The internet has opened many doors for small and medium businesses. If you have a good website, you can quickly get to customers and find your place in the market. It’s true, but you aren’t the only one thinking this way. As a matter of fact, lots of business owners are taking the same path. So, if you want to get to your audience and get them to buy something from you, you’ll need some tips to build an effective business website. And that’s exactly what we’ve got for you today.
Now, don’t think you don’t need a website if your store is only physical and you don’t do any shipping. These types of stores are why the US economy is so successful, and their customers still use the internet. So, why wouldn’t you reach them there and tell them to come and visit your shop?
Before we get into details, here are the key takeaways from this guide:
- Follow the good practices and make your site mobile responsive, easy to use, and well organized.
- Focus on the content that your customers want to see and keep it coming. You want to remind people you’re there all the time.
- Make your website easy to find with a good domain choice and good SEO.
Make your site mobile responsive
You can’t expect your site to be effective in 2022 if you don’t make it mobile responsive. People spend more than five hours a day on average using phones, and they do a third of their shopping through them. Moreover, mobile traffic makes up more than half of all traffic on Google. Hence, you want people to enjoy looking at your site on their smartphones.
If people click on your site and can’t read what’s on the page or find a menu, they’ll just leave. Even worse, they’ll go to one of your competitors and buy from them. Not only you’ll lose money directly, but Google will also penalize you and put you lower on the SERPs. As a result, fewer people will see your site, and you’ll earn less money.
Make it easy to find
The choice of domain is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. You want it to match your company name or closely describe what you do. Keep in mind that you can buy multiple domains that will all point to your website.
However, picking the right domain is only half of the battle. You’ll also have to find out what keywords you should use, write content, and work on your content marketing. On top of that, you’ll need to put some effort into SEO so that you show up at the top of the list when people search for something related to your business.
SEO is by far the most complicated part of the job here, and it’ll take some time for your efforts to give results. However, once they do, you’ll get plenty of people through your doors. If you want to speed it up a bit, you can always reach out to Link Department and similar professionals to help you with getting some backlinks. Your business will prosper much quicker.
Place your contact info above the fold
If you want to get as many calls as possible, you need to make it easy for people to find your contact info. It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised by how many business owners overlook it. So, this may just be the biggest one of the tips to build an effective business website.
Put your contact info right at the top of your homepage. Your visitors should have to scroll to find it — it should be right there! If you use social, make sure to put social media buttons in either the website header or footer.
Make your website easy to use
You may do a lot, but don’t let the range of services you offer confuse your customers. You want to make your website light and easy to use for anyone who stumbles upon it.
The best tactic is to limit your top-level navigation menu to five main tabs and organize pages under them. Also, if people land on a random page of your site, it should be clear how to get right to the homepage. Clicking on the business logo is what most people do, so be sure to make it a part of the design.
Make pages uncluttered and straightforward. The goal here is to create an exciting site that will make sense to anyone who sees it for the first time. You’ll enjoy all the benefits digital marketing can bring to a business if you can do that.
Give accurate information
Your site will only hold value if the information displayed on it has value. You’ll turn people off if you give them the wrong number, bad product info, and plenty of grammatical errors to deal with. They won’t enjoy using your website, so they won’t use it at all.
Before anything goes live on your website, make sure to proofread it. Furthermore, check random pages from time to time, especially if you’re updating them. Finally, be careful with what you post on your site, and don’t let simple mistakes take you out of business.
Pay attention to the speed
As it turns out, people hate slow websites. They hate them so much that they won’t even give them a chance if it takes more than three seconds for them to load. Hence, you want to make your site as snappy as possible.
You can do all kinds of things to improve your site speed, but an excellent place to start is keeping your software up to date. Optimize your pictures and videos and pick a good website host. The quicker your site is, the more clicks it’ll get.
Don’t forget a call to action
By now, it should be clear why every business needs a website. Still, what’s the point of having a website if it doesn’t bring you any customers or leads? Well, that’s what CTAs are for.
In essence, these are landing pages built to encourage your visitors to take a specific action. It could be adding something to their cart, calling you, or subscribing to your mailing list. As a matter of fact, it can be anything you want it or need it to be.
So, the last of the tips to build an effective business website we have for you today is to give your visitors a prominent button or a link to click. Make it visible and explain to them why they want to click it. With this trick, you’ll get as many customers as you can handle, even if you’re a brick-and-mortar business.
