the website. "There's a balance that needs to be reached" in giving the potential customer enough info to make a buying decision, she says. More often than not, consumers will not contact a company for the missing product information--they'll just move on to a competitor.
    
3. Contact information, including a phone number and physical location
   This may seem like a no-brainer, but many companies are purposely vague about their location. Some prefer to do all of their business online and see no need to publish an address or phone number. Others are home-based or they worry that giving a street address or hometown will somehow hinder them.
   
   "This is a must, and it's one small way of building credibility and trust" with the consumer, says Wayne Porter, co-founder of ReveNews, an online marketing publication, and former senior director of research at FaceTime, a business security solutions provider. "A phone number, a street address and even pictures go a long way toward building credibility."
   
   Showing a physical location, even one that no one will ever visit, comforts a customer that your business is real and legitimate, Bredin says. Provide a phone number that maps to that location, rather than just an 800 number, she advises.
    
4. Third-party validation
   This means customer testimonials, client lists, case studies, awards and recognition you've received, positive news clippings and the like. Potential customers indeed want to know who you do business with, and what current customers have to say about their experiences. Such items "forge the underpinnings of trust," Porter says.
   
   Client lists are especially important if your customers are businesses. "If you've got some big-name customers, people like to see that," Cutler says. But make sure you get approval from those you list as clients, she adds.
   
   Porter adds that having a presence on social networking sites and blogs, especially those serving your industry, is an increasingly popular form of validation among customers. "Social networking now has strong validation," he says.
    
5. Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
   SSL is an encryption system that helps protect the privacy of data exchanged between a customer and a website. If you have an e-commerce site that takes credit card information, customers want to know that their sensitive data is encrypted. Get SSL if you don't have it. If you do, let customers know that and about any other safeguards you proactively take.
    
6. Ease of use and navigation
   If people can't find it, they can't buy it. Porter advises keeping sites "crisp, clean, and easy to navigate," but also for site owners to study traffic and usage patterns to adjust their sites based on what visitors are coming for. "The ability to search a site is very important," he says. "Businesses should study their search data to see if there are trends and what to make front and center."
    
7. Clear guidance on your processes
   Let customers know, step-by-step, important things such as how to order--and where to go and what to do should something happen out of the ordinary. Customers also want to know your shipping costs and procedures and how they can get status reports. (Don't list your shipping costs and procedures after people enter their credit card information, Cutler urges.) Last but not least, customers want to know how you handle complaints and problems, return procedures and whether you have a money-back guarantee.
   
   Your processes can be described in a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page or separate "how to order," shipping and/or confirmation pages. Include a way customers can contact your business or fulfillment agency for more information.
    
8. An ability to give feedback
   Encourage feedback about your products and services, your ordering process and your site in general, by providing a feedback mechanism--either feedback forms or e-mail links. Not every small business prefers to offer this, in some cases because of resource constraints. "You definitely want to look at how and what feedback to gather, and you should consider offering an incentive or perk [to the customer]," Porter says. "You might get some good stories to feature on your site or in your blog."
    
9. Clear calls to action
   Customers want signs or buttons in order to act, be it "Buy now" or "Sign up for our newsletter" or "Click here for more information." But many small-business sites don't provide calls to action or they don't present them clearly enough, Cutler says. "This is one of the biggest things that nags me," she says. "If you have a captive audience, this is the time to grab them!"
    
10. Special offers and personalization
    By personalizing a sale with a special offer, incentive or coupon, small businesses can gain an edge on their bigger counterparts, Porter says. "This can be as simple as a hand-written thank-you note, free gift wrap services or a special offer for repeat business.
    
    "Having a personalized touch," he says, "is something small businesses can do that many big businesses can't."

In the spring of 2007, James Siminoff hired a branding consultant to help him with a problem. He believed that a lousy name — SimulScribe — was holding back his young mobile-software company. The New York City business had raised $5.7 million from angel investors and released software that could transcribe a voice-mail message, then send it to customers as an e-mail or a text message. SimulScribe's user base was growing 20 percent a month, and the technology had attracted buzz in the tech press, including a glowing review in The New York Times.

The name SimulScribe seemed to convey the idea behind the technology. After the product launched, however, customer feedback indicated that it was hard to remember and easily mistyped. Given that the company's strategy was to build a user base primarily through word of mouth, this was bad news. "If you're selling a product on the Web that you want people to talk about, the name is the most important thing," Siminoff says.

As his investors clamored for a change, he hired an experienced branding consultant at a cost of $30,000. But when the guy came up with a list of uninspired suggestions such as VoiceTyper.com and BusyEyes.net, "I just completely lost it on him," Siminoff admits. "I fired him halfway through the contract."

Siminoff is hardly the only business owner to get stuck on a name. Many entrepreneurs find that their moniker becomes too limited and outdated as the business evolves and enters new markets. The problem is that changing names early in the life of a company can confuse customers. And the whole process is made more complicated these days by the need for a rebranded company to switch Web addresses. New dot-coms and dot-nets are being registered at a rate of 2.5 million a month, according to VeriSign.

