Are you a small business owner looking to enhance your website’s marketing potential? Well, you have come to the right place! In this article, we are going to discuss the importance of a good website design that can give your small business a great impression on your customers, and ultimately boost your branding and promotion. 

Today, it’s no longer practical to run a small business, even a brick-and-mortar one, without investing in your online presence. Why? Simply because from product research to location and operating hours, modern consumers rely on the internet for everything about their purchases. This is why even the simplest yet well-designed website can give you a huge leverage and easily keep you ahead of the competition. Pair a nicely-designed website with quality products and customer service; your site can open up new markets, reach a wider audience and expand your business without breaking the bank. 

Modern website design software has developed to be easy and accessible for any small business owner to use to their advantage. This means, you don’t need to know coding to create an attractive and functional site. However, regardless of what program you use, the goal is to  give your website a professional and credible look, to make it easy to find and explore, and put your company in the best possible light. 

Whether it's your website, logo, or marketing materials, design plays an important role in branding and promoting your small business.

First Impression Lasts!

Your small business’ website and logo design should communicate a message and is responsible for making a good first impression. Whether your business knows what it’s doing or not, your brand’s website gets the message across to potential customers making website design such  a crucial marketing tool. It highlights the need to invest time and resources into a well-built homepage so it doesn’t appear you’ve settled for mediocre design, content and interface which can easily translate to mediocre products and services.

With this, it’s important to keep in mind that when creating a website, designers should consider visual appeal, breezy navigation and strategies for  search engine optimization.

Why does website design matter?

Did you know that a person’s eyes take 2.6 seconds to focus on a specific element of a webpage when it loads? Yes! Not even 3 seconds on average, according to a study from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. This means, it takes about this much time for a potential customer to form an opinion about your small business based on what they’ve seen. This means what appeals to them visually directly influences their purchasing decision.

What to consider when designing a website?

Here are a few things you should consider when creating your website:

Validity

People develop feelings and associate certain emotions with your brand based on the experiences that they have had with you. These experiences could occur within your store’s premises, engaging with your staff, and in the online world, their experience as they navigate around your website. 

With this thought, a well-designed logo and website encourage confidence because it looks professional and more credible. It inspires a sense of trust consumers would like to connect with to get their wants and needs. If your small business focuses on creating a clean and functional design that is easy to use, that is a direct indicator of the kind of experience they are likely to have when they avail of your products.

First impression

Good design helps to convey your message, draws weight to slash through the marketing conversation, and organizes information effectively for the specific market you’re trying to reach. Effective design and content work hand in hand to legibly communicate the value of your business and, most importantly, in leaving a lasting impression.

SEO strategy

The content on your website should utilize keywords you want to rank for to achieve an effective SEO strategy. This is an essential factor to consider when curating quality content on your website to give it more leverage in search engines. In fact, before creating a website, it’s best to conduct keyword research and organize your content such that each page caters to a single long-tail keyword.

Your small business should also put a lot of focus on intangible aspects of your website – such as how quickly it loads and how well formatted it is for mobile viewing. These are all part of search engine optimization.

Consistency

Consistency is a primary aspect to observe to create a lasting, more professional impression of your small business design and aesthetics. Building a strong, recognizable, and original brand identity is vital to the success of your small business’s online presence. It’s helpful to link all your accounts together and form a community for your team and audience. This brand identity can be present and should stay consistent throughout all your logo, website, layout, packaging, social media, and graphics. 

Simplicity

Your landing page should set your brand's style and tone of voice and provide vital information to make it easy for your audience to comprehend what products or services your business offers.

It helps to be aware of the most essential information your users and customers can take away from that page, making it extremely easy to find and digest.

After which, you can identify the most important actions you’d need users to take on that page and make it evident and easily accessible. For example, you can add a purchase button on the homepage as a call to action. Whatever your call to action, it should directly engage your audience with your services or products. 

Your website design should prioritize simplicity over complicated strategy, with explicit and concise information, a clear tone, and a look and feel that is true to your business’s brand.

Visual appeal

You might have a great story to tell, but it’s a shame if no one would like to read about it on your About Us page or engage with you on your social media posts if you don’t directly entertain your audience. How do you accomplish this?

The answer is strong visuals - strong and prominent visuals usually do the trick. An eye-catching image can quickly, concisely, and memorably convey even complex messages. This is the same drive for fast consumption that has transformed the internet from its text-centric roots into an image- and today, an increasingly video-centric platform.

Great visuals will set your brand apart from others. Your imagery should be relevant to your brand and engage your target audience. A foolproof way is to keep things straightforward.

You may also consider supporting local artists and designers to create unique, innovative designs.

Competition

Monitoring your competitors’ websites can help you determine trending and up-to-date design strategies. If you have an outdated website, you will give customers the impression that you have an inactive online presence or aren’t interested in creating more convenient options for them. Your competition, especially with a long-running digital presence, will understand what attracts a similar target audience well.

Exploring industry websites will also add to your site’s uniqueness. You can also use them as a filter to determine which elements or color schemes work.

Readability and usability

The best advice experts give about designing a website is to make it easy to navigate and not overwhelm visitors with too many options.

The fewer options you offer per page, the easier it will be for visitors to select, decide and convert into customers. Having just one element may be too few and lack enough detail to drive your reader to take action. But listing three points at once is enough to create a balance and infuse interest.

Try shortening your bulleted lists or designing a less complicated, three-tiered pricing model.

Mobile viewing

Modern customers browse the internet using their smartphones. With a limited screen view, it's crucial to ensure that visitors can easily navigate your site and find the information they need, even with just their smartphones. Like how it functions on a web browser, your website should perform well on mobile devices.

 

Create A Compelling, Unique Website Design For Your Small Business

Your website’s appearance is the first impact that will leave a mark on your customers and give them an overall impression of your business. This impression will determine their purchasing decisions that directly impact your business sales and marketing. Website design and the kind of content you produce on your website will offer value and meaning to your business. Also, you have to ensure that your website design is there to highlight your content, not the other way around. Your design plan should not overshadow your actual product offerings. 

Think about the qualities that are unique to your small business and that could attractively represent your brand. Then let those qualities drive your logo and website to your social media  feed and even your storefront, packaging, and customer service.