The Ultimate Guide to Creating an Effective Small Business Website

Recognizing the need for your small business to have its own website is an important first step in giving your brand a strong online presence. In order to allow your small business the chance of reaching its full potential and the most people on the web, you must market it online and establish its brand identity through the content its website contains.

Create a website for your small business that is effective in reaching (and pleasing) its target market. It should communicate what your brand is all about, be different from the competition, and make itself known to potential new customers. Through the design you implement and the content you create and publish to your website, your small business is able to communicate to consumers and establish itself as a trusted, credible resource.

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The Beginning: Getting Your Site Set Up

The initial steps of setting up the website for your small business can seem overwhelming. You have to consider what you want the site to look like, what capabilities you want it to have, what you want it to be called, and more. You can tackle all of the above though and tackle it well by keeping the target market for your business, search engines, and the qualities of your brand in mind.

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Choosing and Registering a Domain Name

First thing’s first, your website needs a domain name. Not just any domain name will do, however. The domain name you register for your site must be both brandable and memorable. It represents your business and is often what forms a person’s first impression of you. Therefore, it needs to be relevant to your brand as well as something that will stick with those that come into contact with it so that they remember it and go back to it again and again. To accomplish this with your domain name:

1. Make it concise. Keep your domain name to about three or four words in length in order to keep it from losing people’s attention or too difficult to remember in its entirety.

2. Avoid using hyphens or numbers. People commonly forget to include hyphens or put them in the wrong place when they are typing or otherwise sharing a domain name. With numbers, people are sometimes left to wonder whether the number is spelled out or in numeric form. Keep people from accidentally ending up on the wrong site by not putting hyphens or numbers in the domain name for your business.

3. Make it easy to speak, type, and spell. Increase the likelihood of your domain name being shared from person to person and being entered into web browsers correctly by not making it too complicated. People should not find it difficult to say aloud, type, or spell out.

4. Ensure it is easy to remember and associate with your brand. Your domain name is how the public will locate you online and share you with others, and therefore must be relevant to and representative of your brand. It should also be easy enough to recall after having seen or heard it. Aim to end your brandable domain name with an extension that is familiar. With “.com” the extension of 75 percent of existing domain names, chances are that “.com” is the extension with which most people are most familiar. Try to end yours with that as well to make it easier for people to remember as time passes.

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Great Logo

Like your site’s domain name, the logo of your business on your site helps build your brand’s identity and the way people think of and remember you. Your business needs to have an awesome logo to be featured on its website and form a lasting impression with all who pay the site a visit. It is certainly true that what makes a great logo will vary according to the industry and type of business, but there are some elements that all logos need in order to achieve the status of being a great logo.

1. Relation to your brand/what you have to offer
Although your logo does not necessarily need to be an image of the product your business sells, it does need to somehow relate to what your brand is all about. Include an element that creates a perception of your brand’s personality and/or what it most values in how it does business and serves its customers.

2. Differentiation from the competition
Make sure your logo looks different (both in design and color scheme) from that of your competitors. Having a logo on your business’s website that looks similar to what is showcased on the websites of your competition will confuse consumers and not allow them to develop a distinguishable identity for your brand in their minds.

3. Suitable for web placement
Your logo will be put on display in multiple ways through multiple channels both digitally and in print. Ensure that it looks just as good and is prominently displayed at the top of your website’s homepage as it is on your business card or company polo shirt.

4. Not too busy
Your logo needs to make a positive contribution to the overall aesthetic of your website, not detract from its content and design. Keep your logo simple enough to not be distracting on your website.

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Make it Mobile-friendly

This is not an optional or nice-to-have ingredient for your small business’s website. Your site must be mobile-friendly! Of all internet users, 80 percent of them own a smartphone. Those smartphone owners need to be able to access your site from their devices.

Ensure that when they do so, your site is properly formatted for their screen and fully functional. You can even use Google Search Console’s Mobile-Friendly Test to enter your site’s pages and check whether they are mobile-compatible. If your site does not make the cut with mobile devices, it will lose credibility and people likely will not try to visit it again at a later date.

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First Steps for Optimizing Your Site

Developing Content

When initially putting together the website for your small business, you must keep SEO in mind. All the content that you create for it and the way you market it online should work toward achieving the goal of pushing your site to the top of search engine rankings so it is seen by more people online.

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Provide Value

Any content that you develop for and publish to your website must give something to its visitors that they either want or need. Make your small business a leading resource in its market by making its website the go-to resource for relevant, trustworthy information, not a place to find fluff or the same thing that is elsewhere.

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Be High-quality and Error-free

It seems obvious, but the content for your website must be of high quality and free from inaccuracies, typos, and poor grammar. If your website contains these errors, it instantly loses both trust with those who visit it and its ability to rank in search engines.

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Use Keywords and Phrases

By using the proper keywords and phrases throughout your site, you can help optimize your site for search engines and make it appear in more searchers’ results pages. Relevant keywords will ensure that your site appears in the searches of its target market and that it will not get left behind on search engine results pages where its competitors appear.

