If you are looking forward to building a new website for your start-up, you need to ensure that from start to finish, the process is handled the right way. Whether you own a hardware store or whether you are a photographer or whether you run another kind of small business, having a great website is very crucial to your success. It may also be that you want to make your current website more effective. In order to achieve this, you will need to have the right team to do the web development process. Here are a few valuable tips to help you create a great small business website:
Choose a Good Domain Name
Also referred to as the website address, a domain name provides the entry point to your website. The domain name is crucial because it makes a good impression for website usability purposes in addition to search engine optimisation. You need to ensure that the name is easy to spell. So, try to avoid the use of slang or highly esoteric words and keep it short. Have an appropriate domain extension like .com; unless it is suitable to use other extensions like .edu, .gov, or .org. You also need to avoid using hyphens and numbers.
Once you have picked the right domain name, you need to purchase a secure, scalable hosting that offers good tech support.
Create a Clear Description of your Brand
You need to let audiences know who you are as well as what you do so that they are not confused when visiting your business website. Create a “hero image” or homepage banner along with other subsequent banners. These will offer a visual representation of the services or products you offer. Ensure you have a nice introductory text blurb placed near the top area of the page describing who you are and the things or products and services you offer. Ensure you have a footer and main navigation menus with “About Us” page links that are easily accessible to audiences. This allows visitors to read more about your brand or business.
Have the Best CMS
A content management system (CMS) is an application or software programme used to create as well as manage your digital content. Having a good CMS helps you to maintain your site properly without the need of having the technical knowledge. Get a CMS that best suits your unique website needs. This is crucial because different CMSs are used for different purposes like extensibility, user-friendliness and budget. You can use a CMS like WordPress, which is the most popular and has many useful plugins. If you are worried about your website security, you can consider a different CMS like Drupal, which is considered more secure than WordPress.
Optimise Your Site for Search Engines
For your site to be indexed by the search engines and rank well on SERPs, you need to build a strong SEO strategy. Some of the most effective SEO practices include the following:
-
- Use of the right keywords
- Optimal website coding
- Ensuring fast loading speeds
- Installing SSL certificates and ensuring the website is secure
- Having a mobile-friendly website
- Building high-quality backlinks
- Getting positive reviews online from sites like Yelp, Google and Facebook
- Building internal links
- Using social media
Create and Publish Superior Content – Regularly
Content is king in online business. People are searching for content that is informative, interesting and that grabs their attention. You can publish blog posts, quality articles, social media comments and other kinds of content to help drive traffic to your site.
Video content is also an ideal way of advertising and marketing your brand. Use content that has an on-brand tone and makes people enjoy reading it so that they can share it.
Use Webmaster Tools
Small business website owners need to analyse the data received from their traffic as well as the site performance. They can install tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics. The tools can track information like daily and weekly visitors to the site and the number of page views. They also determine the bounce rate or the percentage of visitors coming to the site and leaving after only viewing one page. Other elements that webmaster tools can check are broken links on the site, the average time visitors spend on a site, crawl errors and website downtime.
When you follow these steps and tips, you will have a highly functional and effectively performing website that not only attracts leads, but that will also convert them. Talk to our experienced team of web designers at WSI OMS to find out how you can have your website up and running in no time at all!