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Simple Tips to Improve Your Small Business Website TODAY

Having a small business entails a lot of things. In order to run it successfully, you need to wear a number of hats ranging from marketing, sales, business, and management. One of the most important hats you’ll wear is that of a marketer.

Successful marketing can help boost sales and elevate your brand in the process. One of the key components of good marketing is creating a good website!

It’s important that as soon as visitors land on your website they know exactly what you do, what your small business is about, and what your overall goals are. In order to successfully create a website of this level, you have to formulate a plan detailing the customers journey through your website. Which is why the first step to leveling up your small business website is making sure that your web design is contemporary and aesthetically pleasing.

In order to create a trendy and contemporary web design you need to follow 8 simple rules:

1. Reduce distractions and remove friction. Elements like complicated animations, lengthy content, and too many stock photos can be distracting for your audience.
2. Be sure to implement call-to-action buttons that will help convert traffic into sales for your small business.
3. If you have to use stock images, use the right ones. Stay away from cheesy images and instead opt for something original that accurately represents your small business!
4. When creating your website, remember that navigation is a key component; so make sure that your visitors can easily find a path to where they need to go.
5. Don’t be afraid to use some white space. Studies show that white space helps increase readability and break up the content for your viewers.
6. Make sure your web design is compatible with cell-phones! Mobile optimization is an absolute must in this day and age.
7. When designing your website, make sure that the pricing for anything you’re selling is easy to find.
8. You should constantly improve and change up your web design. Viewers are prone to get bored if they see the same images and design over and over again; therefore, I highly recommend changing up some elements on your website every month or so.

In addition to focusing on your web design, another important aspect when it comes to leveling up your small business website is to build an honest online relationship with your audience. This comes down to a number of things, with trust being at the top of the list. If your audience can’t trust you or the information you present, then they have no reason or inclination to visit your website.

Trust is built upon a myriad of things. My number one suggestion for building a website that your audience will trust is: consistency of brand, tone, and message. It’s important to maintain the same language and image style, tone of voice, color scheme, and overall message throughout your website.

Changes in these core components could confuse your audience and indicate a shift in personality. This is something you definitely want to avoid since trust is your primary objective. Building trust means sticking to the same tone of voice and overall message that your audience has gotten used to. The more your audience trusts you, the more inclined they are to visit your website and make purchases from your small business.

You can also share testimonials and social proof in order to gain trust from your audience. Earning praise from other websites, scoring a high number page views for an article, or reaching 10,000 visitors a day for the entire site are a few examples of achievements that can serve as social proof for your small business website. Highlight, celebrate and share these positive testimonials! This type of third-party validation is incredibly important when it comes to attracting more eyeballs and building trust with your audience.

The final takeaway when it comes to leveling up your small business website is to take website security very seriously. As technology has evolved, it’s become even more important and even more challenging to keep information secure on websites. Website security is incredibly important, especially in this day and age, in order to keep hackers and cyber-thieves from accessing your sensitive information.

If you don’t have a proactive security strategy, your small business website runs the risk of spreading malware, as well as attacks on other networks, websites, and IT infrastructure. If you don’t take the time to put security practices in place for your website then hackers can successfully spread attacks from computer to computer, making it very difficult to trace the origin of the attack and stop it.

You need to make sure to at least do the basics to protect both you and your small business from these types of attacks. This includes implementing HTTPS on your website, using strong passwords, implementing 2-factor authorization, using secure networks at all times, and being cautious about posting your email address online.

By implementing our 3 big tips you’ll be able to successfully level up your small business website! As a quick refresher, here are the 3 tips:

1. Make sure your web design is contemporary and aesthetically pleasing
2. Build an honest online relationship with your audience
3. Take the security of your website very seriously

Incorporating these 3 tips when planning and designing your website will help boost sales for your small business while also elevating your brand!