In this present age of Internet, an impressive online presence is undoubtedly crucial for the success of a business. Therefore, it is very important for you to make sure that your small business website design is customer-friendly. Remember, it is not just about design; you have to focus on many other elements as well.
When a website is said to be customer-friendly, it means the website has been designed and developed in a way that inspires your visitors to do business with you. Following is a brief rundown on Ten Commandments that you must work on to design a successful small business website.
Attract Visitors With Friendly Design And Style
When online users visit a website, they tend to scan the content in a glance; they read the samples and then visit a page when they find it interesting. Therefore, it is very important for you to organize the content on your site in a way that should make scanning easy for them. For example, you must highlight important words and phrases, use bullet points and break the content down into small paragraphs with relevant sub-headers.
Protect Your Business With Secure Hosting
In order to make sure that your site is up and running and that your online information is safe, you must choose a secure and trustworthy hosting company to host your website for small business. Besides that, you must also keep your CMS (content management system) up-to-date in order to keep the hackers away.
Make The First Impression With Fresh, Quality Content
First impression is no-doubt very important. Therefore, it is always wise to welcome all your visitors with fresh, quality content. Try to give them something new everyday so that they should keep coming back. Update your website regularly with valuable, well-written, and original content. Do not forget that fresh and quality content also works wonder in terms of search engine optimization.
Make Your Site More Accessible By Search Engines
However, you cannot rely entirely on your content to attract search engine spiders; in order to ensure better placement for your small business website in search engine results, you will also have to implement other SEO strategies also, such as the right use of keywords and keyword phrases throughout your text.
Do Not Forget To Add A Strong Call For Action
Do not expect your site visitors to be all-knowing; it is possible that a prospective customer who is visiting your site finds everything interesting and is also inspired to do business with you, but does not know the steps to do this and thus leaves your site without any action. Therefore, it is important for you to tell them clearly with a tone of command, such as “click here to get an instant, free quote”. You will have to tell them literally what you want them to do.
Add Testimonials From Real Customers
Whenever people want to make a purchase or sign up for certain services, they prefer to hear from other people’s experiences first. For example, they ask from their friends and relatives if they have ever tried the same product before and whether they were satisfied with it. Make this task easier for them by adding testimonials from real people; your prospective customers will love to read those testimonials and it will also inspire them to do business with you. Customer testimonials will also help your visitors to build trust in you.
Make It Easy For Your Visitors To Get In Touch With You
You must also pay attention to the way you provide the details about the contact information on your website. Make sure your visitors do not have to investigate the various pages on your website to find out how they can get in touch with you. If you are making it difficult for them, you can easily lose a highly motivated customer to your competitors. The top right or the top left corner of the homepage of your small business website is the best place for this. In fact, you should include the contact information box at a highly visible place on every page of your website. Besides that, you must also provide multiple options for your potential customers to reach you, such as physical office address, email, phone number, fax, live chat etc.
Guide Visitors To The Information They Are Looking For With An Easy-To-Navigated Sitemap
The navigation system is an important element of the website design for small business. You have to place the links on your site in a way that should make it very easy for the users to navigate through different pages and reach the information they are looking for with just a click. The navigation must be clearly laid out. You will have to make sure that the navigation system is efficient enough to guide your visitors to reach the information they are looking for without any difficulty. Do not let them search for it; instead, show them the way on how to reach there.
Keep The Web Address Simple And Sensible
Your website address is undoubtedly the most important thing. Therefore, you must do a thorough brainstorming about it much before you decide about the content of your site, let alone uploading it. Keep the address simple and sensible. A complicated address that is hard to memories will work against your business and you will lose a high volume of potential customers just because of this. Try to use the ‘.com’ extension because this is what the vast majority of online users are conditioned to type when they type a web address.
Describe ‘Who You Are’ Clearly Right On The Homepage
Last, but not the least, you will also have to make sure that the visitors of your website can easily find out who you are, what kind of business you are operating and what is there for them instantly as soon as they land on the homepage of your website. You have to do this in a way that should tell the visitors that they have landed on the right place.
If you do this successfully, you can easily give a reason for your potential customers to stay on your site and browse through the content within a matter of just 2-3 seconds of their visit. Overall, if you follow the above Ten Commandments of successful small business website design thoroughly, it will definitely accelerate the growth of your business.