For most businesses, the core component of an online marketing strategy is a website. As a result, large companies invest a lot in their websites. As a small business, however, you can’t do everything that a large company can do with website design.
Instead, you need to focus on the most important web development factors to ensure you get a website that delivers for your business, i.e. make closer connections with your customers as well as generating leads and, ultimately, revenue.
As a growing small business – a small business with ambition – this is even more important.
So, here are eight key things you should focus on:
1. Professional Website Design
As you probably already know, there are lots of ways to get a website online. You can use a drag and drop website builder, do a crash course in WordPress, or use a friend of your cousin’s husband who knows a bit about web development.
You can also use a professional website design company.
You will see some themes emerging as you go through the eight web design factors that will help your growing small business. One of the most important of those themes is enhancing credibility.
In other words, you need to do everything you can to make your website credible.
The only way to achieve this in terms of how and who designs your site is to make sure your website design looks professional and functions professionally.
This means using a professional website designer. Your costs might be higher initially, but you will get a better return on investment.
2. Highly Visible and Easy to Access Contact Details
Your contact details are among the most important elements on your small business website. Tips for adding contact details include:
Add your phone number and email address to every page, ideally at the very top of the page above the menu
Add your full contact details to the footer that appears on every page
Make phone numbers and email addresses clickable
Use a common format for your company name and address, i.e. don’t use “Road” in some places and “Rd” in others
Add a contact page
Include your full contact details on your contact page
Add a map to your contact page
Add directions to your location on your contact page, particularly if your location can be tricky to find
3. Intuitive Navigation and Website Structure
Plan out carefully your website structure including the pages you will have and how those pages link together. This is known as your website’s sitemap. It will determine your site’s navigation, including the main navigation.
Crucially, the navigation on your site should be as intuitive and simple to use as possible.
4. Good Quality Content
The content on your website should be high-quality. This includes images that should be professional and, ideally, unique to your business rather than stock images.
The text on your website should be high-quality too. It needs to be unique and there needs to be sufficient content on the page to improve the user experience and for SEO reasons. Including keywords in your content will help with the latter too.
Written content also needs to be easy to read and free from spelling and grammatical errors.
5. Contact Forms for Lead Generation
You should include contact forms on your website. They should be on most, if not all, of your website’s pages, particularly on your homepage and product/services pages.
You should also consider carefully the fields you ask visitors to complete on your contact forms. You will probably want as much information as possible but, in most cases, the more information you ask for, the less likely it is the visitor will complete the form. So, you need to strike the right balance.
6. Testimonials and Badges
Another effective way of adding credibility to your website and giving visitors confidence in your business is adding testimonials and badges.
Testimonials should explain the experience of your customers in their own words and they should be attributed to a named person.
Badges are for the professional bodies you are part of and the accreditations you have.
7. Good SEO Foundation
Make sure your website design provides a good SEO foundation for your business that you can then improve on. As a starting point, this includes:
- Using header tags
- Having descriptive page titles
- Thinking about the use of keywords in written text
- Including internal links where appropriate
- Adding Google Analytics and Google Search Console
- Ensure your pages load quickly
8. SSL Certificate
Security is a topic that is becoming increasingly important on the internet. SSL certificates are a way you can improve security for people visiting your website while also enhancing the credibility of your business and demonstrating you take security and privacy seriously.
Plus, SSL certificates are not costly, and they are straightforward for your website designer to implement.
A Website Focused on Getting Results
If you want to grow your business, you will probably be very focused on results – revenue growth, profitability, market expansion, new customer acquisition, etc.
You should have this same focus in terms of your website. In other words, don’t just get a website. Instead, get a website that delivers results. The above website design factors will help.
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