A business website needs to do a lot. Your website is the face or storefront of a business. It must capture leads or sell products, and it needs to get good rankings on search engines so people can find it. On top of this, small businesses usually don’t have the funds to spend a lot on an all-singing, all-dancing website.
To help you design a website on a minimal budget, here are some helpful tips to get you started
A small business website must focus on achieving the company’s objectives, meaning the website needs to be planned out. The first step to planning a strategy for a site is to define the goals. For example, will products be sold on the site, or is lead-generation the primary objective? Understanding the goals will guide you in what functionality will be required. And then, you must identify the target audience to design a site that will appeal to that audience.
Your website must be easy to navigate, and visitors must move seamlessly between initial interest and conversion. The best way to do this is to plan a page hierarchy that makes it easy to discover the site’s content.
If you are a small business, your website will only need a few pages, but the flow from one page to the next must still be natural and logical.
A fundamental part of differentiating a small business is branding. That
branding must be consistent throughout the business’s website and other
platforms and media. Branding involves more than just designing a logo.
Branding is also the colour palette, the typography, and the personality of the
business.
The domain name for a small business website can make all the difference, and the best domain name for a business may not be the company name. Sometimes your business name does not say what you do. By adding even a single word into your domain name, people can instantly see what your business or service is all about.
When you first designed your website, you put together a plan, including what you wanted to sell or what product you were providing. Now you need to tell the visitors to your website what they need to do next to help you achieve your goals. The way to do this is by clearly defined calls to action (CTAs) that stand out on your website. Wording like “Book an Appointment Now” or “Get your No-Obligation Quote Today” need to be obvious and inviting.
Web design is a lot more than just how a website looks. Many aspects of web design are the things you do before you even start building a new site.
Check out our blog for more hints and tips on web design.