30 of the Most Important Things You Need for Your Small Business Website

We all know the reasons why small businesses need a website.

• Drive traffic and engage visitors
• Convert visitors into customers
• Educate, inform and assure customers and visitors
• Provide convenience and in-depth information

In the physical world
When a person drives up to your place of business it’s your building, your signage, your staff, and the services you offer that create the FIRST IMPRESSION.

In contrast
On the Internet, it’s your website that makes a FIRST IMPRESSION to your visitors. Your website represents WHO you are, WHAT your business is, and WHAT your business has to offer.

When visitors come to your website, they are considering a number of things about your business:

Am I in the right place?

Does this company really exist?

 Can I trust this website?

Do I feel welcome on the website?

Will I find what I’m looking for?

 As a small business website owner, you need to ask yourself these questions as well. Your homepage can be beautiful, but if it fails to instantly tell visitors who you are, what you do, and how that helps them, they will leave without a thought. 

First Impression

The moment of truth is when a visitor first comes to your website. They probably came from an offsite link; perhaps from your blog or social links, so it seems that they are interested in your offerings so … this is no time to mess it up. Your moment of truth is the first impression. 

 One: Professional Looking Design

Studies have shown that a website’s design has more value to a visitor than awards because the visual design determines the credibility of the website. If visitors don’t like the look and feel of the website, they will leave without entering.

That said, the investment in a quality website design can pay off with increased sales, thereby saving you money in the long run. 

Two: Overall Structure of the Site

A good plan for navigating your website is essential. If a visitor can’t find what they are looking for or if they get lost on your website, they will get frustrated and leave.

• Keep the structure of your website and the navigation simple.
• The number of navigation categories should be between 5-7 main categories.
• A “Home” link is not necessary. Most visitors know that clicking on the logo at the top left of the page will send them to the homepage. By eliminating the “Home” link you will have made more space on your menu bar.
• Keep your secondary navigation to no more than three levels deep. 

Three: Color

Using the right color in the right places will help to give impact and draw your audience in. Keep colors to a minimum (2-4 colors) and ensure that they relate to the logo or anything associated with your site. Consider choosing colors that relate to or are associated with your brand AND your target audience. Not all women like the color pink so don’t paint your target audience with a wide brush. 

Web Page Elements

The elements we present below are the minimum and basic items needed on a modern and effective small business website. You’ll notice that we have not added elements that you might find on a large corporate website because your small business site communicates to your visitors differently than a corporate site does. Here are the elements you need: 

Page Header 

Four: Domain Name and URLs

Your domain name (www.yourwebsite.com) should be as short as possible but still reflect the name of your company. Ideally, it should be simple to spell and not have strange spelling. 

The URLs for interior pages should have the spaces removed from between words and replaced by dashes “-“ not, underscores “_” between words. 

Five: Company Logo

Your logo should be placed at the top left of your pages. This is a traditional location and most people know to look there to identify your company. It should be an image (.jpg or .png) no larger than 200 x 150 pixels and should be linked (throughout the site) to your homepage, eliminating the need for a “Home” link. 

Your logo will help visitors identify your website and give them the comforting feeling that they are in the right place. Keeping the logo in the same place throughout lets your visitors know they have not left your site even if the layout changes.

Six: Tagline

Feel free to include a tagline in the logo image. The tagline should be relatively short and clearly describe your company mission.

Seven: Main Navigation

Your main navigation should be descriptive, and intuitive and clearly note the important main offerings of your website. An example includes: About, Services, Products, Pricing, Blog, Contact, and Search. Choose single-word options, if possible. 

Eight: Bread Crumb Navigation

If your site is large and deep you will definitely need to add an element called “bread-crumb” navigation. This navigation is placed at the left lower side of the page header and is formatted like this: Home > Services > Home Repair. This navigation helps your visitors understand where they are on your site. 

Nine: Search Bar or Icon

A search bar or magnifying glass icon linked to a search bar is also a helpful tool for a deep or complicated website.

