7 Ways to Improve a Small Business Website

As your small business evolves, you need to make sure that your presence on the web follows suit. Don’t worry – it doesn’t mean that you need to completely revamp your website every now and then, just that adding small improvements will over time help you build a great space for creating a strong brand and massaging that resonates with your target audience.

Here are 7 smart and easy ways to instantly improve your website.

1. Provide easier navigation

As a brand, you need to provide a smooth and enjoyable experience on your website. If users are looking for specific information and cannot find it in any of your pages, you’re in for trouble. Good navigation is paramount to your success, so add at least 5 top-level categories like Blog, Contact or About Us and make sure that they all reflect the content included on each sub-page.

2. Tone it down a little

Yes, your website should stand out and be characteristic, but taking this value to an extreme can simply hurt your brand online. Websites with lots of decorative elements, animated gifs, flashy buttons or other colorful and eye-catching details are just bad taste.

In order to stay productive, you should allow your visitors to focus on your products, content and brand. The color scheme of your website should match your logo and be simple. Leaving white spaces will only improve the readability of your content. If you’d like to have a look at the worst website ever published on the web, here it is.

3. Add a call to action

This is the part where you inspire your visitor to take action – join your newsletter, schedule a free demo, download information or purchase a product. What you need to do is take a close look at your website and identify the sections that could benefit from a call-to-action.

A call-to-action can be a targeted message, a visually eye-catching button or something else. The important thing is that you align the purpose of your call-to-action element with your general sales and marketing goals.

4. Write headlines that sell

Reading on the web is usually based on a short attention span. The minute users lay their eyes on the headings in various sections of your website is crucial. If you don’t hold their attention now, they’ll probably soon abandon your website.

Use smart headlines to improve the readability of your content as nobody wants to break through large chunks of text – just make it easy to scan. By including important keywords in your headings, you’ll also make them more searchable, which is always a plus for a small business operation that cannot spend thousands on SEO services.

5. Update meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are important – they’re the first thing users see when searching your website through search engines. Make sure each page has a unique meta description that is full of keywords your target audience considers attractive and clickable.

6. Include consumer testimonials

This is a simple step small businesses take to improve the credibility of their brand, which in turn encourages visitors to make a purchase. You can place consumer testimonials in one page or on various pages of your website – for instance, a bar that appears on the title page and product page.

7. Choose the right visuals

We process visuals way faster than text, so it’s important that you incorporate the right images on your website. Go for professionally-looking, crisp and high-quality pictures. Avoid stock photos that just scream ‘stock photos’. Always think about your target audience and their expectations about visuals.

Improving your small business website doesn’t have to involve considerable costs or time. These small adjustments will have a great impact on user experience on your website and the impressions visitors will have of your brand and products.

7 Ways to Improve a Small Business Website