GoDaddy DreamHost Bluehost InMotion SiteGround Prominently display a clear description of your business It is important to let people know who you are and what you do right away so they don’t feel confused when they visit your small business website. Make sure your main homepage banner (also known as a “hero image”) and subsequent banners are visual representations of your services, and also that you have an introductory text blurb near the top of the page that describes who you are and what you do. Additionally, make sure both your main and footer navigation menus have "About Us" page links easily accessible so people can click them and read more about your business in depth. Implement the best content management system A content management system (CMS) is a software program or application that is used to create and manage digital content. A good CMS will help you maintain your site, and you don’t need much technical knowledge to use it. You should choose a CMS that is designed for your unique needs; different systems are used for different reasons, such as user-friendliness, extensibility, and budget.
The following are some popular systems with descriptions of their strengths and weaknesses. WordPress: WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS. It has a vast, active support community and many useful plugins to extend the functionality of your site. (And if you cannot find a plugin that does what you want, it is easy to find a WordPress developer who can make one for you!) WordPress is also free and relatively simple to install. Most website developers are familiar with it so it is not hard to find an individual or agency that can work on your site. I normally recommend that small businesses use WordPress to create their websites, due to its flexibility and extensibility. It must be noted, however, that WordPress's biggest weakness is security—because it is so popular, hackers target it the most. Your WordPress site needs to be regularly maintained and secured so it is not hacked. Also, it is difficult to secure every single third-party plugin, so keeping your WordPress site secure must be an ongoing commitment through various best practices (checking to see if your plugins have been updated within the past few months, making sure it is a plugin provided in the official WordPress repository, deleting unused plugins immediately, etc.).
Drupal: Drupal is another popular CMS. It offers many of the same benefits as WordPress, including flexibility, ease of use, and a large support community. Notably it is a more secure CMS than WordPress (safer from malicious activity); however, it doesn’t have as many plugin or theme options, which makes it less extensible. For many years, the White House website (Whitehouse.gov) was run with Drupal, but has since switched to WordPress, which it still uses today. Joomla!: Another popular CMS is Joomla! Out of the box, it has better SEO, security, and multilingual capabilities than WordPress; however, with the help of a few plugins, WordPress surpasses Joomla!’s capabilities. Squarespace: Squarespace is a service you subscribe to monthly or annually that makes website and blog creation an easy “drag and drop” experience. It includes website design, development, software maintenance, metrics, domain name with annual purchase, SSL security, 24/7 support, and unlimited bandwidth and storage hosting all in one package. It is especially suitable for creatives and provides you with top-notch design templates. If you are on a tight budget, need a simple and beautiful site, but cannot afford a website designer, this is a great service for you. There is a much smaller learning curve with Squarespace than with WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla!, but it doesn’t have nearly as many extensibility options. However, if you have little or no technical knowledge and are looking for a quick and easy way to put up a website, Squarespace is an excellent option for you.
Wix: Wix is very similar to Squarespace, but it is a bit more user-friendly. It offers a monthly, but not annual, subscription and includes similar features. Wix is also a drag-and-drop builder—you can freely drag and drop elements anywhere on the page; in comparison, Squarespace is more structured in where you can drag and drop on the page. The learning curve to using Wix is even shorter than Squarespace, so if you need to publish a site quickly, this may be your best option. Wix has a lot more templates than Squarespace to choose from, but once you choose a template, you must stick with it or be forced to completely rebuild your site. With Squarespace, you can change your template anytime without having to rebuild the entire site. Choose a good e-commerce platform If you plan on selling goods and/or services through your website, you will need the right technology to do so. (If you do not currently sell anything, you may want to consider doing so since e-commerce could potentially increase your profits.) If you decide to allow users to financially transact with you online, you will need to choose the right platform for your business model. Here are some popular small business e-commerce platforms:
WooCommerce: WooCommerce is one of the world’s most popular e-commerce platforms—it can turn your WordPress website into an online store. Like WordPress, there are many plugins available, and it attaches to WordPress, which makes it extremely flexible. There are many free and premium themes pre-built for WooCommerce. (As a rule, it is better to use a premium theme from a reputable developer because it will offer better security and support.) If you are not tech-savvy, you will most likely need a WordPress developer to help you set it up and use it. WooCommerce also offers a very high amount of capabilities and scalability that your small business might need. Shopify: Shopify is a cloud based e-commerce platform that allows you to create and customize an online store, and to manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping. It is not a WordPress extension like WooCommerce—it is a standalone platform that is hosted on the Shopify server—so if you have a main website, your e-commerce site would technically be separate from that. You can link to your Shopify account from your regular website built with WordPress, Drupal, Wix, etc., unless your main website has a Shopify integration plugin. Features include unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, fraud analysis, discount codes, reports, and much more. The key benefits of Shopify are that you do not need a developer to set up a store, and everything on the backend is already set up for you when you subscribe. The downside is you do not have as much control or flexibility over your store as you would with WooCommerce.
