Best Practices in Small Business Website Design

Most website visitors take two-tenths of a second to decide whether they are going to stay on the website or not. This is a very narrow window of opportunity for small business owners to impress visitors and encourage a sale, which is why the design of a business website is very important. Pop Creative, a Miami web design company, encourages following best practices that will help your business website stand out amidst thousands of others just like yours.

Easy Navigation
Website visitors will immediately feel at home on a site with clear and simple navigation. This comfortable feeling will encourage them to explore the site and get to know the brand. The use of breadcrumb links ensures the customer never gets lost and deepens the sense of trust. Creative use of shapes and lines can make a website appear fresh.

Attractive Image
Website visitors are naturally drawn to large visual elements. When using a large image for the main section of the site make sure it attracts customers’ focus with visual cues. This aids in leading the customer to quickly perform an action and close the sale. This image should be optimized and it should use colors that are safe for the web. You are not limited to using just one type of image. Many types of various design elements can achieve the same effect.

Focused Content
One mistake that companies often make in Internet marketing is not tailoring website content to their target customer base. You should tailor content for the age group and lifestyle of likely visitors and make the message personal. Studies have shown that interest level of many visitors falters after reading just 110 words, so all content should be concise for maximum impact. Click here to learn more.

Popular Posts
If your website has a blog, listing popular posts will keep the content fresh and let visitors know what is being recommended by others. Presenting the most recent post as “featured”, with a different background color and larger font, is an excellent way to grab a visitors’ attention and keep them on the site longer. In addition, fresh content can provide a better search engine ranking.

Social Media
In today’s hyper social online world, your company website must provide avenues for customers to share their brand experience with the world. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest are various ways by which customers look to share their experience. Providing ability to do so from the website can lead to higher site traffic and sales. Adding social media features also allows you to monitor the performance of links and understand how much traffic is generated by search engines as a result of those links being shared. Most of all, social media is deeply ingrained in the culture and customers expect to be able to share content from any website.

Strong Aesthetics
People are attracted to anything that stands out from the crowd. While you should not go too wild with the design, it can be beneficial to step outside the boundary a little and make a personal statement. As long as the design stays consistent, it can go a long way towards making a favorable impression on visitors.

You have finite time to influence your website visitors. Following the best practices listed above can be helpful. These can be the crucial difference between a site that delights its visitors and gets talked about and one that turns people away.