Who Are YOU?
1. Clearly state your name and sum up your products or services right on the homepage.
2. A simple, sensible web address. Don’t make things complicated or use alphabet soup letters that can’t be communicated easily on the phone.
Navigation Rules!
3. Simple menu/navigation: Clear links to the most important pages are crucial for guiding visitors to the information they’re looking for. Miss this one and your visitors are gone.. in a click!
Contact
4. Contact information that’s right there. A link at the top corner of the home page, and contact info page that includes phone, e-mail, a standard contact form, and link to your location in Google maps. So many sites make you hunt for this info.
5. An obvious call to action: Free quote, or sign up, or shop now are all good.
Who Loves Ya?
6. Customer testimonials/ honest words from others. It will help you sell.
Content, Content, Content
7. Smart keywords throughout your text, plenty of links, naming your page titles and URLs correctly, meta descriptions, and using/labeling images and videos properly.
8. Fresh, quality content that’s updated regularly, a blog, or new info are all needed to search well.
9. Design and text that’s friendly to online readers who don’t have the time nor much interest in reading.
• Break things down into short paragraphs
• Use bullet points
• Highlight important words or phrases.
• Here is a post on website content, and the importance of keeping if fresh.
Safe and Secure
10. Secure, trustworthy hosting company to keep your site safe and content management system updated constantly.
Watch Your Stats
11. Google analytics installed and reviewed regularly. It’s free and a treasure trove of marketing information. You can see how many hits, how long they stayed, what pages they clicked on, where they left your site.. and oodles more. Did I mention it was free?
In Conclusion
Small business website design is an art. You want your website to look unique and reflect your business, to load fast, and to work great across platforms and devices. These are the steps we follow, and hope you find them useful. If you’d like a quote on a custom-designed website from DevineDesign, start here with our no-pressure-no-obligation quote form.
Here is a post on what to look for when hiring a website designer.
Read more about DevineDesign’s website design services, click here.