Small Business Website Design – How to Make Your Business Look Bigger
If you’re a small or newly established business that is yet to develop a sizeable customer base, it can be difficult to attract new clients.
Potential customers might take a quick glance at your website, notice that there isn’t a huge amount of content there, and swiftly move on to one of your bigger, older, and better known competitors.
That’s why it’s absolutely vital that your website conveys the massive scope of your ambition, rather than the relatively modest scale of your operation, and that customers come away from your site with the sense that you are capable of managing any job, now matter how vast or challenging.
So here are some tips on small business website design that will help you project a more expansive commercial image.
Customer Testimonials and Reviews
Customer testimonials and reviews are a very effective way of introducing prospective clients to your services and to the standard of your work.
But they also demonstrate that you have a track record of success with a real client base.
Positive reviews and assessments of your company – even from the small number of people (so far!) who have hired you or purchased your products – go a long way towards expanding and enhancing your business’s image.
High Quality Video
Big companies often use videos to promote their services and products.
High value production videos filled with clever, concise animations and clear information help explain to prospective customers precisely what it is that you do.
But done well, of course, they will also consolidate your image as a first rate professional company.
Videos can be expensive, with total costs reaching anywhere from $1000 to $5000 or $6000, depending on how long they take to make and who you hire to make them.
But they are also really eye catching.
They draw people in.
And that’s why companies with massive of resources to spare use them so frequently.
For more information on how to utilize high quality videos for your small business, check out this article.
Showcase Your Press Coverage
Make space on your site to showcase any or all of the positive press that you’ve received.
This is a quick and easy to illustrate the extent of your reach.
It shows that you have reach in your community.
You can generate more press coverage by building links to the local media, getting to know the reporters covering the business and consumer beats in your industry, and by sending them a steady (but not overwhelming) stream of well-crafted, thoughtful and interesting press releases.
Those releases may only be picked up periodically, but when they are, they will result in excellent local and social media coverage that boosts your company’s profile.
Publish A Steady Flow of Content
Your website can’t be static.
The content you post has to be consistent and up to date.
It needs to be well written, grammatically correct, and informative.
And it has to demonstrate that, although your company may not have 1200 employees, or be a commercial giant like Google or Facebook, it works dynamically, covering a huge amount of ground with great skill.
Try to publish two or three fresh articles a week, each of which contains some genuinely useful information that is directly relevant to your target client base.
Branding
Design your website so that is speaks clearly and unequivocally to the people you are trying to reach.
That means all the different sections of your site adhere to the same design rules, in terms of font, logos, and colours, and tones.
This might seem like an obvious observation, but it’s extremely easy for inconsistencies to creep in and, when they do, customers registers them as a lack of professionalism.
The reason major companies invest a lot in ensuring that their branding remains uniform across all their products and services is that it builds recognition with the public and shows that they have the resources to spend on an ultra slick, contemporary image.
Live Customer Support
Make live person customer support available to anyone who lands on your site.
This will immediately give the person browsing your site the impression that you have an big team at the ready that is prepared to address their queries and concerns.
If live online forums are too labour intensive for your stripped down enterprise, consider publishing a detailed FAQs page, or encouraging customers to submit questions about your products and services via an easy to use contact page.
Conclusion
Small business website design matters a lot.
In the digital age, it is becoming increasingly common for a customer’s first contact with a company to be through that company’s website.
So that initial impression could cost you big – or it could result in months of extra business.
Whether you’re a small team of digital wiz-kids straight out of college, or a little, family run bakery looking to make a bigger dent in your local market, make sure that people who visit your site are immediately struck by
how broad, ambitious, and professional your company looks.
Follow the advice above and they will be.