In today’s business world, where having a digital presence is a must, businesses can’t ignore the importance of small business website designs.
A well-designed website is a must for small businesses. For them, it’s the key to generating more sales, increasing revenue, and creating a digital presence that builds their brand image.
In this article, we have explored how to build an excellent online presence for a small business. Keep reading this article if you are looking for something similar.
Importance of Having a Professional Website for Small Businesses
A well-designed website is an essential aspect of a small business’ success. It’s the anchor connecting the company with the outer world.
It helps the business build increased credibility, build its brand, raise awareness, and drive customer engagement. Here are some reasons why a business must create a well-designed website –
Clear Navigation & Information Architecture
The impact of design on user experience is non-negotiable. 94% of the users say that a website must be easy to navigate and have a good information architecture. Poor navigation structure dissatisfies the customer and they leave the website without making any purchase.
Poor navigation and information architecture can increase the bounce rate of a website, which isn’t good if you are trying to rank your website higher on the SERP.
It’s important to include the right links, menu, buttons, and navigational tools on the website for the visitors to skim through it. Businesses must focus on building a website with a strong information architecture placing the right information at the right place.
Responsive & Mobile-Friendly Design
Here’s a fact: 65% of the mobile traffic on the website comes from mobile searchers. It’s best to keep your website easily navigable on mobile devices as well. So, responsive website design is a big factor for success here.
Once the business website is mobile-friendly it’s easier to browse and view on smaller screens. It’s a good way to pull mobile users on to the website to drive more sales.
Prominent Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
A business website has some business information. But it serves more purpose than just putting on a digital presence.
It can mean guiding the visitors to take specific actions. It can be signing up for their newsletters, making a purchase, or contacting the business. It’s important to create a proper CTA on the website through design and content that caters directly to the audience.
With proper CTAs on the website, you can have improved user experience, the conversion rate will go up, and user experience will also be improved.
Consistent Branding and Visual Identity
A good website design provides a website with a better and more consistent visual language. It helps create a strong visual presence and improves visual identity and branding.
It makes a good first impression in the mind of the visitors, showcases the brand story to the visitor, and builds an overall good visual identify for the website. Through consistent brand messaging, small businesses build a good brand identity and have a better overall user experience.
What are the Essential Elements of a User-Friendly Website Navigation?
The most important and essential elements of user-friendly website navigation include –
- The right purpose
- Mobile responsiveness
- Visual design
- Header
- Speed
- Footer
- Search bar
How can Small Businesses Ensure Their Website is Optimized for Mobile Devices?
The first step to prioritizing a responsive website design it’s important for a website to prioritize responsive design.
It means that the website automatically adjusts to different screen sizes, by optimizing images. Using mobile-friendly fonts minimizing pop-ups, and also prioritizing important content.
There should be testing on different devices to guarantee a good user experience across all types of mobile platforms.
Design Elements of a High-Quality Business Website
The quality of a highly converting website resides in the quality of the image it has. Essentially, with a good visual, your small business can tell better stories and stand out to the target audience.
High-Quality Imagery and Graphics
The high-quality image of a website is one of the main reasons for its growth. There are several reasons why high-quality images are great parts of a small business website.
Making it more Reliable: 73% of small businesses invest in an original website. High quality images on a website increase professionalism and crispness of a website. Images can speak for the high quality and reliability of the services provided through a business website.
Better User Experience: a high-quality website with better graphics encourages the viewers to see the website which could lead to purchasing decisions.
With better images, it’s easier for brands to offer better product understanding to the customers.
Typography and Font Choices
Typography is as much an important part of small business website design as images are.
It determines how someone browses the website, reads the content, and understands the products and service offerings of the business.
It’s critical to maintain a coherent typography with the right sizes and font choices in mind.
Color Schemes and Branding
The next important part of a website is the color and size of the website. Small businesses can use colors to convey different moods, emotions, and meanings through the website.
In addition, color schemes of a website are important tools to showcase brand image, grab the audience’s attention, and help the users navigate through the website.
When using color schemes for the website, it’s important to consider the color theory, use contrast, limited palette, prioritize readability and do more.
White Space and Layout
Your website cannot be all colorful and full of text and images. There must be enough amount of whitespace on the small business website design.
The whitespace is the intentional empty spaces on the website page acting as a negative tool to create layout, clarity, and hierarchy of information on the website. So, this is one of the most essential tools for a user-friendly experience.
It’s important to use whitespace around headings, CTA buttons, and the most important content that deserves users’ attention.
Content Strategy for Small Business Websites
If the website is the skeleton, then the content is what makes the entire website complete and full. Without a clear content strategy to help websites and businesses drive results, A well-designed website is the playground of a well-planned content strategy. Sometimes the content strategy itself drives the website design for small businesses.
The majority of the websites out there have a content strategy. Only 30% of websites have a well-developed strategy to take the business forward.
Well developed content strategy can drive positive results for small businesses.
Defining Your Target Audience and Content Goals
The core part of a content strategy is the target audience. Whether it’s a website for a food truck or a cleaning service, the content strategy should be built around the target audience who are likely to purchase.
Define the target audience by income level, occupation, interests, needs, customer behaviors, etc. Also, consider the psychographic characteristics of the target audience to understand the values they uphold, their motivations, and interests.
The next stage is to create the right buyer persona for the audience, thereby outlining one personality for each type of buyer.
Creating Engaging and Relevant Content
With audience research and targeting, you’ll have an understanding of the platforms where you have to publish content. Creating social media content is important and helps your business stay relevant. But you also shouldn’t forget to publish content on the business website.
Start by creating SEO-friendly content for the blog section of your website. This will not only add value to the audience but also put your website higher on the search engine page.
Optimizing Content for Search Engines (SEO)
Follow the best SEO practices to optimize your website for Google Search. Make thorough keyword research, aligning your target audience’s queries with different types of search intents.
Place your keyword strategically throughout your website pages and blog content to drive traffic to the website. While at it, don’t forget to optimize the website images with the keywords.
Measuring and Refining Your Content Strategy
Let your content strategy stay dynamic. Small business website designs require a content strategy. But, even after the design work is done, your website content strategy may change.
If you don’t see any results within the intervals of 6 to 7 months, then you may want to change it. Sometimes, the content strategy may require making minor design changes too.
Best Practices for Small Business Website Design
Here are the best practices for small business website design –
Simple & Intuitive Design: When designing a website for a small business, make sure to keep the overall aspect of the website design simple and plain. The website shouldn’t look too busy and be clutter-free.
User Experience: There has to be clear and concise language for the website design. The audiences won’t get the right message through the website if the language has clarity issues. So stick to clear, easy-to-understand language that the readers understand.
Contact Information: one of the main purposes of a small business website is to connect the audience with the business. So, there needs to be a contact form or contact information where customers can contact the business.
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