If you’re starting your small business, you’ll almost certainly need to create a website. Potential customers will be looking for relevant and helpful information on your site, which is why a good website is always a good investment for businesses both big and small.
Below are the top eight tips to focus on when building your small businesses website.
Set Goals
What’s the nature of your business? What information do you want your website visitors to see when they are on your website?
Be sure to include calls-to-action so that visitors will take the action you want them to while on a web page, such as download an eBook, subscribe to your newsletter, or share your content.
Before you plan the website layout and design,you’ll need to think about your goal for the website first.
For example, if you’re selling hand-made products, your website can direct people to pre-order a product.
You can direct people to view your online portfolio and then book an appointment if you’re providing a service.
Use Plug-ins on your Site
Many business owners choose WordPress as their website platform because of the multitude of available plugins for additional functionality.
WordPress plugins are available for almost every feature and function that you’ll need on your site.
For example, whether you need plugins for hotel booking, multi-pin maps, or live chat, you’ll be able to find several options which will suit your needs.
You can also customize many of these plugins to make their appearance fit the rest of your website too.
Introduce Yourself
‘About Us’ pages are essential for most businesses, but even more so for small businesses.
Many prospects want to support small businesses, and they would love to know who are the ones working behind the scene.
Introduce yourself (and your team, if you’re working with one) and briefly talk about your business goals and aspirations.
You can also include your experience leading up to opening the business and any big goals you may have for your business.
Categorize Your Products & Services
You’ll want your prospects to breeze through your website without feeling infuriated by the wonky navigations.
Organize your webpage links into relevant categories and create sub-menu pages where needed.
For example, a small baking business would have their bread and buns under one sub-menu, while their ice-cream cakes, macarons, and tarts would be under another sub-menu. Ensure that your customers can find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
Invest in Good Copy
Design is essential, but it’s not everything. Pair your website design with engaging, relevant, and useful website copy.
At the very least, you’ll want to include clear product descriptions. Under each product page, include a product name, its model or brand, physical dimensions, ingredients or materials, and other essential descriptions.
You’ll also want to include adding details such as Halal-certified, child-friendly, vegan, eco-friendly, and other important labels.
If you are on a budget and would prefer to write your product descriptions yourself, you can also hire an editor to proofread the text on your website for grammatical errors and find out how to improve your write-up.
Social Media Links & Management
Your prospects may want to hear even more from you. Add some social media links in your website footer or on your contact page.
Where possible, try to establish some social media presence as well. You can try to post once or twice a week to show some activity in your social media feed.
Your social media pages are where you can show what happens behind the scenes, bloopers, and other not-so-official insider information.
You can show your friendlier, more approachable side on social media, so don’t worry too much about how you want to present yourself.
Get Mobile-Friendly
Make sure that your website is optimized for mobile. Unlike, let’s say, five to ten years ago, people are searching on the go more and more.
This means that they are searching for information about the items they need or want on a mobile device.
Your next prospect could be searching for the product they want, looking up the location of your store, and visiting your business within the same hour.
One important thing to remember for mobile-friendliness is to refrain from putting too much info on images.
While these may display perfectly on a laptop or a PC, the words could be hard to see when scrolling on mobile.
These text on images are more prominent in product specifications, such as garment sizes and measurements. Where needed, transfer this information into text paragraphs under the pictures instead.
Include Reviews and Testimonials
You can invite your customers to leave a review after their experience with you. These reviews will boost your prospects’ confidence when they’re exploring and stumble upon your business.
As a small business, you can privately ask your customers for a review through email, text messages, or other media.
With their approval, you can share these reviews on your social media pages. You can also crop out or mosaic your customers’ names if they prefer staying anonymous.
Reviews and testimonials are even more crucial if you have returning customers. Don’t be shy to ask them for more input in exchange for a discount voucher code.
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