For small businesses, websites are one of the most important elements of their marketing strategy. This is because the digital marketing/advertising tactics used will usually send potential customers back to the website – so the website has to offer a good user experience.
The effectiveness of a website hinges on its design and functionality. If a small business website has been executed poorly – and many of them are – it can significantly impact a business’s ability to be found online and generate new leads/sales.
Below, we’ll delve into some of the most common small business website mistakes and how to fix them.
1. Pay Attention to Accessibility
Accessibility in web design refers to creating a website that is easily navigable and usable for all users, including those with disabilities.
This involves:
- Translation for Various Languages: Offering multiple language options caters to a diverse audience, particularly if you operate in a large city like Brisbane, Melbourne or Sydney where there tends to be a diverse range of people from different nationalities.
- Content Clarity: Use simple, jargon-free language makes content more accessible and user-friendly.
- Responsive Mobile Design: Ensure the website is fully functional on mobile devices and is easy to use – test it on your personal mobile device to check the site.
- Cross-Browser Compatibility: The website should display and function consistently across different web browsers, including older versions.
- ALT text: Using descriptive image alternative text on all images across the site.
- PageSpeed: Check the site is capable of fully loading in less than 5 seconds on desktop and mobile. A page load time under 3 seconds is ideal.
2. Invest In Your Website
The cost of web design services is a critical consideration for small businesses.It pays to avoid these two extremes:
1. Underinvestment: Hiring inexpensive designers & developers often leads to substandard branding and poor website aesthetics.
2. Overinvestment: Overspending on high-end agencies may not yield the expected ROI for small businesses.
A typical small business website design and build should cost somewhere in the ballpark of $3000 – $20,000 Australian dollars depending on your requirements.
Your best bet is to do your research and conduct the necessary due diligence before hiring a small business web designer. Ideally, you want to work with a web designer who has a background in marketing and can understand that the website needs to achieve a set of business outcomes for you.
Meet with at least 3 potential small business web designers and choose a service that balances cost with quality and has a proven track record of creating successful small business websites for their other clients.
3. Make Contact Information Easily To Find
Effective communication on a website is vital for customer engagement.
Essential elements include:
Phone Numbers and Operation Hours: Display contact numbers and business hours.
Physical Address: For brick-and-mortar businesses, include an address with easy-to-follow directions.
Strategic Placement: Position contact details in the header, footer, or sidebar for easy access. Some contact details such as the primary phone number may appear in multiple areas of the site. You should also have a click to call button that displays for users on a mobile device.
4. Commit to Creating Quality Content
Content quality directly impacts a website’s SEO and user engagement. Strategies include:
- Demonstrate Expertise: Create content that showcases your business expertise such as helpful guides, videos, reviews/testimonials from happy clients, past projects or case studies and have a thorough ‘About Us’ page.
- SEO Enhancement: Request that your web designer conduct a round of on-page SEO before launching the site to optimise page titles, meta descriptions, page URL slugs, h1 headings and do some relevant internal linking between pages.
- Flesh out all necessary pages: If you are a business that has 6 core services, be sure to create a dedicated page for each service and include relevant information about the service that your customers would want to know.
Creating quality content is a recipe for small business website and SEO success.
5. Avoid Background Music
Background music is highly discouraged due to its potential to disrupt the user experience.
his should never be used on a small business website and it should never be set to autoplay. Avoid it like the plague!
6. Use Simple Navigation
A website’s navigation structure should be intuitive and user-friendly.
Best practices include:
Limit Nav Items: Limit top-level nav items to a maximum of 5 and use dropdown menus if you need to add more. having too many nav options creates points of friction for your visitors and can be overwhelming.
Concise Text Navigation: Avoid lengthy text in navigation menus.
Visual Metaphor Consistency: Stick to common visual navigation cues – don’t let your web designer get too fancy.
Hyperlink Visibility: Ensure links are distinct from regular text.
Dead Link Elimination: Regularly check for and remove any broken internal links.
7. Check Your Colour Scheme and Readability
The right colour scheme enhances readability and user engagement.
- Avoid Distracting Colors: Choose colors that don’t overshadow content.
- High Contrast for Accessibility: Offer high-contrast options for visually impaired users.
8. Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)
CTAs guide users on the next steps, such as calling the business, submitting an enquiry form, making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter.
Ensure your CTAs are:
- Direct and Clear: Clearly state what action users should take.
- Easily Visible: Ensure you have your primary call-to-action in a high contrasting colour so it’s eye-catching and placed in the top right of the screen on desktop and stuck to the bottom of the screen on mobile so it’s always visible.
9. Avoid using Automatic Pop-Up Windows
Pop-ups can interrupt the browsing experience.
A more gentle and subtle approach can be using small slide-ins from the bottom right or left of the screen that the user can easily dismiss.
Google has also cracked down on interruptive, full-screen pop-ups which is another good reason to avoid them.
10. Large Site? Implement a Simple Search Bar
A prominently placed search bar aids in efficient information retrieval for larger sites.
Ensure it is easily accessible and functional.
11. Include Relevant FAQ Content
FAQ sections should address actual common queries. If you have a range of services, do a separate set of FAQ content and place inside a section on each service page.
This provides extremely helpful content for your audience, helps you to get more comprehensive content on each page and it will greatly benefit the SEO of that page.
Regularly update your FAQ sections to reflect current customer concerns.
12. Monitoring & Regular Site Maintenance
Most small business websites are not set and forget.
If your website is not updated regularly your content can go out of date, site functionality can stop working properly or worse….your site may go down and you won’t know about it.
When your website starts working hard for your small business and then your website goes down, it can devastate your lead generation and customer acquisition.
If you are running a website on a content management system like WordPress, it is also a good idea to engage a local website maintenance and management service to prevent unexpected downtime.
This will ensure your site is always up-to-date, running the latest software and is safe from nasty hackers/malware.
Final Word
A well-designed website is a crucial asset for small businesses, directly influencing customer engagement and business growth.
By adhering to these web design practices, small businesses can create a more user-friendly, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing online presence that resonates with their target audience and helps the business to grow.