Why the Quality of Your Website Can Make or Break Your Small Business

If you are a small business working hard to attract customers, you may have asked yourself “How are consumers finding me?” The answer to this question is they will find you online. If you are not online you are going to miss out on a massive market of potential customers who now search the internet for products, services, and the businesses that supply them.

Customers who need information are using the internet as they’re first port of call. Still, many small businesses with a website find it hard to gain conversions and don’t understand why. A lot of companies don’t realize that having an engaging and dynamic website makes a massive difference in terms of attracting and keeping customers.

Think about your physical business locations, you make sure the showroom or store looks good, right? Well, it’s the same with your website because looking good is always crucial in a competitive online marketplace. In most scenarios, your website is the first impression of your business… first impressions are important!

Luckily, finding a top-quality website designer is quite an easy task. Many of the leading designers will have a resume and portfolio that will showcase their previous work in building business websites. In most cases, web designers will use a professional resume creation tool such as a free online resume builder to help them stand out to businesses seeking a sleek site design.

Whether it’s right or wrong, customers form opinions about a business based on its website, so it is best to see your site as a reflection of everything your business is. Creating a modern online portal that is branded, interesting, easy to use, clear, and well-organized can help drive those all-important conversions.

It is also worth remembering we are in an age where most users do their computing and shopping on smartphone devices. Having a website that is responsive across form factors is now absolutely vital. It’s no good to your business if your site looks amazing on a desktop but falls to pieces when viewed on a mobile device. Ensure your website can adapt across screen sizes, from small mobile handsets to large desktop monitors.

Speaking of functionality, the browser market is quite diverse, so it is advisable to test your website across all major browsers to ensure it performs universally on all options.

Some important aspects of a successful small business website include:

Clear information – Make all important information easily readable and accessible on the home page. Include what you do, what you sell, or what you offer. However, don’t bog the visitor down. Keep the content informative but brief, leave the finer details to ‘About Us’ and other pages on the website.

Get Social – Social media is a free and extremely powerful marketing tool all small businesses should be leveraging. If your business has Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social accounts, link them clearly on the homepage of your website. Get customers engaged in your product through several avenues.

Content is King – Content is so important, allowing you to tell the customer about your business and about service and/or products you offer. Simple ways to make a website look clean is to use the same fonts and page formatting across your whole site. Yes, don’t put a fluorescent orange on a black background on your ‘Contact’ page when the rest of your website is clean white.

Media – Did you know YouTube is the second most used website in the world and that Instagram is the fastest growing major social network? This tells us something about how internet users engage. In other words, they love images and videos. Your small business should at the very least include high-quality images that are related to your company and products.