Do you have a small business and realize your social media business page isn’t enough and now need a website? You must make many decisions and have a certain level of knowledge to build an effective small business website, so some business owners turn to a professional.
Paying a professional to design and develop a website only fits some budgets. That is why many choose to start with social media. With everything in mind, you decide to build your very own website. Where do you start? We have outlined the basic steps to consider when building your website.
Start with the basics
When building a small business website, the groundwork might be familiar to an experienced business owner, but it is also vital for newcomers. A foundational step in this process is defining your brand identity.
This involves selecting consistent colors that convey the right emotions, designing or choosing a logo that encapsulates your business’s essence, and picking a font that aligns with your brand’s personality. Your brand identity should be a cohesive reflection of what your business represents, creating a solid and recognizable image for your audience.
It’s crucial to identify the primary purpose of your website during this phase. Whether it’s to inform, sell, entertain, or connect, understanding the primary goal of your site will allow you to focus your efforts where they will be most effective, ensuring that your brand identity and website’s purpose are aligned and resonate with your target audience.
The importance of content
Once the purpose of your website is clearly defined, the essential phase of content creation comes into play. Content is more than mere information; it is the foundation that informs visitors, establishes the mood, and effectively markets your business.
When crafting content, it is imperative to align it with the core goals of your site, ensuring that it speaks directly to your target audience. Focus on providing valuable and relevant information rather than just filling space, as quality content can make your website a trusted resource in your field.
One of the most critical elements in building a website is your content, particularly how it’s optimized for search engines, a practice known as search engine optimization (SEO). SEO involves carefully crafting your content with specific keywords and phrases that people will likely search for, improving your website’s visibility in search results. Many tools are available that guide you in using content and keywords effectively to enhance your website’s SEO.
You do need to remember humans will be reading your website, and a bunch of text can overwhelm your visitors. Most users will be skimming material. You can always link your users to more pages that contain the details. Check out this great YouTube video about SEO.
Your website come to life with images
Images play an essential and multifaceted role in web design, bringing life into a website and enhancing user engagement. They add visual appeal, breaking up text and adding color and dimension to a webpage, making it more aesthetically pleasing.
More than mere decoration, imagery can convey emotions, reinforce brand identity, and even clarify complex information. A well-chosen image can evoke feelings aligned with a brand’s message or illustrate an idea more effectively than words alone.
Custom visuals that resonate with a brand’s personality create a cohesive visual theme, strengthening recognition and trust. Images can also serve practical purposes, such as guiding navigation through visual cues or boosting SEO when optimized with appropriate tags and captions.
Professional and relevant images beautify a site, enhance credibility, build trust, and encourage broader engagement. The thoughtful integration of images is a design consideration and a vital component in creating an effective, engaging, and successful website.
Structure for your small business website
You can design your layout after determining most of your content and having some images to get started. In other words, how you will put all your content into pages on the web and what pages will need creating.
This depends on the type of business you own. A basic website for small businesses must include at least a Home page, an About page, and a Contact page. An example of some variations to the basic list of pages is a services business would need to add a services page. You will want a list of products and product details pages if you sell products. This will be a good starting point; you can always expand your website over time.
Now you know the pages you will be creating, and now you can begin designing the page layout. There are many design tools you can use to create your custom layout. However, you can create your general layout using a pencil and paper.
You have another option if you don’t want a fully custom-designed small business website. You can always select from a long list of templates. Templates are complete website designs for inserting your content and images. This is a good way to ensure your design has a professional look.
I prefer to custom-build my pages from a blank page. For someone starting, using a template might be a good starting point. You should at least look into available templates.
How do you build and implement your layout
You have selected all your content and pictures and have a general idea of what you need from a design perspective. Now it’s time to start putting all that hard work on the internet, but how?
Building a small business website isn’t as hard as you think. Unless you are a developer, you must choose among the 100+ website page builders. This can turn into an overwhelming decision. My suggestion is to pick one that is easy to learn. Something like Wix is one of the easiest options.
There are costs associated with your website, including your domain name, hosting (where your website lives), and possible ongoing maintenance costs. I built my website in WordPress after using Wix for my first-ever website. I use WordPress because you can pretty much do anything within WordPress. Wix’s available features were limited, and I felt long-term WordPress would be less expensive. WordPress does take longer to learn, but websites created in WordPress are more professional-looking, and available features are limitless. Having said that, I would choose Wix if you are looking for an easy way to build a small business website.
Don’t forget this important step
The next topic isn’t as fun, but it will protect you and your visitors, and it’s necessary. Website security and compliance pages for your protection: privacy page and terms and conditions. Ultimately, this is required to help reduce your liability. Several laws require a privacy page in some circumstances. First, let’s discuss the required compliance pages. Your privacy pages will cost about $150 for a website content creator available online, or you can choose to have an attorney. The last option is to wing it yourself or not include one, but neither is a good idea. You will want to protect your business.
From a security perspective, if you choose WordPress, you are a little more vulnerable to hackers attempting to break into your website. The good news is that there are plugins to help you add more security to your website.
Plugins are kind of like add-ons to your website. They can help to ensure your website is more secure. There are a ton of options, including free options. Paid options add better firewall protection, but you generally pay for a more premium service. Like your privacy statement, the premium plug-ins are another mitigating risk element.
If you choose to build your website in Wix, it is a self-contained solution. Also, any applications you can add are contained within the Wix ecosystem. Wix handles the application and network security for the websites hosted on Wix to protect users’ data and assets. The point here is to make sure your website is secure and that you display regulatory information on your website.
Analyze and improve your user experience
Lastly, when you build a small business website, you must add a way to track user traffic and activity. If you plan to use your website to help grow your business, you will want to add tools to track this data. I use Google Analytics. After some time on your website, you can use this data to test out different page layouts or content that intend to improve conversion rates. You can also use this data to identify problem areas where users leave your website.
If you want your website to succeed, you must consistently improve SEO and the user experience. Google Analytics is one of the tools to help you determine where to focus your efforts. You should hire someone to help you with this or make this part of your everyday business activities. Focusing on these things will help you gain relevancy on the web and grow your customer base.
I hope these ideas help get you off and running with building your website. If you have any questions on how to build a small business website, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at Hoke Web Solutions.