Shopify Plus: Shopify Plus is Shopify, but with a higher level of customization, more staff accounts, and international e-commerce options. It also has a higher level of support. However, all of this obviously comes with a higher subscription cost, and it still does not have all the flexibility and customization abilities as WooCommerce. Business Squarespace: Squarespace has an e-commerce subscription option, so if you chose Squarespace to build your site and have very simple e-commerce needs, you can choose this route. Business Squarespace charges a transaction fee, but this can be bypassed by upgrading your subscription to a basic online store. It includes a free domain, SSL security, SEO, abandoned cart recovery, discounts, real-time carrier shipping, and more. However, it has been noted it is not as user-friendly as Shopify. And like Shopify, it is simply not as flexible as WooCommerce. Wix: Wix actually has a Shopify extension which is very user friendly. You will have to upgrade your Wix account and subscribe to Shopify in order to use it.
GoDaddy Online Store: GoDaddy has a relatively new e-commerce standalone subscription platform that is relatively easy to set up and use. Very little technical knowledge is required to launch your shop with GoDaddy Online Store. The templates are simple and clean, and somewhat customizable. Features include marketing and SEO tools, social media integration, appointment booking, SSL security, rapid page loading, and more. Other Articles From AllBusiness.com: The Complete 35-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business 25 Frequently Asked Questions on Starting a Business 50 Questions Angel Investors Will Ask Entrepreneurs 17 Key Lessons for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business Create an interesting, memorable, and engaging website user interface Make sure your small business website interface leaves a positive impression that drives results. You can do so by implementing the following suggestions:
Use beautiful graphics and easy-to-read fonts. Make sure your graphics are compressed and optimized for fast loading. If your website is slow, search engines like Google will penalize your ranking. Research the competition to see how they have designed and optimized their websites; implement similar components that will work for your small business website. Research your target audience to see what they want from your site and make it easy for them to accomplish it. Stay consistently on brand throughout your website design. Design an intuitive navigation system which allows users to get to the pages they need quickly. Publish easily accessible contact information. Incorporate obvious call-to-actions (especially “buy now” buttons). Create pages that are standard for small business websites, such as:
Home About us Products/Services (with descriptions and visually appealing images) Sitemap (for SEO purposes) Management team Contact us Terms of use (the online contract governing how users can use your site) Privacy policy Additional pages relevant to your specific small business Optimize your small business website for search engines SEO is a set of practices you apply to your website to ensure search engines index and rank your website appropriately and then show it to search engine users. Once your website is “crawled” by search engines, it competes with websites that have similar content. The better your website design and content is, the higher your site will show up on search engine result pages. SEO mainly includes the following practices:
Keyword research and implementation Optimal website code Fast loading speed Being secure and having an SSL certificate installed; SSL is the standard security technology that ensures data passed between web servers and browsers remains private Having a mobile-friendly site Existence of high-quality backlinks (links on external websites with related content) that lead to your site Having lots of positive reviews online (Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc.) Using internal links throughout your site to keep people clicking and reading Using social media to link to your site (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) SEO is an extremely important ongoing process that can mean the difference between showing up on the first page of search engine results pages (resulting in large amounts of free traffic to your website) or page 300 (resulting in no traffic).
Squarespace Website TemplatesRegularly create and publish quality content Both content quantity and freshness are important to search engines, so it’s important that you create a plan to publish quality articles and/or blog posts on your site and on external sites that link to your site. If you want to rank highly in search engine results and encourage people to return to your site again and again, you will have to update your website with new and relevant content as frequently as possible. In addition to static page content and articles, a great form of content to post on your website is testimonials. Asking for testimonials from your customers and then publishing them on your website is a great way to post fresh, high-quality content on your site that makes your small business more attractive. Make sure your content uses an appropriate, on-brand tone that people will enjoy reading. Install webmaster tools Make use of vital data to help you analyze traffic and site performance by installing Google Analytics and Google Search Console (both preferably via Google Tag Manager), and Bing Webmaster Tools. These tools can be used to track the following types of information:
Daily, weekly, and monthly visitors to your site Number of views on each page of your site “Bounce rate”—the percentage of users who come to your site and leave after having only viewed one page (Google algorithms give higher rankings to websites that have a low bounce rate, on the theory that visitors are spending more time on the site and find it valuable.) Average time spent on site by visitors Crawl errors on your site (errors that the search engines found on your site in crawling its content) Broken links on the site Keywords that lead users to your site Backlinks to your site Web page download time Other information that can help you enhance your SEO Implement a website maintenance plan A website shouldn’t be created and then allowed to grow stale. In order to have a successful website that ranks well in search engines and doesn't get hacked, you need to make sure it is properly maintained. Here are some tips to create a small business website maintenance plan:
Check Webmaster Tools data at least once a month and have any vital errors emailed to you in real time. Use traffic data to learn more about your audience so you can better cater to them. Use performance data to optimize and fix warnings and errors. Make sure all software is always up to date. Run security scans so you know your website is clean of malware and hasn’t been hacked. Use “split testing” to see if certain variations of your website help performance; for example, if you are selling a product, you might have two versions of a particular landing page with different images and wording—the split testing allows you to see which version has a higher conversion rate. Follow my advice about SEO (see point #7), and continually publish quality content (see point #8). Find on-trend and effective ways to market your business online. Allow website users to provide you with feedback about your site. Continue to check out your competition from time to time to see what they are doing with their online presence and see if what they’ve done can work for you as well. Make sure your website is backed up in multiple ways at least once a day and at least 10 days back. Conclusion As you can tell after reading this article, creating a great small business website may not be as simple as you first thought. However, if you follow the steps set forth in this article, your small business will have an excellent chance at succeeding in the online marketplace.
