A small business is known for serving locals or significantly small clienteles. However, it does not mean you should stay the same and forget about scaling- to do that, you need a great website!
It is necessary to have an online presence to grab customers in today's market, and what better than having your website do that.
A strategically designed website will bring in customers and help boost brand recognition and drive future goals.
Having a professional website gives a much better impression to existing and new customers.
Although building a website from scratch has become more accessible today, the competition has risen drastically, requiring you to think out of the box.
Read on to learn how to build a small business website that drives sales and brand with Searchable Design, Best Web Development Agency in the US.
Why Create a Website for Your Small Business?
Having an online presence for your small business is about providing something of value to your potential customers. And many potential customers and clients won’t take you seriously without a website.
One of the great benefits of having a small business website is that it enables people to find you online and easily get in touch with you.
Therefore, it is crucial to establish an effective web presence at the initial stage of their business to get a decent profit in the future.
Here are a few reasons to create a website for your small business pronto.
- To look professional
- Find new customers and retain an existing customer
- To inform your audience
- For better SEO ranking
- To maximize leads and sales
- Provide quick access to your products
- Help build trust for a long-term relationship
If you own a small business, the sooner you create a business website, the sooner you get benefits.
Get ahead of the competition and start building an excellent website for your small business.
8 Ways to Create a Great Small Business Website
Here are eight proven ways to create a successful small business website.
1. Choose a Domain Name that Speaks Your Brand
Getting a domain name for your business is something that lasts forever.
It is the heart of your brand identity on the web, so make sure to pick the domain name that not only fits your business but is also easy to find, remember and pronounce.
Following are some essential tips to help you choose a great domain name.
- Ensure to choose short and simple, and memorable domain names
- Include keywords
- Make it SEO friendly
- Target your geographic area
- Ensure that others haven’t registered the name you choose.
However, creating a domain name that is lengthy and complicated domain name would be unsafe. Therefore, creating a domain name not only forms your brand’s first impression but also helps with rankings and traffics.
2. Choose a Logo Design that Advocates Your Brand
Your business logo is one of the critical parts of your brand's visual identity as it provides a visual and virtual representation of your business.
Whether it's on your website, on social media, in your store, on employee uniforms, or anywhere, it is often the way customers can quickly identify that something is related to your company.
3. Pick your Website Building Platform
With so many website builders in the market, choosing the right one may look daunting, especially for users who are new to web building technology.
Choosing the right platform to build your website is what you need to plan to manage your website.
Some platforms are better suited for e-commerce, while others are for security.
Here are a few best website platforms to choose from:
- WordPress
- Wix
- HubSpot Website Builder
- WooCommerce
- Laravel
- Joomla
- Weebly
- Webflow
- Mobirise
Choose a platform wisely that not only works for you today but can grow at the same speed as your business.
4. Add Purpose to Your Website (Informational, E-commerce, Sign-ups)
A small business website must be built carefully, wisely, and up to date. Be precise about what you want to achieve and add purpose to your website accordingly.
For example, if your business is E-commerce, add the functionality to accept and process an online payment system.
By doing so, you can turn your website visitors into purchasing customers making your business faster, easier, and convenient.
According to Forbes.com,
The biggest draw of having an online store is that it allows stores to connect with the customer base they have lost.
You can quickly integrate E-commerce into your website using the plugins most website builders provide, including Magento, Wix, WooCommerce, etc.
Similarly, some informational websites have nothing to do with selling. Their primary purpose is to provide information to the user.
Wikipedia, Encyclopedia, and educational or organizational sites are a few examples.
5. Optimize your website for SEO
Having an SEO-friendly website will help direct potential leads to your page and deploy a solid SEO strategy across your site.
It is a constantly growing industry because of the entry of new players every day.
An estimated 3.5B searches are made on Google every day, from which 28% of total searches convert into a sale.
Moreover, with the advent of smartphones, people spend most of their time surfing online.
Hence, it would help keep up with the latest SEO and marketing tactics to attract new customers.
Ways to improve your website's SEO includes:
- Create high-quality content by adding targeted keywords and phrases relevant to your target audience.
- Integrate internal and external links.
- Make your website mobile-friendly
- Optimize your images for online searches.
- Create blogs to publish fresh content
- Build backlinks to your website from other high-quality websites.
- Increase your webpage speed.
- Optimize for Voice Search
- Introduce product videos
- Incorporate Google My Business
Thus, having a strong focus on SEO will help you generate traffic and bring your website's ranking to the top.
6. Take Advantage of Social Media
Build more effective lead generation techniques using social media to meet buyers’ needs and demands.
Improve your website's traffic and engagement by integrating social media.
Add social media buttons to your website to redirect visitors to your social media platform.
Create your business profile on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to help build an audience and collect leads. (A social media lead is anyone who shows interest in your products and services. )
Go through some of the few techniques to generate leads through your social media
- Launch compelling offers
- Share testimonials and clients reviews
- Build targeted ads with offers
- Lunch a referral campaign
- Run contest and giveaway
Try these few techniques on your social media platforms to get the ball rolling.
7. Create an effective landing page
A landing page redirects your visitors from a search engine such as Google or Bing to your website.
A landing page is a better way to get website traffic, more sales, and market your small business.
It markets your products and services to new visitors and is often tailored to a niche audience.
Do not forget to add the call to action button to get new sign-ups, requests, and purchases.
Compared to a regular webpage on your website, landing pages offer high conversion rates.
About 68% of B2B businesses rely on landing pages to generate leads, making them an integral part of a digital marketing campaign.
An effective landing page includes:
- Eye Catchy Headline
- Compelling Copy
- Integrate Keywords
- Social Sharing Buttons/ Links
- Hide Navigation
- Attractive Image
- Add Conversion Form
Pro Tip: The goal of creating a compelling landing page is to convert the traffic into leads, such as inquiry calls, sales, downloads, or sign-up.
8. Track Performance
Tracking your website’s reach and impact lets you measure its overall performance.
It is a Go-To step to determine whether your website produces a positive return on the marketing budget.
Data generated from analytics is presented and refined into reports to help you understand whether your website is achieving a set of desired results or not.
There are many web analytics tools available to track a website’s performance. Among them, Google Analytics is the most popular one.
It is a free tool that efficiently collaborates with other users, which helps to track your page traffic, the number of visitors, bounce rates, and other crucial indicators.
With quantitative feedback about how your website is doing, analytics can help you set up goals and make data-driven decisions.
Make the most out of the web analytics tools and track the overall performance of your website.
Conclusion
Building an engaging website for your small business can be your most effective marketing and sales tool.
Following the tips mentioned above can benefit you in many ways and increase your small business website's performance.
Get in touch with Searchable Design LLC, the Best Digital Marketing Agency in the US to build a professional-looking website for your small business today.
We specialize in tailored web development and marketing to help excel and scale small businesses.
Our dedicated team will take on the task of improving your small business’s web and marketing needs.