Did you know that, according to Small Business Trends, there are over 30,000,000 small businesses in the US? Additionally, 99.9% of all businesses in the US are small businesses.
If you own a small business, then you need to stand out, considering how many other small businesses are out there.
One of the best ways to do this is to have a small business website that represents your business’s brand and puts your business on the map.
Whether you want to redesign your business’s existing website or you want to build a brand new website, the right web design and building strategies will make a huge difference to your business’s success.
But it can be difficult to get started. You may be wondering what steps you have to take to build a great small business website.
That’s why we’ve put together this guide. In it, you’ll discover all the key steps for building a new small business website, whether you’re starting from scratch or rebranding. Read on to learn more.
1. Choose the Right Domain Name for Your Small Business Website
If you’re wondering, “How does web design help improve my business?” one of the ways it does is that it makes it easier for your clients to find out about your business and leaves an impression when they visit your site. When you choose the right domain name, this happens.
Why? First of all, if you have a good domain name, it will be memorable and visitors will see your website as reputable (and, therefore, your business will seem reputable).
Additionally, it will improve your SEO (search engine optimization), bringing more visitors to your website in the first place. To come up with a good domain name, follow these tips:
- Keep it short
- Make sure it’s easy to spell
- Use a legitimate extension, such as .com
- Avoid using hyphens and numbers
- Make sure it’s memorable
- Make the address SEO-friendly
You should also make sure that the domain name makes it possible for your business to have future growth. If you focus on a niche that’s too specific, this might limit your options in the future.
We can help you choose the right domain name with our Business Web Design service.
2. Prominently and Clearly Display Your Business Description
When it comes to having effective small business web design, you need to make sure your customers know exactly what you offer. They also need to know who you are when they visit your website.
To do this, you need to prominently and clearly display your business description.
Your homepage banner and banners on other pages should visually represent your services.
Additionally, you should also have some text at the top in the form of a blurb that describes your business and what services you offer.
Finally, both the footer and main navigation menus should have links to an “About Us” page that are easy to access. This way, visitors will always have the option to learn a bit more about you.
Need help putting together that perfect business description blurb? Or do you want to learn a bit more about how to put together all these elements together so designing a website is a bit easier for you?
Check out our Logo and Brand Design services to get started.
3. Be Smart With Your Website’s UX Design
One of the most important website design tips to follow is to be smart with your website’s UX design. When visitors are on your website, the last thing you want is for them to be confused (or to get a headache from crazy graphics or intense colors).
To make your website visitor and user friendly, you need to follow the right UX design strategies.
First of all, use fonts that are easy to read and graphics that are beautiful. (Speaking of graphics, make sure they’re optimized so they load quickly—otherwise, this can negatively impact your SEO.)
Next, create a navigation system within your website that’s intuitive and makes sense for users. It might help to think about the customer journey most of your potential customers go on.
You’ll also want to include CTAs (call-to-actions), such as buttons that say “Buy Now.”
Other pages you should include are: About Us, Home, Services (or Products), Management Team, Sitemap (this helps with SEO), Terms of Use, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, and any other pages that are popular in your industry.
If you need help maintaining your website, you can use our Pro Website Maintenance service.
4. Brand Yourself
When designing your website, you also need to think about how to reflect your brand in its design. That way, your customers can begin to know your brand from the moment that they visit your website. This creates consistency, which in turn creates trust and loyalty.
The first thing you should do is research your customers. By creating a buyer persona, you’ll know what type of brand voice will speak to them. You’ll also have an easier time selecting the right color palette and font types.
It can also help to visit your competitors’ websites. This will give you an idea of what’s expected both in terms of website design and branding in your industry.
Remember that your branding needs to be consistent throughout your entire website. You can’t make sudden switches with colors or fonts. Additionally, this branding should be present in ways your business shows up online.
For example, your brand should be reflected in your logo and on social media platforms. Need branding services? Check out our Logo and Brand Design service.
