Online presence nowadays has become a necessity for the survival of any business, whether small or a big conglomerate. If you are considering to build a successful online brand, there are some factors and standards as a business you need to adhere to reap maximum benefits. Below are seven tips for building a successful website for a small business.
1. Mobile Responsive
Close to 90 percent of most internet users use a mobile phone to navigate through the internet; as a business, if your website does not have an excellent mobile view, most of your clients will not waste their time on your website. To optimize your website, make it user friendly, with the same experience for desktop users transferred to mobile users.
2. Domain Name Choice.
Your domain name is a very critical element of your overall brand name. Choose a domain name that instantly relates to your company. Also, your domain name should be easy to remember and hard to forget.
3. Contact Information
Your customers need to know how to reach you or your sales team, and you do not want them to start navigating searching for your contacts. It’s always advisable to have your contacts somewhere your potential clients will be easy to find. On top of your page or at the footer are mostly the ideal places to place your contacts. You can include an email address and phone number.
4. Make navigation easy
Websites with a lot of pages and links tend to be confusing to most people. Your home page should be able to communicate your business to your clients without navigating to other pages. Also, make your website simple, have minimum links or menus with related pages under them. Create a blog and don’t include too many links if necessary.
5. Avoid cluttered pages
Your website should be as simple as possible; avoid the use of sounds or lights on your website. It creates a distraction to your clients, and they will lose focus on what you are selling. A lot of information to a reader at once clutters his mind, and he or she cannot digest the information you are putting forward. To avoid cluttering your pages, keep them clean and straightforward.
6. Your website speed or Load time.
One fact we all agree with is customers hate a slow loading website. Where you are hosting your website, make sure their servers load a bit faster, and if you cannot afford a dedicated server, have a content delivery network incorporated in your hosting package. It will improve the loading time and speed of your website, and you won’t lose your customers. A taker here, mind your load time, don’t compromise on this, it can cost you severely.
7. Adopt a simple Design
Your choice of fonts, colors, animated gifs, or even the number of images you use should appeal to your customer as well as your brand name. Adopt short, clear paragraphs and, if possible, use bullets, they make it easy for your visitor to scan through faster and digest your information better. Also, design your call to action in a simple, appealing, and captivating manner that will attract your visitors to respond. Design is king in successful online branding, invest your time here.