Small Business Website – In our digital age, billions worldwide are favoring online activities over in-person dealings for education, entertainment, and business transactions.
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More than 2.14 billion people made digital transactions in 2021—a modest increase from 2.05 billion at the pandemic’s peak. Any business operating in the present economic environment, regardless of size or type, needs to have an online presence in order to prosper and expand.
A company website can do more than just sell your service or product. It’s the entire representation of your organization in the digital realm—greeting your potential clients as they search for your business online. Hence, a small business website must not only be visually appealing, but it must also be useful for your users and customers.
If you’re wondering how to make a site that’s sure to attract more clients and retain your current ones, consider the steps below.
Table of Contents
Choose your Domain Name Well
Ideally, your domain name should reflect your business, being that it serves as your website address too. When creating a domain name, experts suggest you consider the name for easy recall and search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Using keywords and geolocation may be useful for small and local businesses. (2) (4)
Pick a Good Web Host
Small businesses can either choose to have a shared or dedicated host, with the latter carrying a higher price tag because of better speed. Choosing the best service requires business owners to consider their unique business needs, including scalability.
Ideally, your web host must have omnichannel customer service support functionality and be user-friendly. Server security must be considered, ensuring your business information remains protected.
Make your Pages Compelling and Engaging
Ideally, users should be encouraged to engage with all the relevant sections of your site. From the outset, it must be very clear what your business does just by glancing at your home page. You can achieve this through relevant imagery and short and concise descriptions of your brand and what you do. (2) (3)
Additionally, allow users to clearly navigate your site through the various sections:
- “About Us”- This section should include a short but succinct introduction to your company.
- “Contact Us”- This page should contain updated and comprehensive information on how you can be contacted.
- “Call to Action” buttons must be strategically placed and use compelling words to convert clients. Depending on what it is your business does and what you want people to do, this can be as simple as ‘contact us’.
Every business will have different things they want users to do when they land on their website. Service businesses, for example, may want to encourage people to schedule an appointment or pay an invoice. If this is the case, you may want to consider integrating industry specific business software for flooring businesses, plumbing, cleaning, or whatever niche you operate in.
- “Sitemap” must be optimized for SEO purposes yet can be easily navigated.
- “Online Payment” integration can be offered as an option for customers’ convenience.
As a small business, you want to encourage your customers to pay as promptly as possible to maintain a healthy cash flow. Don’t overlook best practices on how to achieve this. In the example of the service businesses mentioned above, you may want to consider using something like this free, easy-to-fill, professional-looking invoice template from Jobber which will prompt you to include all information required to help achieve this.
Businesses must also ensure they take these specific steps to ensure that their website is user-friendly:
- Upload high-resolution images or videos of your products and services.
- Ensure fast loading and mobile-friendly viewing by optimizing your photos, integrating appropriate plugins.
- Understand your audience and know their preferences.
- Blog content must be optimized for SEO, generating relevant and valuable articles that users love to read and share
- Check your competitor’s websites, especially the companies that get the most traffic and sales
Implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques
Get more qualified site traffic with a boost from digital marketing tools and SEO strategies. Online advertising and SEO can increase the visibility of your site, making it highly useful for newly-established small businesses. Most of the points discussed above can help increase your company’s visibility.
Additionally, these SEO practices and online marketing tools can help increase your search rankings:
- Using niche- or industry-relevant title tags, uniform resource identifiers, and meta descriptions
- Analyzing and choosing appropriate words
- Integrating internal and external authority links
- Uploading fresh content regularly
- Publishing positive client reviews and managing negative reviews promptly
- Linking all social media accounts to your site
- Subscribing to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Embedding free e-books or newsletters on the site
- Uploading “how-to-videos” for service-oriented businesses (3) (4)
Test your Site before Launching it
Now that you’ve created a new site based on the considerations discussed above, it’s time to test your site. Check what it looks like on computers and mobile phones, and be wary of grammatical and link errors. Similarly, as most internet users rely on their smartphones, your company website must be mobile-friendly. Take a look at the loading and site speeds, too, as a slow performance could mean a high bounce rate, which means users visit your site but leave only after spending a few seconds. (3)
Once you’re content with your site, choose an analytics program before clicking “Publish.” This enables you to check and understand your site and page’s performance. Further, this helps you determine which topics have the best engagement and which SEO and online marketing strategies work in helping scale your business.
Conclusion
Making customers happy is at the heart of every business. As can be gleaned from the discussion above, your website shouldn’t be only about your business. It should be about how you can make your clients’ lives easier and better overall.
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