A high-quality website is a must for small businesses because it shows reputation, attracts clients, and promotes growth. A website functions as a virtual storefront, displaying the brand’s services and values, and it also serves as an effective marketing tool for reaching a larger audience and generating leads efficiently. While achieving a good website may be straightforward, achieving a high-quality website requires attention to detail.
In this article, we will go through seven website design tips for small businesses, so you can create a beautiful website that will help your business grow.
Tips to Design a Website for SME’s
Website design requires clearly defined objectives and an awareness of the target market. Next, in order to help you achieve your desired website design, you must select a platform.
After that, you will need to layout your website, organise your business information, and make small adjustments here and there.
If you are not sure what website development is, check out our article diving into the topic about what is web development. However, if you already have a basic understanding of the idea, let us go over each step in more detail so you can have the website of your dreams.
1. Define Goals and Audience
Before you start designing your website, it’s important to set clear goals. Ask yourself: What does your business want to achieve, and who is the person that you want to communicate with?
For instance, if your aim is to sell products and you want visitors to make purchases on your website, you’ll need e-commerce features. On the other hand, if you offer creative design services, you’ll want your website to look visually appealing to show off your work and catch the eye of potential clients.
So, the first and foremost step is to decide what you want to achieve with your website. Do you want to sell things online, showcase your work, share ideas on a blog, or promote events?
Knowing your goals will help you decide how to design your website. It’s also critical to understand who your audience is. Make sure your website is tailored to your target audience’s preferences and assists them in finding what they are looking for.
In case you are uncertain about the benefits of creating a website for your small business, you can read our other article that explores the 10 benefits of having a website as a small business.
Now that you’ve decided on your goals and identified your audience, it’s time to design your website.
2. Choose Your Website Builder Platform
Choosing the right website builder is crucial for turning your design vision into reality.
With various platforms available, each offering distinct features and functionalities, making an informed choice is essential.
But what truly defines the “best website builder platform”? The answer lies in finding the one that best suits the needs of your small business.
Most website builders available today already utilise drag-and-drop editing functionality, alleviating concerns in that regard. However, if your small business lacks technical or coding expertise within its team, it’s essential to ensure that the website builder offers drag-and-drop features.
Following drag-and-drop editing, consideration should be given to e-commerce features. While some website builders may charge extra for this functionality, others include it as a default feature, with additional powerful features available behind a paywall. Therefore, it’s important to check for this aspect.
Popular choices for website builders include Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify. Starting your search on these platforms can help you find the best website builder for your small business.
3. Determine Website Content and Features
When creating a website for a small business, it’s important to decide what elements and features are needed. This means thinking about what functions and parts are necessary to meet your business goals and satisfy your audience.
First, figure out the main parts your website needs to communicate your brand message and display your products or services. Also, think about any special features that are specific to your business or industry and would make the user experience better.
For instance, if you have an online shop, you’ll need features for online transactions. If you offer services, you might want to include a booking system.
Additionally, consider adding elements that will interest, attract, and engage your audience. For example, adding good-quality images and videos, interactive features, customer reviews, and links to social media.
In the end, choosing the right elements and features for your website is about finding a balance between usefulness, ease of use, and appearance.
4. Adding Pages to Your Website
Adding pages to your website is a crucial step in expanding its functionality and providing valuable content to your audience. Each page serves a specific purpose and contributes to the overall user experience. While the pages you need may vary depending on your goals and industry, there are some essential pages that every website should have.
According to the Wix blog, some of the general pages that every website needs to have are:
- The homepage: the first page visitors see when they land on your website. It provides an overview of your business, highlighting key information, products, or services, and guiding visitors to explore further.
- The About Us page: introduces your business to visitors, providing background information about your company, its history, mission, values, and team members. It helps to build trust and credibility by giving insight into who you are and what you stand for.
- The contact page: A page where visitors can find information on how to get in touch with your business. This typically includes your address, phone number, email address, and possibly a contact form or links to your social media profiles. It’s essential for facilitating communication between you and your customers.
- The Product/Service page: showcases the products or services your business offers in detail. It provides descriptions, images, pricing information, and any other relevant details to help visitors understand what you offer and make informed purchasing decisions.
Another good addition other than the one on the list is a blog. Content is always one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website.
Even if writing doesn’t come naturally to you, don’t worry; you have plenty of valuable content to share. Consider writing about your clients’ success stories, case studies, or interviews, as well as personal experiences like events you attend or new employees joining your team.
However, the most valuable blog content often stems from your own expertise. Your audience will appreciate learning about the tips, methods, and solutions you employ to overcome challenges, providing added value and insight.
