Web Design Hampshire | Website Design in Hampshire

5 Killer Tips for Small Business Websites

The internet can prove a very fruitful place for many small businesses but many take the world wide web very lightly. Small Businesses have been recently accused of either ignoring the potential and possibilities the internet has to offer or not exploring this opportunity enough and allowing poorly designed websites to promote their products or services - which, unknown to some small business owners, can reflect very poorly on their business.

In this article we present five killer tips that small business are encouraged to follow to help drive customers and ultimately sales:

1. Easy on the Eye:

This has to be one of the most ignored and underused features small businesses implement. All to often small business websites look amateurish, poorly created and unimaginative.

Consider your own purchases online. You have visited two websites, both offering the same product/service at roughly the same price. One website looks professional, everything colour co-ordinated with up to date graphic design. The other very poor on the eye with font difficult to read against the background and out of focus images - which do you give your business too? One that cares about it's image or another that doesn't? It's not too difficult to choose.

The rule:

The more professional, and easy on the eye, the design the better it will reflect on your business.

The Tip:

This is down to how your website has been created. If you have a designer developing your website, and you are not sure whether the look and feel is right, why not ask friends and family for their opinion. Alternatively you could visit various small business forums and ask for honest feedback. Often the advice obtained can be invaluable.

If on the other hand you have built this yourself (or friend of the family has created for you) you may want to seriously consider upgrading the site, particuarly if sales or even visitors are low.

The rule of thumb with the visual design of your website is colour co-ordination, photographs that not only blend in with the theme of the site but also the colours too, and photographs that are optimised (removing any bluriness or stretching).

2. Simple Navigation:

Would you believe that one of the top five reasons why visitors leave a website is due to 'getting lost'. The concept of not knowing where to go next, or not being able to find the page you need quickly send people away.

The Rule:

As a small business website owner it is your responsibility to ensure your customers do not feel lost AT ANY TIME whilst visiting your website.

The Tip:

There are three ways to help ensure your visitor never feels lost on your website:

A. Ensure your navigation links is in the same place on each page. This way your visitor will always know how to browse through your website.

B. Make sure each page can be found from any other on your website within three clicks. If not it is time to make a change. If your visitor needs to find certain information it is recommended they never need to click through more than two pages to find it.

C. Include a sitemap. Not only is this a great way for the search engines to find each page on your website, but it is used by visitors to help find their way around larger sites.

3. Build a Visitor Database:

Many small businesses spend money by having a website designed, and then spend further by attracting potential customers (e.g. search engine optimisation, advertising, Google Adwords etc...). There's nothing wrong with this, in fact its recomended, but one key factor small businesses are missing out on is re-targeting visitors.

Just think on how many visitors have visited your website in the past year, or two years. How many of them do you have some form of contact details for? Not many I am guessing!

A visitor database is basically an essential tool that aims to collect or encourage visitors to subscribe to newsletters, product updates or enter competitions with the condition that their contact details can be used for marketing purposes.

A visitor may come to you by a PayPer Click advert costing you money. They may take a look around and disappear. What if you were able to capture contact details for 10% or even 20% of the visitors to your website for future promotions, offers and seasonal campaigns - the cost of the original click seems much more attractive now.

The Rule:

Aim to collect the contact details for between 5-10% of your visitors

The Tip:

Email addresses can be collected and added to your database with only a little technical knowledge - something we as a company can set up a small business with this essential tool in less than 24 hours.

You can collect email addresses from the following methods:

- Newsletter subscriptions;

- Product and discount alert subscriber tools;

- Regular Competitions;

By promoting ways of becoming a subscriber, with an incentive to do so, across your site in visable places will really help your ROI.

4. Search Engine Visibility:

Many companies call this search engine optimisation but I like to refer to the first stages of search engine placement work as visability. The first stages of any SEO is to ensure you are visable to the search engine bots and for the right keywords.

An example of this is consider a toy shop in Southampton, Hampshire. The toy shop do not sell online but use the website to promote their shop within the Southampton and Hampshire area. You may believe their main keyword will be Toy Shop. This would be incorrect. There competition for this keyword will be fierce and could take years to achieve a good placement - plus if someone in Yorkshire is looking to buy toys a shop in Southampton will not be of much use.

This is where we can be more specific with keywords. Not only will this reduce the competition but makes the target audience more relevant and more likely to visit the shop. An example of a more relevant keyword could be:

Toy Shop Southampton; or/and

Toy Shop Hampshire;

Contrary to popular belief although you do need to make changes to your website, once these are in place you can - as a small business website owner - concentrate on factors outside your website itself.

For instance the number of related and popular websites that link to you the better. If they use your main keyword to link to you it's a bonus!

5. Building your website and business

Don't assume that now you have your website up and running that's it. It is important to see your website as a growing tool capable of bringing in a substantial customer base (particuarly if you are national or international based - which is now not off limits for small businesses today).

Rule:

Ensure your website grows. If you are able to add new pages each month. Ensure all new products are also listed once they become available and importantly ensure all promotions and special offers are well advertised and displayed on your website - vistors can not resist a bargain!

The Tip:

If you are not able to make the changed yourself enquire for quotes to help keep your website up-to-date and relevant to the market you are in.

Plus search engines have been known to show favour to websites who take the effort to make updates and changes to their website.


If you are looking for a quality and professional website for your small business please contact us on or alternatively use our Online Quotation page.