The importance of website design
The importance of small business web design services is on the rise as more and more customers of small businesses are relying on digital resources to drive their buying decisions.
In spite of this trend, we are still seeing the vast majority of Australian small businesses without a website. With that statistic in mind lets cover a few of the key benefits of utilising small business website design services.
Core website design benefits
A product showcase
A website is a cheap and effective way of showcasing your businesses products to a much wider audience.
A strategically placed website combined with a targeted social media strategy can provide tremendous benefits for a small business.
To help spark some inspiration for your product pages lets take a look at a few absolute stunners.
Bellroy
Bellroy is a wallet brand that was struck with a rather unique challenge.
This business specifically designs thinner leather wallets in order to minimise their bulkiness when they are staked full of cards. U
nfortunately, it can be quite difficult for customers to fully understand the benefits of having a thinner wallet.
To overcome this challenge a nifty feature was designed to provide a visual example of the impacts of having thinner leather.
This website is a fantastic example of a business recognising a customer challenge and solving it with beautiful design.
Ethels Baking
Next up we have a delicious looking product page by Ethels Baking.
When you have a foodie business such as a cafe or bakery its important that you make the most out of your appetising looking imagery.
If you are looking to develop a website for the food industry then this one will serve as a perfect role model.
The product page is incredibly user-friendly and the well-matched colour scheme paints a beautiful picture of the brand.
These two brands are perfect examples of effective product showcases that kill two birds with one stone.
The pages show off what the business has to offer whilst also solving customer challenges in the process through interactive design.
Contactable 24/7
A website allows consumers to have access to your products and contact details around the clock.
We have all been stuck in that situation where we drive into town only to find the business closed.
A website allows consumers to keep up to date with opening and closing times as well as being able to contact the business without the trip into town.
This means that your contact page will need to be clear and effective at capturing your clients.
(Capernicos full contact page)
Capernicos contact page is a great example of all of the fundamentals that are often needed in an effective contact us page.
Make sure that you add the appropriate forms to effectively tease out that much-needed information that you will need from your potential customers.
When it comes to searching for businesses online I have found contact-ability to be crucial.
Nothing annoys customers more than incorrect contact details. A website allows a business to ensure that the online contact details remain accurate.
Credibility
A company website ensures that your small business establishes a degree of credibility within the marketplace.
Online is quite often the first place consumers will look for a business.
Time and time again a consumer will choose a business with a website over a business with a simple yellow page listing.
Websites with an active blog can allow your business to take that sense of street cred one step further.
By developing blog articles that answer popular client questions online businesses can begin to form a rapport with clients prior to the purchasing process.
Blogs are a fantastic way of humanising your brand.
Carefully crafted blog articles allow readers to not only understand why you do what you do but why you do it.
This allows your readers to indulge in the same inspirations and challenges that your business encounters.
Steps to building web design credibility
- Produce quilty content by answering common client questions and by providing informative articles.
- Post regularly in order to ensure that your website is receiving a flow of fresh website content.
- Maintain content relevancy by aligning your content with key events. Public holidays like Christmas may often make for fantastic post themes to celebrate the festive season.
Now there you are armed with the key points for building out a bit of extra web design street cred its important that you build a regular content workflow to make sure that you maintain that website heartbeat.
Creating a website content workflow
Whichever industry you work in you will agree that it is essential to have a time efficient workflow for certain tasks, producing engaging blog content is no different. When I produce online content I often use the following steps.
- Fueling Up: First things first you will need to fuel up on knowledge in order to effectively write your article. It’s often helpful to reach out to your community to discover a few of their key questions and challenges. Once you have selected a few jump online and go to your bookshelf to fuel up on knowledge around the specific topic area.
- SEO Analysis: Once you have fueled up think about the type of words that customers will write into google in order to find your content. Once you have a short list you can litter these throughout your article. When selecting search terms make sure that you put in your local area so you aren’t targeting terms that are much too broad.
- Editing: When I finish up with an article I usually tend to leave it for a day and come back to give the article a quick edit before publishing. This allows me to approach my content with a fresh mind to ensure that my thoughts were on the right track.
- Sharing with the world: Once you have published your article now its time to make sure that it effectively reaches your potential customers. This is where your social media platforms will come in quite handy. Distribute your new content out in a timely manner and with the best hashtags for your industry. If you would like a bit of guidance on which hashtags are currently trending then make sure that you check out Buzzsumo for the latest social trends within your industry.
- Analytics: Now remember you can’t manage what you don’t measure. This is definitely the case when it comes to measuring the success of your articles. Make sure that you are measuring website traffic on a per post basis and that you keep an eye on your search engine rankings for specific keywords.
Remember this process is by no means a one-off process it’s important that once completed your rinse and repeat through this cycle.
Now I know what you think how can I possibly have enough time to run through this process regularly.
I find that once a week is usually a good time frame to create content. Once you develop a consistent content workflow you will find that this process will become far less daunting.
Online Directories
One final thing to keep in mind is just because you haven’t ever added your business details online doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t.
Online business directories and yellow pages like sites store lists of business and they can often get the business details wrong as they aren’t updated. This stresses the importance of having a website showcasing the accurate contact details for your website.
When I think of this point I think of that notorious Australian Ad “Not Happy Jan”.
For those who don’t know poor Jan had forgotten to list the business in the yellow pages and as she was running frantically out the front door, her boss pokes her head out the window and yells “Not Happy Jan”.
A website is as important as a yellow page listing twenty years ago.
One would post in the yellow pages to reach a wider audience and to showcase their contact details the only difference is now that audience has shifted online.
In Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has provided some insight into small business website design packages and perhaps sparked a flare of interest into how to best develop a website for your own business.
If you are interested in building out a site to establish your online launch platform you can reach out to me through my websites contact section.
Let me know how it compares to some of the fantastic contact pages showcased within this article.
