When Building a Small Business Website, Send a Clear Message
When creating a website for your business, you need to consider how the information describes your services and/or products. Is it clear? Is it confusing? What should a potential customer do once on your website? How do you turn the website visitor into a customer?
These questions will help you determine if your services and products are easily understood by visitors. Then you need to provide visitors with an action they can take. Common actions include:
- collecting customer information
- making an appointment
- offering products for online purchase
- explaining how and when to visit your brick and mortor shop
- calling your office/shop
Put your Business Information Front & Center
When arriving at your website, the messaging should be clear. It should describe your business and what you have to offer. Any necessary information, logo, company name, and contact details should be easy to find.
Call-to-action features should be seen on every page, and throughout the content on long format pages.
If a customer arrives at your site for a specific reason, make sure they can easily find what they are looking for. If it’s purchasing a product or service or simply being able to find location or contact information, it should be easy to spot.
Choose the Correct Website Building Platform
Once you have determined what information a visitor might need and the actions you want available you will have a good idea of what website platform you’ll need to use.
There are options out there such as hosted website builders that are quite popular, such as Wix or Squarespace. These are great for a quick turnaround if you are ready to get your business up and running right away on a limited budget. The downfall of these website builders is that their style and layout options are highly limited. If you aren’t concerned with the design details, then these are both good options to get you started quickly.
Some people find the interfaces clunky, but most mid-age and younger business owners will find they can figure out the basics of how to input their data, set up their products, forms, and other call-to-actions quite quickly. These companies also have customer service available to most subscriber levels.
WordPress is another great option. Around 37% of all websites out there use WordPress! You have a lot more design, layout and functionality options with WordPress, but you’ll also need to make sure you’re site is secure and running optimally.
All three of these site builders have templates to easily input your own content. When you are ready for a site refresh, it’s usually quite easy to make any necessary changes. The price is usually good for these types of options. WordPress.org software is free and is very flexible and user-friendly for business owners who may not have a developer or coding background. Wix and Squarespace have monthly or annual payment options and sometimes offer deals throughout the year.
If you have a lot of products to sell online, you might want to try Shopify.com or add Woo-commerce onto your WordPress website.
Find a Reliable Website Host Like Kinsta
If you choose an option such as WordPress, you need a reliable hosting provider. There are endless options like Bluehost, Flywheel, SiteGround, or DreamHost but the best WordPress specific hosting provider we have used is Kinsta. When you cost compare the add-ons, services provided and customer service experience, Kinsta is the best value by a mile.
We recommend getting the WordPress-specific hosting – as you will have an easy WordPress installation, tailor-made themes and site-building tools, and customer support for help along the way. If you are working with Wix, or Squarespace, or another website builder that does it all, there’s no need to worry about a website host.
Need Help Building a Website for Your Business?
Contento Interactive Group can help! We can get you up and running with a fast, reliable and beautiful WordPress Website that supports your business goals. Contact us today to get started!