5. Optimize Your Website for SEO
When your website is optimized for search engine optimization (SEO), it makes it easier for your customers to find your website when they complete a search query on Google. The stronger your SEO, the higher your site’s content will show up in search results.
For your business website to have strong SEO, there are certain strategies you should use. These include:
- Optimal website code
- Keyword implementation and research
- A loading speed that’s fast
- Having an SSL certificate and being secure
- Optimizing your website for mobile use
You should also have to link between different pages of your website and have high-quality backlinks. It also helps to have many positive reviews on sites such as Facebook, Yelp, and Google. You should also use your social media platforms to link to your website.
These social media platforms include Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
SEO makes a huge difference. If used properly, you can show up on the first page of Google results instead of the twentieth. For help with SEO, check out our Local Search Engine Optimization service.
6. Create and Post High-Quality Content Regularly
Another way to improve your SEO (as well as your branding) is to create and post high-quality content regularly. In terms of SEO, this helps because search engines prioritize content that’s fresh and copious. In terms of branding, it gives your customers the information they want (and need).
As a result, you’ll end up with more repeat visitors because of loyalty and new visitors because of improved SEO.
To make sure you do this correctly, create a content calendar so that you’re consistently publishing blog posts and other types of content on your website.
Create content about what your customers want to read about (which you’ll know from the customer research you completed when branding). Optimize it using the keywords you researched when optimizing for SEO.
Another great way to get content onto your website is by asking happy customers to write testimonials for you.
In addition to giving you fresh content, this will show other customers that your business is worth buying products or services from.
If you want help with managing your business reviews, check out our Business Review Management service.
7. Use Analytics
One of the best ways to have an effective business website is…well, to find out if it’s actually effective. If you’ve designed a great website and followed many of the tips here, then it’s time to see what the analytics are related to your website’s success.
When you’re using analytics, there are different elements you should track. These include:
- Number of views on every single page on your site
- Monthly, weekly, and daily site visitors
- Your “bounce rate” (the percentage of those who go to one page and then leave)
- How much time visitors spend on average on your site
- Crawl errors
Additionally, you should analyze broken links, backlinks that lead to your site, keywords that bring visitors to your website, and how long it takes for your page to load. If you need help figuring out how long your page takes to load, you can use PageSpeed Insights.
It can be challenging to understand how to use analysis tools correctly, and how to then make changes to your website once you have that information.
For this reason, you might need external help. In this case, check out our Pro Website Maintenance service.
8. Set Your Website up For Payments
Most small business websites sell products or services online. If this is the case for your business, then you need to set your website up for payments. This way, your customers can easily pay for a product the moment they’re interested in it.
If you want your business to be successful, you need to integrate payment methods into your website so that it’s as easy as possible for your customers to make purchases. That way, they’ll be more likely to buy.
This can be complicated to set up. For this reason, we recommend using our services to make setting up your website for payments simple.
If you want your customers to be able to make purchases on your website through their mobile phones, check out our iOS and Android Development service.
9. Use Social Media to Market Your Website
It’s also smart to use social media to market your website. If you’ve carefully designed your website and created a ton of high-quality content, the last thing you want is to hear crickets. To avoid this problem, you have to use social media so people find out about your business.
We can help you manage your online reputation with our Business Review Management service.
10. Publish Your Website
Before your website goes live, there are a few things you should do. By following these pre-publish your website strategies, you can make sure customers love what they see (and that Google loves you, too). First, preview the site on different phones.
This way, you can make sure it’s mobile-friendly. Next, read through all your content. You’d be surprised how easy it is to catch typos once you’re looking at everything with fresh eyes.
Finally, remove any of the filler content you might have if you used a template or theme when setting up your website. If you need any help with these steps, check out our Pro Business Website service.
Need More Information?
Now that you know all the key steps needed to build a great small business website, you might need additional information. Maybe you want to learn more about social media strategies to make your website known to more people.
Or maybe you want some advice on how to brand yourself so that you stand out from the competition.
Whatever information you need, we can help you. At Iconic Web Headquarters, we’re experts when it comes to business website building. To learn more about how we can help you, contact us now.
