The website for your business is one of the most important tools you have. A website for small business owners is often the first place a potential customer interacts with a company. Other people will see it as the place they go to learn more about your products and interact with your business.
While there are plenty of methods for creating a website for your business, the good news is that website design isn’t as difficult as you might think. Here are some keys to a great website to keep in mind.
Have A Focus
Having a focus for your website is website building 101. It would be best if you had a clear goal for what you want to get out of the website. Websites for small businesses can work as great marketing tools, and having a plan for your website helps you to focus on creating something to meet that goal.
Common goals for websites are to build awareness, generate leads and phone calls, boost online and offline sales, and increase the number of consultations and reservations. Think about what you want the website to achieve, and then create a website with that goal in mind.
Have Visual Aids
It doesn’t matter what kind of industry your business operates in, whether you sell clothes, consulting services, electronic products, or food. When you put together the products and services page, think of them as a sales funnel and use visual aids to inform users and get the results you want. Professional quality images and videos in product listings can make all the difference in the world. The better people can see what you have to offer, the more interested they will be in it.
The internet is a visual medium. People expect to be able to see pictures and videos of things before buying them. Would you buy something online without seeing it first? Neither would your customers.
Make It Responsive
When you create a website, you want to make one that looks good and works well on all browsers and devices. You need a responsive, cross-browser website so that anyone can access your website, no matter what device they use. Not only does making a website more responsive help your users, but it also increases your SEO and placing in search engine results pages. Part of website SEO is how responsive that site is.
The great thing about making a responsive website is that it’s much easier than you might expect. Most website builders have themes and templates that are responsive as standard. You should still do some testing to make sure the website loads and works how you want it to, however. Don’t automatically trust the template to do the work.
Have Helpful Content
Content is king when it comes to websites. You need to have good content to keep readers engaged and coming back for more. Not any old content will do, though. You want to make the content helpful. When creating a website for your business, think about informative content you can write. People should be able to understand more about your business and what you offer from the content on your site.
Security
There’s no getting around the simple fact that your website is at risk. Thousands of websites, big and small, are hacked each day. Even if you think nothing will happen to your website, prepare for the off chance it does. Don’t fall for the idea that hackers have bigger fish to fry than your website; nearly 43% of cybercrimes are targeted at small businesses.
Security is one element of website design you can’t afford to take lightly. It’s not like hackers are about to stop any time soon, so the least you could do is prepare yourself for the challenge and improve security.
Search Engine Optimization
Most people are familiar with search engine optimization, better known as SEO. Website SEO is basically creating a website in such a way that it becomes more visible to search engines. The more visible a page is in search results, the more likely it is that the person who searched will click on your website. The more people you have accessing your website, the more potential leads and conversions you can generate.
Search engines work by using bots to crawl websites. These bots crawl through website after website, gathering information about the pages they see and sorting that information into an index. Search algorithms analyze the index when people perform a search, factoring in hundreds of different ranking signals, to determine the page order of search results.
Think of SEO as being a proxy for the user experience. The better the user experience, the better your SEO will be. Keyword research and content quality are two of the most critical factors for SEO; write informative content for humans, and the bots at Google, Bing, etc. will reward you for it.
Consistent Branding
One of the biggest rookie mistakes you can make when you create a website is to have an inconstant design. There should be consistency across the pages, copy, and media used to make the website. That means that every page should have similar styling, colors, typography, and language. You need to put together a cohesive website where every page looks like they all belong on the same website.
Fast Loading Times
The speed of a website can have a significant impact on the overall user experience and your search page results ranking. There are several ways to create a website made for speed. One of the easiest ways to boost site loading times is to reduce how many plugins you use for your site. You should also consider compressing photos and videos to reduce how much space they use, letting them load faster. The fewer redirects your site uses, the better.
Stay Organized
Having to plan and organize website content can seem daunting for the uninitiated, especially if there’s plenty of content to go around. You should use a grid system when developing your website to keep things clear and simple. Think of a website layout as being similar to a restaurant menu, with content separated into logical categories.
The better-organized your content is, the faster it loads, and the easier it is to understand. Take the idea of organizing content into the plan for putting together a website for business, so you don’t run into problems later on.
Create A Website
Putting together a business website isn’t as difficult as it might sound. Keep these tips in mind and consider looking through some of our other articles for more advice. If you are feeling overwhelmed by it all, or just want some help anyway, then don’t hesitate to get in touch.
We offer all the website design and consultation services you could need. Count on us to help you get a website ready for your business, including great website SEO and the other keys to a great website.
Let us help you create a website. We are happy to offer our advice born from years of experience in the industry.
