Website Design for Small Business: Must-Read Guide for Every Business Owner

Website design for small business is nothing of a big deal! Create a website and manage it is simple with a few mouse clicks. And you don't need a website to guarantee a successful business. If that’s what you’re thinking about website design for small business, we have to say you’re making a huge mistake. According to Telstra Report 2020, 1 in 5 customers will stop considering buying from a small brand if they see that the brand doesn’t have a website. 

Since we’re living, breathing, and consuming the digital world every day, a website is the simplest gateway to introduce yourself to potential customers. A well designed and optimized website will act like your virtual office that convinces, hook and attract customers for you. In this article, we’ll take you through everything you should know about website design for small business.

1. Why does website design matter to small businesses?

Websites have long been, and will always are a vital and powerful marketing tool for any brand if they’re aiming for success. Just think of it as your company’s virtual office. Now, would you let it become a rundown place, poorly designed or looking familiar to someone else’s? Or would you want to leave a touch of your identities, seamless experience, and awe to your visitors? By this stage, we believe that you have just got the right mindset to start thinking about website design e-commerce. But why is website design for small businesses important? 

• Make users memorize you: Do you know that you only have 1/10 of a second to impress your users? People make judgements of a website as fast as what they would do to a human. So in such a short amount of times, you shall want to try your best before they make up their mind on whether to stay or not. And that goal can only be achieved with a well-designed interface. Before your users actually click into any content, all they see is the look and feel of your website. It also means you have to be consistent with your logo, website design, packaging, and voices for a fulfilling experience. And has your website design been strong enough to make potential customers remember? 
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• The simplest way of credibility: Keep in mind that customers are truly aware of online scams. So your website will represent your brand to tell the world that you are legit and trustworthy. Everything you do here is to gain trust, soothe your customers' worries and make sales. Keep your design simple, straight to the point and less flashy. Customers will trust companies with clear and convenient designs so much more than one with sophisticated graphics.
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• Keep you up in SEO ranks: When it comes to website design for small business, we must stress that it affects your SEO efforts. Keep track of your code and make sure they’re SEO friendly will save you a lot of money in SEO, thus ensuring people will see your web instead of your rivals’.
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• Stay competitive: This is not what a small business owner would do, but we recommend checking your competitor’s website regularly. Make sure that once they begin to level up their visual, contents, or loading speed, you’ll have to do and better yours as well. It will help you stay competitive and trustworthy all the time.
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• Consistency is vital: Website design and hosting are a part of your branding, and it’s important to keep them consistent as much as possible. Make sure you’re using the right and same tone, mood, layout, styles throughout your website and other platforms of media. 

2. How to start with website design for small business

Having a small business doesn’t mean you’ll always have spare budgets for certain tasks. And even if you’re having enough money, it wouldn’t guarantee that you’ll know what to do, especially with website design and hosting. Before you click on some website design and development company’s ad, let us prepare you with our how-to’s. 

Step 1: Choose your platform.

When selecting the platform to settle your website, you should find ones that are either easy to use and have good SEO support. If you have a freelance or website design company ready to help, then WordPress would be great to begin with. 

However, if you’re running short in budget, website builders like Wix or Squarespace could be really helpful. Despite some cons, this is still a great option for young entrepreneurs to kickstart their business with a professional look. 

Step 2: Domain name. 

Your domain should always stick closely to your brand name. In this way, users won’t be confused when they click on your webpage and would be less likely to worry about being scammed. When choosing a domain name, remember to keep it short and relevant to your business.

Step 3: Hosting.

Hosting is a place where all your files are stored. Choosing the right hosting would mean more traffic, faster loading speed, and better security. Along with website design for small business, you should also level up your website with decent hosting. This will ensure that your customers would have a smoother experience later on. 

Step 4: Website design.

Now it’s true when you begin to shape your own website, giving it a breath of your identity, tone & mood. With website design, you can either go for a website design company and have them done a custom design for you. Or you could just choose among a ton of templates to see what fits yours. Each of these choices has their own pros and cons, and it all depends on your budget, thus expectation. We normally would recommend using templates for small businesses who want to start with website design e-commerce. However, if you want to invest more to have a completely unique design, it’s up to you. 