Ten: Favicon

A favicon is a small graphic that is used to represent the website and placed on the browser tab. The favicon can be as small as 16 x 16 pixels and saved as a .ico or .png file and added to the website using the CMS. 

Items “Above the Fold”

In the area called “above the fold” (The “fold” being the area from the top of the page to the cut-off point of the bottom of the screen – at “full screen”) you should have elements that grab your visitors’ attention the second they land on your site. If you do get their attention you might get them to click around, subscribe or even, buy from you.

Eleven: Image or Slider

In order to capture visitor interest, it will be necessary to place a single, high-quality image or a few alternating images just below the page header. There was a time when a long series of images in a slider was desired, but testing has shown that this tends to confuse visitors and does not help to focus your Call to Action message. Using a single, high-quality, compelling image is suggested. 

Twelve: Call-to-Action (CTA) or Headline

A “Call-to-Action” is a statement designed to create an immediate response. It’s basically a sales pitch statement to let potential customers know what to do next. Keep the Call-to-action (CTA) short, to the point, and effective. You may need to test different CTAs to find the most effective message. Your CTA should have a clear benefit, solve a problem or inspire curiosity. You should, generally, have only one CTA per page positioned in a prominent place, near the top of the page. Additional links or link buttons on the page are OK and should not take away from the CTA. 

An enticing headline or CTA can increase the click-through rate (CTR). The CTR is the number of times people see your link vs. the number of times they actually click the link.

Items in Your Footer

The footer on your website is at the bottom of the site. It’s the last thing visitors see and can interact with. The footer tells the user that they have reached the end of the web page. The footer should also provide useful information, links, and a call-to-action.

Thirteen: Contact Information

Contact information placed on the right side of the footer will offer a second location (in addition to the Contact Us page) for this important information and allow easy access for the visitor. Information to include is:

Company name

Company address

Email contact

Business hours

Link to contact us

Phone number 

Fourteen: Various Secondary Information

Additional information to be added in the footer can include:

Link to your most recent blog post – Limit to 3-4 articles only

A brief history of your company or mission statement

A chat or contact form 

Fifteen: Other information

Copyright

Lower navigation that mirrors the main navigation

Links to Terms of use and Privacy policy pages

Social icons

Additional CTAs 

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Your Content

Your visitors ultimately come to your site for quality content. The new trend in content marketing and the use of search engine optimization has allowed small businesses to create quality content that gets seen, read, and acted upon. This allows you to compete in the same marketplace as your well-financed competitors.

Within seconds of a visitor arriving at your website, your message needs to tell them what you do and how you can solve their problem. The visitor needs to know why they should buy, subscribe or download. 

Sixteen: Visual Appearance

Important information is prominent

The content appears to be logically organized

There are clearly defined pages

Click links are obvious

Few or no distractions 

Seventeen: Making Your Pitch

Writing content can be difficult but nobody knows your business better than you do so explain who you are, what your offerings are, how you offer a solution to problems and why the visitor should “buy-in” to the solution.

• Make sure you include a clear call-to-action wording and what steps are needed to complete the action you wish them to perform. Educate your visitors as often as you educate your customers.
• Offer value in your words, the formatting, and your message.
• Write your content as if you’re speaking directly to your audience.

Eighteen: Ease of Reading

Even though only about a quarter* of your website visitors will actually read your online content you should still create your content to be easy to read, understandable, and digestible.

The font you choose will say a lot about your personality and the personality of your business. Choose a font that is Internet-ready, so it reads well on all computers and devices. To make the page easier to read you can use short paragraphs, bulleted lists, and section headers.

• High contrast between the font and background
• Links are easily visible and working
• The quality, amount, and relevant images and/or video

*Nielsen Norman Group 

Nineteen: Quality Content

Quality is better than quantity. You don’t have to write a lot of content, but you do need to write content that answers questions.

• Be friendly, human, respectful, and helpful. Solve problems.
• Make your content unique. This is good for your site and for search engines.
• Don’t put in too many keywords as if you are writing for search engines. Instead, write for your audience.
• If you are using old content or having someone write content for you be sure to review it so it meets your standards. 

