Getting Started

Whether you’re building your first website or optimizing a current one, there comes a time for every entrepreneur to revisit what makes an outstanding small business website.

Afterall, you need your website to do it all: represent your business, capture leads, close sales, climb to the top of search engine results, and connect to all your other digital platforms seamlessly. And you—you have to do it all too: choose your content, write & design your pages, connect your marketing tools, test it out, and not spend a million dollars or hours getting from A to B to blastoff.

In this article, we’re going to walk you through the 5 proven tips that will help take you from ‘I need a website’ to ‘my website does wonders for my business.’

1 – Start with a website strategy

Any successful small business website has one commonality: a well thought through strategy. With a plan in place, you’re teed off for success when it comes to supporting lead generation goals. Your website plan should answer the following ten questions:

  • Who is your audience?
  • What is your website’s goal or goals? (Rank and prioritize them!)
  • What functionality will your website have? (what’s critical and what’s a ‘nice to have’?)
  • What information do you need/want to give website visitors? 

2 – Set a clear page hierarchy

After you have developed the overall goals and a blueprint with tips on creating a website for your business, the next step is making it easy for website visitors to find content. To do this, make sure your page hierarchy is clear.

Social Media Today suggests bucketing your content by theme and importance. Try physically drawing a plan as you create a high-level outline. Most people freeze up at this point so it’s important to visualize your website structure!

3 – Design For Conversions

When you do hire a designer, they have to have a superior skill set to the average Designer. A Sales Driven Website requires a specific layout and design. For example, every page should have a unique highlight colour used on all Call To Action buttons but no other part of the website. This is important, so you train a user that whenever they see this colour, they know it is time for them to take action. This is just one element required for a Sales Driven Website design.

Some Call to Actions:

  • Request a Call back
  • Download an eBook
  • Facebook Messenger or Chat Bot Installed for Instant Chats
  • FREE Consultations

 

4 – Make your design Super responsive

Did you know 90% of small business websites don’t keep the smaller devices’ screen size in mind when creating websites? And around 30% of all website traffic is mobile. 

Before publishing anything on the web, always consider desktop and mobile devices. “Having a site that isn’t mobile optimized can drive away customers, hurt your SEO and look unprofessional,” notes Small Business Trends writer Ann Pilon. 

5 – Keep it (so so) simple

Simple design and text are essential to an effective small business website. An overly complicated website doesn’t convert. Too many page elements lead to website visitor confusion.

So, long story short, uncluttered visuals and text have the most significant impact on your audience. And, while we’re on the subject of simplicity, keeping your color scheme minimal is key, too. Two to three colors is all you need to make an impact.