If you are looking to build a new startup website or make your current site more effective, here are 8 key tips you need to considerate so your small business website compete effectively in the online marketplace.
1 - Have your customer in mind.
Here’s where many business owners and web developers fail when getting the websites developed. Every thing you write and every image you use should be communicating with your specific niche. Take in consideration their age, gender, where they live and even what they think.
Forget about just talking about your business and how great your products or services are. Your costumers want to know how exactly you gonna solve their problem. If you don’t put your visitors first, your website won’t be effective. Bottom line, it’s not about you!
Visitors come to your site with certain goals in mind. Your job is to help them achieve these goals as quickly as possible, ensuring they have a positive user-experience.
2 - Use conversational english.
Despite what your high school English teacher may have thought, nobody wants to read text that sounds like a term paper. Yawn. Write copy as though you’re speaking directly to the visitor. Pretend you’re having a one-on-one conversation.
Use second person like “you” and “we.” A friendly, informal tone is better than stiff, corporate-speak. Contractions like “you’ll” and “we’re” are fine. Industry jargon that your visitors may not understand is not.
3 - Use pictures and videos to help tell your story.
If you have good photos of your products or your people, by all means use them. Visitors want to see what they’re buying and who they’re buying it from.
Don't be shy on also using videos of your products or services. It’s all about creating a user experience that tells the story.
4 - Use a simple straightforward layout.
Limit the use of fonts on one or two different types, don't use too many colours, keep it minimalist, you don't want to distract and pull the eyes away from the focus of the webpage. Short paragraphs and bullet points also make the information more scannable and likely to be read.
5 - Make your site mobile friendly.
Mobile responsiveness is critical for a website to be effective. Is not uncommon for internet users spend more than five hours on their mobile phones every day. Needless to say, your business's mobile website must offer a positive user experience.
If potential customers land on your site but find it difficult to read or navigate on a mobile device, they may simply abandon you in favour of a competitor. Furthermore, a negative mobile user experience affects your website in search engine rankings, making it harder for users to find through a Google search – which brings us to our next point.
6 - Apply SEO best practices.
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving the quality and quantity of organic website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines such as Google. While you can invest money on ads to drive prospects to your website, you should also aim to bring free organic search traffic to your site.
If Google ranks your website high through your use of optimised copy, you immediately get more exposure to prospects searching for your product or service. FOR FREE.
7 - Include calls to action.
Each page on your website should entice the reader to do something. Tell visitors what you would like them to do next. Lead them down the path to a sale or to contacting you. In other words, you need to give them a call to action.
Your landing pages should encourage users to take a certain action, such as to call your company, sign up for a service, buy a product, download an e-book, or do something else that benefits your business and marketing goals.
Give them a noticeable invitation to take the action such as a button or a link.
8 - Track your website performance.
If you don't track your marketing you can't measure if your efforts are being efficient and successful. You must collect data related to marketing actions and understand the journey of your customers.
If you’re not already tracking and measuring analytics, you should start now! The simplest (and free) way to track web analytics, such as visitors or time on page, is through Google Analytics. Anyone can create a free Google Analytics account to track a website or app, and Google has a number of tools to get you started.
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