Danny Altman, founder of A Hundred Monkeys, a naming and branding firm in Mill Valley, California, believes it's better to change than to stick with something that isn't working. "In their first few years, start-ups usually go through some fairly wild gyrations," says Altman, who helped rebrand the Rhode Island State Lottery as The Lot and who has worked with Bill Hambrecht, the Silicon Valley investment banker. "Almost all of the start-ups I've worked with have started with really bad names but waited until they were more advanced to seriously think about marketing and branding," Altman says.

So if you blew it the first time, how can you improve your chances of choosing a good name the second time around? Altman typically takes a client through an eight- to 10-week process that starts with broad philosophical questions: Who are we? What are we good at? What territory do we want to occupy? The answers serve as a jumping-off point for a series of brainstorming sessions that produce as many as 50 potential names. The list is whittled down to five to 10 candidates, which are vetted for concerns such as their defensibility as trademarks. After that, picking the winner is usually a matter of personal taste.

Jeff Hyman, a serial entrepreneur in Evanston, Illinois, has hired A Hundred Monkeys on two previous rebrandings and, most recently, to christen Strong Suit, a start-up recruiting firm he owns. Each time Hyman has gone through the process, whether for a start-up or for an existing company, Altman has helped him come up with something a little edgy — a name that some customers like and others are unsure of. And that's part of the point. A name can't be too safe or neutral. "If you have a name that makes everyone happy, it's probably pretty boring," says Hyman. (He declined to share rejected names.)

A new Web site called NameThis hopes to streamline the process. For $99, you can post a description of a business or product and solicit potential names for it. NameThis's users can make suggestions and vote for their favorites. The site then ranks the suggestions according to an algorithm that judges their popularity among NameThis's users, as well as the names' uniqueness and relevance. If a name is picked, the person who came up with it is paid a small fee, and NameThis helps the client track down the corresponding domain name.

The site launched too late for Siminoff, who came up with a new name on his own; on a redeye flight from L.A. to New York City, PhoneTag popped into his head. The Web address was already owned, but after a few months of halting negotiations, the owner agreed to sell it for $30,000.

The rebranding campaign proceeded from there. Siminoff kept the same logo, swapping in the new name for the old, and left the design of the Web site largely intact. But there were glitches. Another domain-name owner with whom Siminoff had been negotiating tried to sue SimulScribe for breach of contract, but the case was dismissed. And in April, just ahead of the official name change, SimulScribe's technology was selected for a personal-tech segment on the Today show. "I told my wife, 'I can't believe we're on TV with the old name,'" Siminoff says.

The cost-cutting actions employers have made to deal with the economic crisis have left businesses with fractured teams of disengaged employees. Studies show that employee engagement levels have dropped significantly since 2008. According to Gallup, more than two-thirds of American workers are "not engaged" or "disengaged" in their workplaces in response to the brutal economic and workplace changes over the past two years.

"People are disillusioned with the economy and the fact that many of them are having to do more work with fewer people, thanks to layoffs," says Dianne Durkin, president of Loyalty Factor LLC, which consults with businesses on change management, employee loyalty and customer loyalty programs. "You would think employees would be more engaged because of the economy, but I don't think anybody is."

And a lack of engagement among employees is costly for small businesses, leading to high turnover rates, shaky leadership and a dearth of good ideas. "What happens is you don't get the creativity and the innovation," Durkin says. "People [who are unengaged] aren't going to speak up about issues they encounter, they're not going to bring new ideas, and productivity really suffers."

So how do you get employees engaged in unsettled times? Here are four ways that have worked for other small companies:

Ask for help
Last year, when the economy was dragging and stress levels were soaring, New York-based telecommunications firm M5 Networks Inc. launched a year-long team growth program, "M5 Rock." The company's 100 employees were divided into 10 cross-functional teams from different parts of the organization, says president and CEO Dan Hoffman. In addition to competing in scavenger hunts and other teambuilding activities, the teams worked together on business issues such as developing new sales pitches and writing business plans for new products. Being asked for feedback and seeing that their ideas were valued led employees to become more invested in their jobs. After the program's end, Hoffman saw a 10-point increase on customer satisfaction surveys, as well as increases in employee satisfaction surveys.

"When you ask employees for their input in solving business issues, it is absolutely amazing what they will come up with," Durkin says.    

Focus on a purpose
At Everblue Training Institute, every employee knows the mission: to build the earth's most sustainable work force. Owner Jon Boggiano believes that educating workers for a green economy will promote energy security, build prosperity and safeguard the environment, and he regularly reminds employees of the difference they are making.

Simply understanding and being reminded of the company's mission can help employees stay engaged, Durkin says. "Your work force needs to understand what your purpose in life is, beyond making money," she says. "Make it simple so people can identify with it, but you can really motivate people around these little statements that are very meaningful."