When you consider this in the context of how to make a website or making a blog, it’s much the same. You spend days, weeks, even months working to build your perfect website. You utilize a chunk of your business budget to create this incredible user experience, hoping it leads to customer satisfaction and increased consumers or visitors. When creating a website or undergoing a site redesign, there shouldn’t be any pieces left behind. The various aspects should fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, eventually compiling the perfect picture. When learning how to design a website, you want to create the optimal user experience. To do so, go through your site piece by piece and make sure you have these key elements. The following features are purposeful elements of a website that users have come to expect and will leave a lasting and positive impression on all those who navigate your way. Home Page Features for Your Website The home page is where most first impressions are made. It’s a user’s first look at who you are and what you’re about. Don’t mince words here. Be concise and effective with your communications, and make it a quick place for users to understand your business. website-features Domain Name The URL for your website that appears in the navigation bar. This is the address where visitors are able to find you, or the address they are taken to after search leads them to your site. Domain name creation is one of the first steps to website creation, and you cannot have a functioning site without one. Make the domain simple and easy to spell so visitors may find you without trouble. If your ideal domain name is taken, think outside the box and get creative. Domain names are registered for brands, so you will either need to find an unregistered domain or acquire a domain that is owned by someone else.
Company Name Your company’s name should appear pretty high up somewhere on the homepage, reassuring visitors they’ve come to the website they were looking for. Users should not have to scroll to find your company name. Search Bar Some users know exactly what they want from your site, and just need help navigating to that page. Including a search bar on your homepage, and every other site page, allows visitors to take control of their site experience. Logo Logos should also appear high up on the homepage. Logos are small, easy-to-remember graphics that create a link in a customer’s brain between your company and that image. While they may not always remember your company name, they may recognize you by logo.
Description A short description or company tagline should appear somewhere near the company name or logo. This is especially true of smaller businesses whose work is not so easily understood. A short phrase that outlines who you are and what you do will set the scene quickly for first-time visitors. Navigation Bar Whether to the side or across the top of the page, a navigation bar should be positioned to empower users to explore your site and find their desired products or information. CTAs A CTA, or call to action, can be anything from “create a login,” to “book a demo,” to “get on our mailing list.” It’s a convincing plea to users, begging they take some kind of action on your site that would involve later contact, and it is often coupled with some sort of incentive. Images Your website should be accompanied by some sort of header image or body image to provide visitors with a visual. These visuals can be ads for your new spring line, or a graphic designed specifically for your site. Images help retain attention as they are easier to process than an overwhelming amount of text. Images can be a slideshow or video; any visual media is better than a page of plain text. Related: Learn how to pick the best images for your website.
Internal Links The purpose of a website isn’t just to get people to your homepage. Rather, use your homepage to spur visitors to other parts of the site. Advertise relevant spring styles, or provide links to recent blog posts. Internal links get users to stay on your page longer, which increases the odds they’ll become a customer. Testimonials Consider including some of the wonderful things users and/or previous clients have said about you on your homepage. Review sites such as Yelp or G2 Crowd have a plethora of data from which to pull. If you don’t have enough data, seek out administrative rights to your company profile and ask users to write customer reviews. In the meantime, consider reaching out personally to people and asking if they don’t mind saying some kind words to be included in your testimonial section. TIP: Claim your G2 profile today to start getting more reviews that you can use on your site to highlight your happy customers!More and more, websites are utilizing live chat software as an opportunity to get in touch with site visitors and provide top-tier customer service. If you are using a live chat tool, make sure users are prompted to converse after they’ve been on the homepage or other internal link for a certain period of time. See the Highest-Rated Live Chat Software, Free → 1 Subscriber Opt-in Although newsletter forms can really be located anywhere on your site, they should start on the homepage. A lot of orgs will opt for a pop-up that encourages visitors to sign up for the email newsletter in exchange for an incentive, such as a discount. Newsletters can be set to appear as visitors are hovering over the X button, prompting them to action before they close out the page.
