No matter the size of your business, having a website is a crucial component that helps to grow your digital presence, but also makes it easier for people to find you and your services. So to help you out, we’ve put together 10 great web design tips for your small business website.
Focusing on SEO
Search engine optimisation is no doubt important for all websites, regardless of their size. Make sure you focus on being easily found by Google and researching white-hat methods of SEO to help boost your presence.
Settle your branding now
Whatever logo, colour schemes or slogans you plan to use, make sure you decide as early as possible so that you can incorporate them in your website without having to use ugly placeholders.
Responsive design
A website being “responsive” basically just refers to it being able to adapt to the device size and orientation. For instance, a website that looks great on a desktop computer must automatically scale down and look fantastic on mobile too.
Optimising performance
The last thing you want is for your website to be bogged down by a ludicrous amount of images and videos that automatically load when someone visits it. This results in slow load times and too much data usage for mobile devices, creating unnecessary problems that lead to a poor customer experience.
Original content
It’s crucial that you create content that’s actually relevant to your website. If you’re selling tech items, then make sure your blog actually talks about tech and not something completely different. If you’re a blog about art, then make sure it’s relevant to art and doesn’t drift off into another subject. This will help retain viewers and customers, but also help with SEO.
Staying simple
A minimalist design is good not only because it’s often cheaper and easier to make, but it creates a better experience for your audience since there’s less clutter on screen. Try use more images and less text, and keep paragraphs as concise as possible so your audience can skim through everything yet still get all the information they need.
Planning website navigation
You should plan your website navigation so that your audience never spends more than 2-4 clicks getting to where they need to. Important information like contact details and social media accounts should be visible on every page, and the navigation should be intuitive and simple to understand.
Capturing leads
It’s important to realise that your small website needs to capture people and convert leads. This means you should create landing pages, you should profile your ideal visitor so you can appeal to their tastes, and you should also keep them informed about all of your products, discounts and services.
Showcase products
No matter if you’re selling a service or a physical product, it’s important to describe it as best you can and also includes as many images as possible to help convert leads into sales.
Utilise social media
Make sure you have social media widgets so that your visitors can share information from your website. Be it a product, descriptions or even a blog post, make it easy for your visitors to spread your content.