Website Design for Small Business

Just because you’re a “small” business doesn’t mean you have to have a “small” website. In fact, the exact opposite is true.

This is an opportunity to be grasped with both hands.

Your website is, by a flying mile, the best marketing tool you will ever have. It has the ability to generate huge amounts of new customers and for that reason, if no other, it deserves your love and attention.

It’s also the best demonstration of your brand and it will enable customers, at any time of the night and day, to check out what you have to offer.

Stunning websites for small businesses – five things you must know before you start

There are five key things to bear in mind before commissioning your new website:

1. Build a website with someone who is totally focused on business and what your web site can do for you. This is an asset that needs to work hard every single day. It’s not just something to show friends and family (although they should be knocked out when they see it).
2. Understand that more than half of your customers will be looking at your site on a phone. This massively affects the design (or should I say designs?)
3. Don’t make the mistake of building a great-looking website that search engines cannot understand. Did you know that only 4% of people visit search results on page 2 of Google?
4. Always stand on the shoulders of giants (don’t try and reinvent how the internet works, always follow website best practices).
5. Understand that a website is never finished. New content needs to be added every month if you want to really grow your company.

So let’s go through each of those 5 things one at a time so you can get the most out of every penny you spend.

A great website is ALL about the customer journey.

We have been building websites for 25 years and if there is one error that we see more than anything else it is business owners who want to use the website to talk about themselves.

It goes without saying that there is bound to be a fair amount of that on any website but ultimately your business website should be solving a customer problem. That means it is about the customer and not all about you.

To start with, customers are looking for suppliers who can solve their problems. At that stage, they are not interested in you.

The customer journey is everything. If we can identify what those customer journeys look like (there’s always more than one) we know that we can attract lots of new business.

This means that we are making a website for your customers. We are not making it for you (even though you are paying our bill). It’s about what problem customers are trying to solve and how we can help them on that journey.

So whoever you choose to build your website, make sure that they are focused on the customer journey and not totally consumed by design. Yes, design is important but they should have good marketing skills and great business skills so you get a website that makes money rather than losing money.

More than half of all visitors to your website will be on a mobile device

Like all digital agencies in the Exeter area, we have VERY LARGE computer screens! After all, we’re not going to show you that brand-new website on anything else now are we?

But remember what we said earlier about the customer journey.

If over half of your customers are looking at your website on a mobile device, they should be getting a fantastic visitor experience as well, arguably more so, than those looking on desktop computers.

The design for a phone is significantly different from that chosen for a large computer screen and your finished website will recognise the device being used and serve up the design that works the best. It’s not just about design, it’s about functionality as well. The phone design will always use what is known as the “hamburger” for the menu (the series of small horizontal lines we are used to seeing in the top right-hand corner of the screen).

So yes, by all means, enjoy the cinema experience of the big screen but as a business person, focus more on how well the phone version of your website is working.

Only 4% of visitors will go to page 2 on Google

Type any search term into Google and it will tell you how many pages it has found that satisfy your search criteria. It usually runs into tens of thousands of competing pages. However, there are only 10 places on page one of Google for what is known as organic search terms.

Organic search terms are the ones that have been ranked by Google as the best sites to visit based on the term you are searching for. This excludes all the paid, or sponsored ads, that companies use when their pages do not rank well. Unfortunately, many customers ignore sponsored ads as they know these companies are simply throwing money at Google to appear at the top.

Now it’s obvious that if there are thousands of pages on Google but only 10 spots on page one, an awful lot of websites are not even being looked at. The guys on page one are getting ALL of the business.

As mentioned several times already, 100% of people visit page 1, only 4% visit page two, and as for page 3 and beyond, well you can forget those.

So it’s important not to build a website that no one visits. If it’s a retail web site you are building, this is equivalent to building a shop in the desert. No one will ever find it.

The bottom line is to make sure the web design company you use understands how to get your pages to rank on Google and allow a budget for this.

Small businesses can stand on the shoulders of giants.

Just because you’re a small company doesn’t mean you cannot have a great website – and at a fraction of the cost of what the big boys have to pay.

The trick is to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Not mentioning any names here, but a (very) small company asked us if we could do a design similar (but obviously not exactly the same) as an international car manufacturer. We did exactly that and suffice to say it did not cost anywhere near as much as the big manufacturer had paid. I’m sure the marketing budget alone would have run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

What sites do you like the look of? What sites are a real turn-off? Can we create that for you at a fraction of the price?

As a design agency, this sort of information gives us an immediate steer as to what you are looking for saving you time and money.

It is also vital that before you brief a web design company on your needs, you look at what the competition is doing.

The same is true of web content.

What do your competitors think are the most important things to talk about and how do they approach getting a customer engaged? You may not have your own in-house marketing team but a lot can be learned by looking at what the competition.

For these reasons we always put marketing focus at the centre of every website we build. This will ensure that it is totally “on message” and “on brand”. This is our industry ‘gobbledegook’ for ensuring we deliver the right message, to the right customers, in the right way.

Is my website finished yet?

Okay, imagine you’re Google and you’re looking to rank the pages of two competing websites. One updates its web site every month with new content and the other hasn’t been touched for over a year.

Which one do you think offers the visitor the best experience? Which one would you rank above the other?

No prizes for guessing correctly.

That is why a website is never finished. New content, often in the form of blogs and new landing pages, need to be added each month.

Your chosen web designers must be able to help you with this or your website will never appear on page 1.

They will also advise on the writing style as well as give advice on what subjects your customers are actually searching for.

This may sound like a lot to take on but believe me, after 25 years in the industry, we’ve seen what a carefully planned website is capable of – and how it can take your company to the next level of profitability.

Next Steps…

Our website design team in Exeter knows how to create a website that will look fantastic from day one and would love to discuss your next website project in more detail.

So give us a call today at 01392 980012 or 01494 730000 to arrange a site visit or video call. We would love to hear from you.