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Use Visuals

A web page stuffed with text tends to be overwhelming and easily lose the attention of anyone who visits it. Even if the text is that of expert, useful information, no one is likely to read it if it is simply displayed on your small business’s site in one giant block. Break it up with visual elements instead. Visuals like infographics, pictures, graphs, and charts attract more attention than words do alone and keep people’s attention for a longer amount of time. Also, using attractive visual elements within your site can help it to get more inbound links and shares from its target market.

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Have a Content Marketing Strategy

According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” It is a form of online marketing (done through blogs, videos, social media posts, email newsletters, etc.) that essentially allows you to promote your brand through relevant content it develops without specifically mentioning the brand itself. The content your small business creates for its marketing can be shared on its website, as well as used to direct traffic to its website.

The content marketing strategy for your brand may have goals that differ from that of another brand’s strategy, but there are two things all content marketing should strive to achieve: exposure for your brand and making conversions. Grab the attention of your target market by creating content that is interesting and useful to them, as well as having a way to track those who interact with your content and giving them options to stay connected with your brand.

Your content marketing needs to set itself apart. It cannot be like everything else that is already out there before the eyes of consumers! What you create and publish does not get the chance to establish an identity for your brand in people’s minds if it looks just like what your competitors have already done. Plus, if done right, your brand’s website can enjoy all the benefits that content marketing can offer it, including:

1. Better search engine rankings: With the right keywords and phrases used in your small business’s content marketing, along with the publishing of shareable content, your website will be noticed more by and do better with search engines.

2. More traffic to site: Creating original content that is not trying to make a hard sale to the target market of your small business gets attention and interest. By getting the attention and interest of your target market (and with the help of good CTAs), your small business is able to drive more traffic to its website.

3. Brand development with target market: When your small business develops content marketing material that is catered to its audience and relates to its brand, it promotes brand recollection with those who are exposed to it. People who see your content marketing will be able to make a connection with and remember your brand, increasing the likelihood of them thinking of your small business in the future and checking out its website.

4. New consumers: With content marketing done right, your small business and its website can reach people it might not have otherwise. It can span multiple channels on the web and be shared by your target market to reach new potential customers for your business.

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Build Links to Direct Traffic to Your Site

Link building for your site means both better SEO and more traffic being directed to it. Also, with the right links built to your site from other good, quality sites, your site gains credibility and is seen as a useful resource of information.

What is link building? It involves getting sites other than your own to link back to yours in some way. This is done through methods like a guest blog post or an infographic that directs people back to your site when they click on a link it contains.

Link building is highly important in creating a trustworthy and well-viewed website for your small business and will lead more traffic from other places across the web.

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How to Further Develop Your Brand Identity & Build its Following

Everything your small business puts online, its website of course not excluded, needs to speak with a consistent voice that conveys its brand and its overall personality. Allow all who come into contact with your site to be able to identify what your brand is about and to follow along with it and all that it does.

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Start a Blog

Through blog posts on your website, your small business can build itself up as an expert in its field and provide its consumers with valuable content that they can then go on to remember and to share with others online.

You can also utilize the power of guest bloggers for your site. In who you choose to have make a contribution to your site’s blog as a guest, you are communicating who you think ties in well with your brand and its image. Also, you can get new visitors to your site that might not have landed there otherwise through the online following of your guest contributor.

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Direct to Social Media Accounts

Include links to each of your business’s social media accounts on your website. Feature them somewhere they will be easily seen, such as prominently on the homepage or from clicking on a clearly labeled tab. Use your website to get a lasting following for your brand through a dedicated social community.

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Capture Visitor Information & Make Conversions

When consumers come to your website and learn more about your business and its brand, use what you present them to encourage them to share their contact information. By pulling people in with your site’s great content, you can get them to then subscribe to an email newsletter from your business or to download an ebook that you are offering. Capturing your consumer’s email addresses when they do something like this on your site is a way for your business to make conversions. Turn first-time visitors to your site into customers by giving them compelling content, then connecting with them consistently through your deliveries to their email inboxes.

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Find Your Niche in the Market

Avoid trying to market to everyone. This strategy (or lack of strategy) with your website will lead to it being too broad and general in its content to really attract and connect with anyone. Rather, find the right niche for your small business and work to meet its needs. By narrowing your focus, your site can appeal to more people within the smaller circle of the market segment. If you are unsure as to who exactly makes up the target market for your business, conduct market research to find out. Then, get to making content that interests them and helps them in some way.

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Use Tracking Tools

What’s the point in investing your resources in creating a website for your small business if you are unable to know whether what you do is working? You need to begin to track your website’s performance as soon as you get it up and running. Use a comprehensive online tracking tool like Google Analytics to gather the data on your website’s performance. With this tool, you can see how many people are visiting each of your site’s pages, how much time they are spending there, through which other online channels they are accessing your site, etc. Having this information made readily available to your small business allows you to see what the site is doing well and how you can improve it moving forward.

Make a website for your small business that will result in brand development, a loyal following, conversions, and general exposure of your business across the web. Develop its content to be relatable and of interest to its specific target market, as well as that which promotes people to share it and search engines to rank it well in their systems. Give your small business the resources consumers want, need, and expect to see by creating an effective website to serve and represent it and its brand. A professional, well-built template can save you (and your developer) a lot of time and money while you are trying to get your first website online, so be sure to browse the massive collection here on Template Monster.

If you enjoyed the guide, tell us about it below!

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