Twenty: Be Accurate, Fresh, and Focused

Your small business website is the face of your company and unless your business is unfocused and lacking in freshness, your website shouldn’t be either.

•         Do research if you have to. Don’t make things up.
•         Keep your content fresh. Two-year-old information on your site is not going to help you with search engines.
•         Keep your information focused on your audience. Offer content that visitors would be interested in.
•         Add some facts and numbers periodically to back up what you are saying.
•         Don’t use buzzwords. Words like “groundbreaking”, “best of breed” and “mission critical” is not helpful. 

Twenty-One: Truth and Authoritativeness

Speaking truthfully and with the authority of a person who knows your small business and your industry. Your voice, although friendly, should carry a sense of professionalism, as well as, influence and respect.

•         Show your personality
•         Be authoritative and knowledgeable
•         Solve visitor problems
•         Write truthfully 

Twenty-Two: Other Content Types

Written content is only one example of content you need to consider for your site. A website with only blocks of type can be very boring and may cause visitors to leave without investigating or engaging.

•         A blog with images, unlike web pages, can give you a different and perhaps more flexible voice and position for your information.
•         Well-crafted images, graphics, charts, and infographics are very popular and effective ways to communicate.
•         Video or audio can work well to tell a story, give instructions or explain difficult-to-understand concepts.
•         Testimonials, case studies, and customer stories are ideal for telling a story. If you use real names and pictures you will improve the effectiveness.
•         Finally, unique and relevant content is a very critical part of a successful search engine optimization strategy and being found on the Internet.

Links – Making Connections 

Twenty-Three: Text Linking

In addition to buttons, you should be employing text links. Use text links within the content and be very clear in the link description where these links go. 

Twenty-Four: Internal Links

Internal links are links to other pages within your own website. Developing good internal linking is smart for visitor usability and accessibility for search engines to effectively review your website and index your web pages. 

Twenty-Five: Quality Links

The thing that really turns off visitors is when a link is offered and it’s either dead or it goes to such a general page that it’s of no help. Make your links specific to the topic and check them often to see that they are still working. 

Images 

Twenty- Six: Quality Stock images

Images really do tell a story, but they need to be chosen carefully. Stock photos are an option, but they are often distant, unrelated to the subject, and just plain stiff and staged-looking. It’s well known that “real” images are more acceptable to most audiences. But if you can’t find or take good quality images that are relevant to your business you might find that a good quality stock image is better than nothing at all. Each image will send a message to your audience so be aware of the images you see.

Twenty-Seven: Optimized Images

Once you have your “real, relevant” images you need to make sure that they are as small as possible while still maintaining their quality. Large images can dramatically reduce the speed of your site and diminish the impression the site has on visitors. Visitors will tend to wait only 3 to 5 seconds for a website to load.

To fix the problem of large images that slow down your site it will be necessary to reduce the image’s resolution by applying compression that will make the file size of the image smaller but has no loss to the quality of the image. This process is called “optimizing” an image

Twenty-Eight: Add Meta Tags to Images

Meta tags are used by search engines to explain what the page is about. Meta tags are also used for page descriptions for people with disabilities (blind, low sight, low comprehension). 

The information to include is:

• Title tag – the title of the page
• Meta description – brief description or summary of the page
• Alternative text tag – copy that describes the image

Twenty-Nine: Use Images with Purpose

When choosing an image you need to consider 2 things: 

• Why am I using this particular image and not another
• Am I placing the image in the best possible location 

Also consider if the image tells a story, completes a thought, or conveys an idea better than a block of copy. Only by supporting the other content on the page will the image be considered effective.

Thirty: Use “Real” Photography

If you produce quality images of your store, your products, or even your employees for brochures or other printed material you should include these on your website. This will increase visitor engagement and help your visitors to “get to know you better” because they will feel they have met you and been to your place of business.

As a small business website owner, you know how important your website is to you. Does your site have most or all of these items? If not, you’ll need to consider adding the right elements. You need to also make sure your site (your entire online presence) tells visitors who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.

Your moment of truth IS the first impression.