Small Business Owner: 7 Tips Before Building a Website

Building a website might seem like a big hassle for a small business owner especially when you are starting out. You will be wearing a lot of hats like that of a financial planner, email list builder, customer base builder, lead generator, online marketer, brand awareness builder, and whatnot. As a Digital Marketing Specialist in Saudi Arabia, let me tell you that a simple visually pleasing, and highly converting website is a complete solution to all these problems. No, you don’t need to be tech-savvy to do this. In this modern era of AI, we can build a website from scratch in seconds or you can hire a web developer to do so and leave the rest to them.

Whether you are building the website for yourself or hiring a team to do so, here are ten important points to keep in mind while building a website. And trust me you don’t want to miss the sixth point, as that will put your lead generation on autopilot😉.

1. CHOOSING THE RELIABLE DOMAIN AND HOSTING PROVIDER

Before even building a website, the primary goal is to select a proper domain name and a reliable hosting provider. A proper domain name can have keywords that represent your business or you can use domain name generator tools that suggest many domain names for the kind of business you specify to begin with. The next step is to select a reliable hosting provider that gives 24/7 support and security support. You can choose from many hosting providers like Hostinger, Godaddy, Hostgator, and so on. Your website is a gold mine of info, videos, pictures, data, etc., so always make sure to choose a reliable hosting provider that can serve your purpose right.

2. PROPER BRAND GUIDELINES

It is a must for any business small or large to have proper brand guidelines. A brand guideline shows your company colors, fonts, the type of messaging, and the type of audience you are talking to. Having a strong brand message will make you stand out from your competitors. Strong brand guidelines will show your credibility, build a loyal customer base and proper user experience, and keep your brand always on top of the minds of the customers. With the proper brand guidelines, the website becomes more visually appealing and conveys the right message to the right target audience.

3. WEBSITE MUST SPEAK TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Anyone can build a website that speaks to everyone, but that is not our ultimate goal. As I have said before, our website is our lead-generating machine, it should speak to our target audience, solve the customer’s pain points or problems, and feel that the website has a solution to their problems.

For eg, for a lipstick brand, the target audience of the lipstick brand is mostly all women, girls above 16, etc. We can’t create content that speaks to the males right? Similarly, for a beard oil brand, the majority of the customers are males and not women, so the website must address the pain points of the males before using a beard oil.

Always remember that there is always a human at the other end who is viewing your website, so humans buy only when they can feel a change in your product or service. So, understanding the customer psychology and the customer buying behavior and designing a website for the customer should be your number one priority.

4. KEEP YOUR WEBSITE MOBILE OPTIMISED

With the rise in technology and the current AI scenario, the rise of people using smartphones has increased. With over 8 billion people, 6 billion people are smartphone users, and hence is important to keep our website mobile-friendly. Business is where the customer is and building a mobile-optimised website is highly important. According to a recent data study, the average person spends almost 3 hours and 15 minutes on the phone every day. Here are some important factors to make the website mobile-friendly;

Developing a responsive layout includes building a website that fits all the screen sizes for a better user experience. Having a responsive theme will solve the problem of responsive layout and it will make the website load faster. The faster the loading speed better the website user experience and hence search engine visibility also increases. Google ranks websites that are mobile-friendly and have a seamless user experience.

Website speed optimization is a crucial step for highly mobile-optimized websites. The faster your website loads, the more time your customers will spend time on the website, or else they will bounce off. Videos are those that take up most of the space in the website, and the best way is to host the videos on a third-party site and embed them on your site like YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

Compress all the images that you plan to upload on your website to limit the file size and increase the downloading speed. You can use tools like tinypng.com to compress image size.

Avoid pop-ups in the mobile version of your website as they can irritate the customer and the bounce rate can increase. The popups can seem small on mobile devices and often customers feel it difficult to close the popup as the cross may not be seen. Popups look good on desktop devices and are easy to handle.

Proper usage of buttons and large fonts can improve the user experience on mobile devices. Use large buttons and large fonts to make the mobile version user-friendly.

5. PROPER NAVIGATION AND CALL TO ACTION

Let’s say you run advertisements and bring potential customers to your website, and say they leave the website without proper knowledge about how to and where to navigate and take action. As a result of this poor user experience the bounce rates increase, which is not what we want.

Always ensure that your customer gets what they are looking for. A website must serve the purpose of the customer with proper navigation. Make the navigation mobile-friendly and as simple as possible. The usage of a sticky header is recommended as it grabs the attention of the viewer and drives the user to navigate to the appropriate section.

Always use short and concise navigation terms. A call to action is a must in a website for conversion. Make the CTA’s as large as possible and at appropriate places. A lack of these two important tips leads to a bad user experience.

6. ADDING OF SOCIAL PROOF ON THE WEBSITE

Your website is the online address of your business. Social proofs and testimonials are the only way to build customer trust and customer satisfaction. Reviews and testimonials build the brand’s credibility and trust factor. People buy from people only if the benefits sell. So, incorporating user-generated videos is a brilliant way to build trust with the brand. You can add Google reviews or video testimonials from social media platforms. It is always recommended to add the video to another third-party platform and host it on the website as it reduces the user from bouncing off the website and gets converted faster.

7. ENSURE SECURITY LEVELS ON THE WEBSITE

For an offline business, product security can be easily understood by simply communicating with each other. But that’s not the case if you want to buy a product from the online world. Make sure the SSL certificate is installed on your website and proper security and backup measures are guaranteed by the host you choose. Select the right content management systems and always update the plugins and themes to avoid hackers from entering your website.

Implementing all these steps on the website will help you build a highly converting website in no time. As a small business owner, it can be quite overwhelming to do all the tasks by yourself. Always approach a digital marketing specialist for help and delegate tasks accordingly. If you have come this far, I appreciate the time taken to read this blog. In my next blog, I will be talking about how to bring customers to a website, stay tuned for it.