A well-designed website is vital for a small business. A polished and professional website can help boost the credibility and reputation of your business. Building a website sounds overwhelming, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the technology. However, there are several options to make it less scary.
It used to be costly to create a well-designed website because it required a professional web developer. Of course, if you have the budget to build a unique website from scratch with a web developer, that’s great. But fortunately, many more affordable options are now available. WordPress, Wix, and GoDaddy are just a few website builders that provide customizable templates at various price points.
If you don’t have a website, or yours could use an update, here are a few tips to help you design a stellar website that drives business.
Design Your Website For Customers
The main focus of your website should be on customers and potential customers, not your business. Of course, you need to include information about your business, but overall your site should be about the needs of the customer and potential customers. While choosing a website design that suits your tastes can be tempting, you’re not the audience. It’s all about showing your customers that you understand their issues and have solutions that work.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile
It’s important to ensure that your website is mobile-compatible to provide an excellent experience for your mobile visitors. Globally, approximately 55% of website traffic was generated from a mobile device in the first quarter of 2022, while about 50% of website traffic is mobile in the US. In addition, if your site’s not mobile-friendly, it won’t fare well with Google’s algorithm, which is important since it’s the world’s largest search engine.
Use tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check how well your website performs and how user-friendly it is on mobile devices.
Focus on Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps improve the ranking of your website on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It’s important because it can help your website appear on the first few search results pages when potential customers search for the products and services your business offers. Often referred to as organic traffic, this is important because studies show that 75% of users don’t go beyond the first page of search results.
Some of the best ways to improve your website’s SEO and site performance include:
- Creating high-quality content that’s relevant to your target audience using high volume keywords and phrases
- Including on-page optimization and optimizing your images for online searches
- Sharing your content on social media to increase your website’s exposure
- Creating and regularly maintaining a blog that includes keywords in the titles and posts
- Building backlinks to your website from other high-quality websites
Use SEO Tools
Accessing the right tools can help you improve your website’s SEO. Fortunately, many great SEO tools are available that can help you with everything from keyword research to backlink analysis. Some are free, and others require a subscription.
Integrate Your Social Media
Another way to help you improve your website’s traffic and engagement is by integrating your social media with your website. Adding social media buttons to your website makes it easy for visitors to share your content on their favorite social networks. Here are a few ways to add social media integration:
- Add a Facebook Like button to your website and blog posts so that visitors can easily like them on Facebook
- Install a Twitter Follow button so that visitors can follow you on Twitter without leaving your site and share your content with their followers
- Auto-publish your blog posts to your social media profiles so that your followers see them as soon as they’re published
- Create a social stream to display your latest social media updates on your website
Incorporate Reviews and Testimonials
Reviews and testimonials from happy customers are an excellent way to improve your credibility and convince customers to consider your business. A few ways to incorporate reviews and testimonials into your site include:
- Adding a link in the footer of every page so that visitors can see them no matter where they are on your site
- Linking to reviews and testimonials in your email marketing campaigns so that new subscribers can learn more about you without leaving their inboxes
- Adding a link to reviews or testimonials on your social media profiles to make it easy for visitors who click through from there to find positive feedback about your business
Utilize Video
Video is a great tool to engage visitors and can also be used to explain your products or services in more detail. As an added bonus, including videos on your website, can help improve your SEO results. There are a few options to add videos to your site:
- Embed videos from popular video-sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo
- Upload videos directly to your website’s server
- Create a video landing page to introduce visitors to your business and its products or services
Test and Test Again
Regularly test your site to make sure everything is working. Testing helps you learn and tweak things. For example, track how well each element performs so you can make changes. Also, use analytics to see how visitors are interacting with your website. This information can help you decide what content to keep, change or remove.
Connect2Capital Helps Businesses Grow and Thrive
Connect2Capital offers advice on how to help your business grow and thrive, whether you’re working on designing a website or looking for other strategies to help your business succeed. In addition, it helps small business owners who may have difficulty procuring funding from mainstream lenders connect with mission-driven lenders that offer affordable financing.
For more assistance in helping your business succeed, complete this inquiry form to start the matching process between small business owners and lenders.