Step 5: Creating content. 

Before filling up the content in your webpage, you’ll need to determine the sitemap (aka structure) for your website. From this, you’ll have a rough vision of how many pages your website needs, and what you would do on each of these pages. 

Most websites will need these pages: Home – About – Product/Services – Contact – Blog. Figure out what suits you and begin building your website content based on this sitemap. 

Step 6: SEO optimize.

At this step, it’s hard for most business owners to do it on their own. So we highly recommend hiring a website design and development company to help you out. SEO shall be optimized to meet the need for speed, adding keywords to attract search and help to turn all clicks into conversion. In other words, SEO is the extra step to make sure people will see and click on your website. Without it, your website couldn’t benefit you much.

Step 7: Now you can publish.

Before clicking that publish button, you must preview every single page. First, it’s to make sure you’re going in a consistent and right direction. Next is to see how your webpage would adapt to different devices. Then is to make sure the speed is just right, you can always upgrade it later, but a decent speed at first click is vital. Last but not least is checking your content to avoid any mistakes. And you’re now good to go, publish your website and let the world know about it! 

After finishing this whole process, you still have to keep track of the web’s traffic and performance. Thus, to take much less time and effort, you can always trust a website design and development company to do it all for you. 

4. Five essential components of website design for small business 

After knowing the whole process of creating a website, now we come to components that make your web page pop. Trust us, this will be extremely useful when you’re planning for your new website. Let Socialectric show you.

Responsive design: 

A confusing, unprofessional and poorly adapted website design will cause more harm than you could think of. Not only it will give you a low ranking, but also affects your conversion. An all-device-friendly design will keep you away from these problems. 

Call to action buttons: 

Users normally won’t understand what they should do on your website if you don’t have obvious guiding buttons. These call-to-action buttons will eventually guide your customers to making a conversion. It could be Buy Now – Learn More – Contact Us,… But the message must be clear, easy to see, and tempting. 

About Us: 

We’ve seen many small businesses looking down on this page. Don’t just throw a bunch of text in and call it branding. Be ready to tell your brand story, what drives you, how do you start. Let people know who they’re interacting with, and gain their trust from your real stories. Make the most of the About Us page, it’s where you can inspire and hook your customers up with your authentic vibe. 

Be visible when it comes to contact: 

Allow your customers to know how and where they can reach you. This is where they can make sure that your business is legit, and let them know if there are any problems, you’re ready to connect. On this contact page, show your Brand name – address – Contact numbers – Email, and social media handles. These are must-have info for every business, no matter you’re selling products, services, or anything. 

Helpful and relevant blog: 

A blog is useful for businesses who are trying to reach more customers. It strengthens your presence, keeps your customers engaged, and provides you a wider exposure to online audiences. You should start investing in creating original content, along with a helpful blog about your business. It’s best to find a good content strategy and stick to it and keep attracting potential customers. We also recommend making a comment section so that your customers know that they are heard. Be ready to answer their questions, feedback, and requirements from anywhere, and that’s how you keep your audience's interest. 

These are our first 5 essential components for a good and well-organized website. When working on your web, don’t forget to include those for a better user experience and help your brand grow. Small businesses often lack attention to these details, so if you’ve known about it, that would keep you ahead of your competitors. 

5. Website design company that you’re looking for

Why looking anywhere further once you’ve already had the best choice when it comes to website design for small business? Socialectric is a Saigon-based Digital Agency that aims for the perfect experience in the digital world. We’re specialized in building websites and optimize digital presence for local and global businesses. 

Here at Socialectric, we provide well-tailored solutions for your websites, so that you can focus on your professions. You can count on us in every part of the whole project, from research, plan to design and develop your website. 

Most of our customers are entrepreneurs and growing brands, so we deeply understand your needs as well as difficulties. We believed that your presence online is more than just a website that makes the conversion. But it’s about telling and inspiring your stories to potential customers. In that way, your journey and connection to each of every customer are much more sacred and meaningful. 

Come and have a look at our previous projects. From challenges to solutions for a client is not a simple journey, but Socialectric adores every moment of it. We know what you’re looking for, how to make it simpler for you on a budget, and hope to help you innovate the market in the best way. Contact us now, we’re ready to serve.