Summary:
Creating an effective website for your small business boosts visibility and credibility. Follow these steps to ensure your site meets your business needs and appeals to your target audience:
- Define Website Goals and Purpose: Tailor design and functionality to your business objectives.
- Choose the Right Platform: Select user-friendly, affordable platforms like WordPress or Shopify.
- Plan Your Site Structure: Focus on user-friendly navigation and essential pages.
- Design for Your Target Audience: Incorporate branding consistent with your buyer personas.
- Optimize for SEO: Use strategic keywords and SEO-friendly practices to improve visibility.
- Create Credible, High-Quality Content: Develop content that is expert, authoritative, and trustworthy.
- Integrate Crucial Business Tools: Include necessary tools for e-commerce or appointment setting.
Establishing an online presence is essential for small businesses looking to expand their reach and enhance their credibility. A well-crafted website serves as the cornerstone of your digital footprint. Ideally, potential customers should be able to discover your products, learn about your services, and engage with your brand.
How do you make a website for a small business that is tailored to the specific needs of your audience?
This blog provides seven expert tips on how to make a website for a small business. We’ll cover everything you need to ensure your website looks professional and performs effectively.
We hope these insights will help you create a strong online presence that resonates with your target audience. Keep reading to discover how making a website for a small business can transform your bottom line.
1. Define Your Website Goals and Purpose
When it comes to building a website for a small business, form dictates function.
Before you begin, determine the primary purpose of your website. Is it a hub for sales, a way to generate leads, or a source of expert information?
While all websites should be accessible, your unique business goals will inform your web design and functionality. An e-commerce or online sales business must prioritize a user-friendly shopping process, for example. In contrast, a website whose goal is to educate will need to prioritize structure, search functionality, and readability.
What is the most important thing your website needs to accomplish to help you achieve your business goals? That should be at the top of your mind as you proceed.
2. Choose the Right Platform
There are many website-building platforms that specialize in offering templates and functionality geared toward small businesses. In most cases, you don’t need any special web design expertise to create a website for a small business. When starting with a smaller budget, focus on ease of use, affordability, and integrated marketing tools.
The most popular web design platforms that meet those descriptors include:
- WordPress
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Shopify
- WebFlow
Do your research into each platform to determine which one is the best fit for the purpose you defined above. While Shopify is ideal for ecommerce businesses, you may want to look at Wix for content-focused sites. Each has unique strengths that can help you achieve your goals with minimal effort and expense.
3. Plan Your Site Structure
A strong website is a user-friendly website. If nothing else, ensure your web design prioritizes access to the most important information that visitors need. It can be helpful to begin by outlining the most crucial pages. Those typically include the home page, an ‘About Us’ page, pages for products and services, and a contact page.
According to Usability Geek, the most critical elements to incorporate into your website navigation include:
- Predictability, simplicity, and page-to-page consistency
- A clear hierarchical structure including categories and subcategories
- Breadcrumb trails
- A logo that links to the homepage
- An accessible sitemap
- A functional search feature
In other words, a simpler, functional site is always preferable to a unique site that is difficult to navigate.
4. Design for Your Target Audience
In our Ultimate Guide to Small Business Growth & Success, we go into depth regarding how to identify your business’s target customer. Go back to your buyer personas when you begin crafting your website. Ensure you are making choices with those personalities and preferences in mind.
The branding decisions you made for your social media platforms can also apply to your small business website. That includes fonts, color schemes, and other visual language.
5. Optimize for SEO
Likewise, we discussed SEO optimization strategies in our Ultimate Guide to Small Business Growth and Success. To recap, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to your website’s ranking in popular search engines such as Google. SEO relies on the keywords you prioritize to help potential customers find you.
According to the marketing experts at SEMrush, critical SEO strategies for small businesses include:
- Content aligned with search intent
- Leveraging primary keywords
- Crafting accurate and compelling title tags and meta descriptions
- Optimized website images with alt text
- A clear, SEO-friendly URL structure
6. Create Credible, High-Quality Content
The most important SEO strategy for many small businesses is crafting helpful content. This is high-value content that answers visitor questions, provides value, and helps establish your brand as an authority. SEO expert Neil Patel recommends that all website content be E-E-A-T to ensure it is valuable for visitors and ranks well on search engines.
E-E-A-T stands for:
- E: Experience (or first-hand subject matter knowledge)
- E: Expertise (or expert-level content that is unique and valuable)
- A: Authoritativeness (or content that is unique enough that other websites refer to it as a source)
- T: Trustworthiness (or credible content that is legible, well-structured, and up-to-date)
7. Integrate Crucial Business Tools
One of the final steps in building a small business website is to incorporate the tools you need to make business easy. For ecommerce businesses, that includes online shopping capabilities. For those offering services, it may include online booking or appointment setting systems.
Each page on your site should not only have a clear call to action (such as “shop now” or “book a consultation”). Likewise, visitors should have the ability to execute your CTA seamlessly.
Likewise, you may wish to incorporate automation, such as automatic replies to form submissions that acknowledge communication. The more streamlined the user experience, the more likely visitors will be to return.
The final step in making a website for a small business is testing for usability issues. That includes eliminating broken links and checking for compatibility across different devices. Once you’re certain that your site functions as it should, you’re ready to launch!
Building a website for your small business is only the first step toward achieving long-term success. Discover Our Powerful Lead Generation and BTOB Marketing to bring your SMB to the next level.