Making your business presence online is an essential no matter you are a big brand or a small business. Especially, if you are a small or medium scale business then having a website is one of the cost-effective ways to market your products or services. However, many business owners are not aware of the elements of a successful business website
In this post, I will share all the critical website aspects that will establish your small business as an authoritative brand online without costing you plenty.
Here are the points you need to focus on when building the best small business website:
Professional logo
Building a unique brand identity can be challenging but it is very important if you want to succeed online. A business logo goes a long way when it comes to catching visitor’s eye and making a professional impression.
Here are some points that will help you in getting the perfect logo for your business site:
- Use your real business logo as your website logo
- In case you don’t have a business logo, spend time to create a unique one.
- Take inspiration from logos of established brands in your industry
Engaging Homepage
Visitors mostly look at the homepage and at a glance decide if they want to continue with a particular site or switch to another one. Create an impressive banner as it is the first thing seen by the visitor. Besides planning a simple navigation bar, add all the important links to the footer to help the visitors navigate easily.
Introduce your business and speak about the services without boring the visitors. Get the perfect balance of images and text to create a delightful experience.
Simple navigation
While big brands realize the importance of neat navigation, small businesses often get it wrong while attempting to be creative.
Here are some points that will help you in mastering navigation:
- Labeling needs to be simple and obvious.
- Navigation bar should be located prominently at the top of a homepage.
- It should act as a gateway to most important pages and products.
- Use dropdown tabs for accommodating more pages.
I found navigation part of the YoKart website very user-friendly:
Product Pages
Product information is obviously critical to drive sales. Begin the page with the brief summary about the products. If the product list is large, it could be better to split it into further categories and sub-categories. Business owners know that discounts and offers lure buyers. So, they usually ask chosen design firm to build an offers page.
Amazon product pages are an best example to create user-friendly product page:
It is also important to create the product pages with SEO in mind. Else you will lose the search engine mileage for your brand. Make sure your product pages and website load quickly. If they are slow, here is a post for you.
About Us and Team page
It is obvious that new clients will want to know about your business and its history before they buy your products or hire you. They will want to know why they should prefer your business over others. An interesting About Us page will help you share information about you and answer questions.
Sharing real images of your team can do wonders to your business leads.
Reviews page
People would love to know how awesome the business they are opting for is. Reviews show a business prospect why other people have chosen your business for a particular product. Review page not only strengthens visitor’s trust in your offerings but also motivates them to complete the purchase.
Another advantage of a reviews page is that it can become a critical reputation asset on Google search results for your business name. However, you need to optimize the page correctly to get this advantage.
Social linking
People love brands that interact through social media sites and care what they have to say. Because this love for everything social is only going to grow bigger with time, you need to get a small business website that comes with social media integration.
For small business websites, Facebook and Twitter are the best options. However, just adding social media buttons is not going to work. You also need to spare time to engage your followers and answer their questions to get best results.
Trustmarks
A security guarantee by an external trusted source that a particular business is safe is very necessary. Some of the trustmarks include MacAfee, Network Security, GeoTrust etc. Such certifications give customers a sense of security and they feel safe to share their private information. For websites that support online payments, trustmarks are highly critical. So, don’t forget to get them for your small business website.
For example, I found testimonial slider effect used on website Juskteez is highly impressive:
Store finder
If your business is present at multiple locations, store finder feature will make it easy for customers to locate exact address. Besides this feature, you can also help people locate your store by using map functionality. Such features will make store search easy for visitors and actually help you get customers to your doorstep. What can be better than that?
Café Coffee Day Store Locator feature
Contact us page
This page is an opportunity to acquaint visitors with every road that leads to you. By road, I mean every medium of connecting with you. For instance:
- Email address
- Phone number
- Business address
Phone number ought to be present on every page at a prominent location. Sometimes, customers have queries about products and don’t wish to call. Adding an enquiry form on the Contact page will help in this case.
There are turnkey website solutions available online to build websites but a professional business website requires branding, design and feature expertise. This is the reason why industry experts never recommend experimenting with creating your own site.
Do you have any other query about creating a small business website? I will be glad to answer your queries in the comments section. Let’s get started!
Originally published at www.business2community.com on November 6, 2018.