5. Strengthen Your Website’s SEO
Now that your website design is up and ready to run, the next thing to do is optimise it. Since you are a small business that aims to attract visitors from the internet, improving your website’s visibility on search engines like Google is vital.
- Choose the Right Keywords: Think about the words or phrases people might type into Google to find your business. Use these keywords naturally in your website’s content, like in page titles, headings, and descriptions.
- Create quality content: Write helpful articles, blog posts, or product descriptions that answer common questions your customers may have. This not only provides value to your visitors but also shows search engines that your website is relevant and trustworthy.
- Connecting Pages: When creating multiple pages for your website, remember to connect them with one another. This will let search engines have a better understanding of your website.
- Make it Mobile-Friendly: Many people use their smartphones to search the web, so ensure your website looks good and works well on mobile devices. Google prefers mobile-friendly sites and ranks them higher in search results.
- Speed Things Up: If your website takes too long to load, visitors might leave before they even see your content. Optimise your site’s speed by compressing images, reducing unnecessary plugins, and using a reliable web hosting service.
- Think Local: If your business serves a specific area, optimise your website for local searches. Include your location in your content and create a Google My Business listing.
6. Prioritise User Experience and Mobile Optimisation.
According to Statista, almost 60 percent of total web traffic comes from mobile devices. So, making sure your website is easy to use and looks great on mobile devices needs to be one of your priorities when designing your website.
But what does “looking great” on mobile mean? At least there are three things that you need to keep in mind.
- Organise information logically: Make sure the content on your website is structured in a logical manner, so visitors can easily navigate and find what they’re looking for. Examples of this include using clear and distinct font sizes between headings and descriptions, categorising items in your catalogue, and adding menus to your website.
- Make buttons and links easy to tap: Design buttons and links to be large enough and spaced appropriately to accommodate touchscreens. By doing this, it helps users interact with your website easily on mobile devices without struggling to tap on small or crowded elements.
- Minimise load times: Optimise your website’s performance to reduce load times on mobile devices. Most mobile users expect fast and responsive experiences. Things that can be done to achieve this are to optimise images and videos and reduce unnecessary scripts and plugins.
7. Publish and Update Regularly
After you have finished all of the above checklists, the last step is to publish your website. Your small business website is now properly designed and prepared to draw online visitors!
It is important to keep in mind that having a website is only the first step towards promoting your business. And running a website is just like running your business; it is a long game. So keep your website fresh, and it will eventually help you grow your small business.
Make sure to update your website on a regular basis, whether with blog articles, product updates, discount offers, news, or announcements. This will keep your audience engaged while also signalling to search engines that your site is relevant and current. Keeping your website up-to-date can also help you remain visible to your target audience and maintain your reputation.
Website Design Template As Your References
1. Aroz Jewelry
Aroz Jewellery is a good example of a small product-selling business.
They design their simple, minimalist aesthetics with the target audience in mind. Additionally, their website has an extremely basic and concise layout. You can see that after the headline, Aroz Jewelery goes directly to their catalogue, making it easy for visitors to start shopping after learning about what Aroz Jewelery is. Next, in an effort to persuade customers of the product’s worth, they present the backstory.
2. AÃRK Collective
Another excellent example of a small product-selling business website is AARK Collective.
One of the best practices for small business website design is to include a call to action button that clearly directs visitors to the shopping page and showcase content that follows the headline. Just keep in mind that you must grab users’ attention and move quickly! Because of this, you must design your website to be simple to use and to include any actionable content.
3. Ladies Get Paid
Ladies Get Paid serves as an illustration of a small company that offers services.
While product sales may seem simpler, selling services involves a completely different set of procedures. You should work harder at informing visitors about what you are doing. This is the reason the Ladies Get Paid website included a brief explanation of what they do after the jargon in the headline section. Remember, in order to encourage visitors to interact with your website right away, you should always place the actionable button at the top section.
Conclusion
Thankfully, with the availability of drag-and-drop website builders, designing a website for your small business can be a fairly simple process these days. For this reason, you should focus on outlining your approach to product presentation so that it can encourage website visitors to interact with it and eventually become customers.
Trying to think of every possible strategy when creating the perfect website for your small business can be very exhausting. Some of you who recently started small businesses might not have enough time to complete creating the website from scratch.
That’s why you should check out Nexa Lab’s web app development services.
We offer customised solutions for businesses of any size. We offer the best web app development services, taking security and compliance into account, guaranteeing scalability and performance, conducting thorough testing and quality assurance, and providing maintenance and support.
