Creating an attractive and effective website for a small business can feel like a daunting task. It’s often the way potential customers “meet” you, so it has to make a great first impression, it has to pop with personality and it has to be functional.
“Easier said than done,” you might be thinking, but a little focus goes a long way when it comes to creating a website. That’s what we’re here for — we bring the focus.
Here are Five Things your Small Business Website Needs to Succeed:
1. A clear brand voice.
Are you fun, funky and tongue-in-cheek? Or maybe you’re authoritative with a side of no-nonsense. You know your core audience, whether it be local college students or midlife professionals. Your brand voice should incorporate the spirit of your company in a way that connects with your audience. A business that offers therapeutic massages, for example, will have a very different brand voice than the local tattoo parlor; that difference should be evident on their websites.
2. Quality over quantity.
You don’t have to have all the bells and whistles right out of the gate. You’re working within a budget, so let the priority be to start small but mighty. You want your website’s pages to load quickly and reliably, to provide intuitive navigation, and to feature only content that speaks directly and succinctly to your customer’s needs.
3. To be free from clutter.
Don’t overwhelm your users with unnecessary clutter and excessive information. A nice balance of text and images — along with some clean space — makes it easier for the user to hone in on the most important information and navigate the site with ease. If your website feels cluttered, take stock of any less-than-vital widgets, which have a tendency to clutter up the sides of websites.
Also — and this is just as important — always use quality images. If you can hire a photographer to shoot some personalized images for you, that’s great! If not, sites like Unsplash offer quality stock images for free. Professional photos will make your website POP rather than droop.
4. A really solid mobile version.
Mobile website viewing is overtaking desktop viewing, which means it’s no longer enough to create a desktop version and hope it looks OK on a smartphone or tablet. At every turn in the design process, be thinking about how your site will respond on mobile. Your designer should test the site on mobile throughout the process, but there’s a difference between a responsive website simply working on mobile and fully optimizing your site to be easy to use for the majority of users.
5. Direct calls to action.
Getting traffic to your website is great! Everyone loves an audience. But turning that audience into customers should be your website’s biggest priority. It should be easy and obvious how those potential customers can take the next step. Maybe they can sign up for your newsletter to get a discount on their first purchase or maybe they can fill out a form for a free estimate. Make your calls-to-action clear, concise and customer-oriented.
Hey, if you need any help with this, we’re here for you. Check out all the branding and marketing services we offer here. (Friends, that right there was a call to action!)