For inspiration, look at large companies that successfully focus on a simple purpose statement, such as Ritz-Carlton ("Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen") and Disney ("To use our imagination to bring happiness to millions").

Communicate confidently
To keep employees engaged, ensure that employees understand the managers are in control and know exactly what they are doing.

And a lack of engagement among employees is costly for small businesses, leading to high turnover rates, shaky leadership and a dearth of good ideas. "What happens is you don't get the creativity and the innovation," Durkin says. "People [who are unengaged] aren't going to speak up about issues they encounter, they're not going to bring new ideas, and productivity really suffers."

So how do you get employees engaged in unsettled times? Here are four ways that have worked for other small companies:

Recognize and reward good work
Last spring, HometownQuotes, an online service that matches consumers with local insurance agents, wanted to find a way to "keep morale high, engage our teams and break down silos throughout the organization," says Krista Farmer, communications manager for the company. The result was an incentive rewards program called the Q Point program, which recognizes employees for doing things like maintaining high customer satisfaction and keeping a keen eye on details. Each week, employees throughout the company submit Q Point nominations to the Q Point committee, which consists of three to five employees who review and discuss the nominations and award Q Points to nominated workers who clearly performed above and beyond their job description or exhibited out-of-the-box thinking. When an employee receives 10 points, he may turn them in for a paid half-day of vacation, or he may accumulate 20 points and exchange them for a full day of paid vacation time. Since launching the program, 13 of 24 HometownQuotes employees have earned at least a half-day off.

Small business owners looking to stay afloat in today's choppy economy have a lot riding against them. Raw materials are pricier. The U.S. dollar is worth less. Credit is harder to come by. And the cost of health care continues to rise. As a result, many entrepreneurs are slashing one of their biggest expenses: payroll.

In fact, nearly half of small-business owners polled in a recent survey said they plan to lay off workers, curtail raises or offer days off instead of wage increases as a result of the economic downturn. The survey was conducted by PayCycle, an online payroll service in Palo Alto, Calif.

While layoffs may be necessary at some small businesses, employers should avoid sharpening the ax. Here's why: Not only do employees contribute to the company's productivity and bottom line, they're often well-schooled (at a great cost) on your specific business methods. Conduct layoffs now, and you'll spend even more to train a whole new batch once the economy picks back up.

Instead, consider these other payroll-trimming strategies:

Keep employees working. If there isn't enough work to go around, consider switching up people's duties, suggests Ray Friedman, a management professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. "I have seen big companies make it through downturns by having factory workers do maintenance work [such as] painting, fixing tools" and the like, he says. Small companies, he adds, can receive similar cost savings by having current employees perform jobs that you would otherwise hire someone to do.

While such a role reversal will likely upset some workers, Christopher J. Collins, an associate professor of human-resources studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., says that "complete honesty is really important." If you articulate to your employees that such a job shift is only temporary, they may appreciate your resourcefulness and pitch in where they can.

Explore alternatives. As you converse honestly with employees about your business's struggles, ask them for their cost-reduction thoughts, suggests Collins. "They may have creative ideas that have to do with nonpayroll ways to save money." For instance, there may be some inefficient processes that an employee may have noticed that, if fixed, could save the company a bundle.

Ask for volunteers. You might also ask employees to consider a voluntary furlough, which is typically an unpaid temporary layoff or leave of absence. "Some employees may want time off," says Friedman. "It's better to let those who want, and can afford, time off to not work, rather than forcing it on everyone." Some employees might consider using the time off to take a vacation, spend time with family or work on a personal project if they're promised a job when the furlough is over.

Offer other incentives. Look into other forms of compensation, says Gene Marks, a small-business consultant in Philadelphia. For instance, providing stock options in lieu of payment may be acceptable for a short period. Additionally, if your company regularly provides bonuses but can't afford them this year, consider offering nonpayment incentives instead, Marks says. "If you have anything like a vacation home or a timeshare that you can give to an employee that doesn't cost you really anything, offer it," he says. Just make sure you're upfront about the switcheroo, as (understandably) many employees will chafe at having their bonuses disappear.

Install shorter work weeks. Reducing your employee's hours may do the trick as well. For instance, Tray-Pak, a custom plastic packaging maker in Reading, Penn., has for the past two years instituted a four-day workweek during the typically slow months from February until April. "In our slow period, we really don't need full staff," says Ken Ritter, the company's chief financial officer. Historically, he adds "we would have laid those people off." However, Tray-Pak has found that it's worth keeping the employees on because the training process, which takes three weeks, is so costly.

Reduce pay. If all else fails, consider reducing employees' pay, says Collins from Cornell. This is obviously going to be controversial. However, since a person's livelihood is on the line, a pay cut vs. a job cut, for many employees, may be preferable. The key to this predicament, he adds, is to "keep employees involved." It will be a difficult conversation, but after relaying to your staff that the business is being squeezed and its overall stability is in question, a pay cut may be an easier pill to swallow.