July 30, 2018
If you have a small or newly established business, then you probably wouldn’t have concentrated as much as you should have about your website. If the design of your website isn’t proper, then the customers will take one look at it and may move on to your competitors’ websites and therefore you have high chances of losing out on your customers. If you want to leverage the website, then a small business website design is a very important aspect that you should never neglect about.
To improve your website performance with respect to getting more customers, then you will have to pay more attention to small business website design. But many feel that website design is a very tedious job; to make it simpler, here are a few steps by which you can design your own website and bring a makeover to your small business website design to attract more customers.
7-Day Revision for Your Small Business Website Design
Some go for a professional website design company and let them take care of revising the website design in an affordable budget. But if you’re running on a tight budget and you have a bit of technical knowledge, then you can go ahead and make the change by yourself and improve your website performance by following the steps given below.
Day 1: Audit Your Website
The very first step is to make a thorough audit of the website. Even if you are hiring a website development company to make changes to your website, a complete website audit is where they will start from. Make a clear note of all the current elements of the website without leaving out any minor details. Be clear in what your goal of the website is and decide on the elements depending on it.
As you note down all the details, check for yourself if you can do away with any feature from your website. See what difference it would make if that element isn’t present from the website. If it doesn’t contribute to any improvements, then you will have to remove it.
As you list all the elements, make two tables: one for the features that you think are ‘essentials’ and one for those that you think are ‘unnecessary’ – those that haven’t got a good response from the website visitors – and add elements to it as you audit.
Since you are auditing a small business website design, you will have fewer elements to consider. Hence don’t think much and spontaneously keep on adding it to the table as you see fit. It is important to look at the analytics and see the performance of the elements like the CTAs, videos, and links, down to the position of the tabs and the pages too.
As you complete the audit of your website, go over to a selected few of your competitors’ website and see the features and more importantly its placements on the webpage and add more such elements to the ‘essentials’ table. This will give you an idea of what was missing from your website and what changes you will have to make in the coming days.
If you want a complete audit done by a third person, then you can even hire a cheap website design company who offers website audit at very affordable rates.
Day 2: Decide on the Website Essentials
As you have a hang of what is present in your website, now is the time to go through the table from the day 1 and refine it.
For a small business website design, keep in mind that a simple website is a key to giving information to customers with clarity. Keep aside the elements from the ‘unnecessary’ table and go through the elements from the ‘essentials’ table.
Now you will have to think about it very carefully and consider each and every element and think how each and every one of it contributes to the website and how well it aligns with the purpose of your business. You may also refer other websites for it.
Don’t lose sight of the major output which you want from the website and think accordingly. It may be to directly make a sale, ask customers to come to your store or subscribe to your services. It is important to consider it at all point of time and list the final elements and features which you want to see in your website and which are completely essential and makes a direct impact on your business objectives.
Day 3: Decide on a Website Theme
With the essentials that you want in your mind, now pick a website theme that brings out and shows the best part of your business. Many professional website designers also use the pre-made themes available; therefore for your small business website design, you can also go ahead and pick one website theme from it.
If you have a café, then go with a theme that shows the images of your café in the best light. If you are providing any physical services, choose a theme which can bring a high click-through rate.
The theme and the colors that you choose down to the font of the theme should be a reflection of your business and bring in the best results. When you design your own website, it is best to look at samples of websites that are already using the themes you are considering to get an idea of how it looks.
Day 4, 5 and 6: Add the Content
A good website design is incomplete if it doesn’t have the appropriate content to fill in. Hence for a small business website design, using and optimizing the right content in the right place is the key to bring in the best results.
With the list of ‘essentials’ available, first, find out the place where it will bring in the best results and start designing the website with it.
- Add relevant images and videos as and when necessary, but don’t overdo it. Simplistic website design always fares well for small businesses and large enterprises alike.
- Make sure to keep the website design clutter-free. Don’t make the mistake of removing all the unwanted elements from the previous design and adding further unnecessary elements to it. Contemplate well before introducing a new element.
- As you already have an existing website, you can change its theme and edit the elements to simplify your work.
- As you work with the content for a small business website design, don’t forget the importance of SEO. You can hire an SEO agency to help out with the aspects of ranking on Google or if you already have a digital marketing agency for your company, then you can get their help to finalize the content according to the best practices of SEO.
- Add proper, visible CTAs in relevant areas according to what you expect your visitors to do on the website.
- Display your business logo, address, contact details and map details on the website prominently so that it is easily accessible to all.
- Add relevant social media handles of your business.
Day 7: Perform a Final Test
Before you make the website go online, perform a test to check if all the parameters are working and are linked to the right pages. Perform each step by step as a visitor will do in all the possible scenarios and check if it flows seamlessly. Check if the small business website design complements all the features in all its web pages.
You can also hire few people or get your friends and ask them to perform a set of pre-defined actions and get their experience of using your small business website design and check how user-friendly it is.
If you do not know how to create a website, you can hire a website development company to get a website created for your small business and can handle the part of creating a small business website design by yourself.
Ghost Writer: Money Brighter is put together by a team of entrepreneurs and financial experts. In an attempt to provide information to laypeople about various financial and business issues, they collected and provided various financial and business information. The site provides guides on how to use virtual wallets and online payment platforms. There are also lists of routing numbers, steps to forming LLC California, and how to activate credit cards online.
