Modern day success usually has something to do with going digital. And small businesses no matter their domain and field of expertise are no exception to this new rule. The market is simply too competitive and in order to grow, you will have to go digital. There is a tremendous difference in what creating a digital presence can do for your sales as well as attracting new clients. Companies that do not create a strong online identity are almost entirely under the radar. The reasons why many business owners are reluctant about showing up in the digital world is that it seems far too complicated than it actually is. Most smaller businesses skyrocket by simply building a website that represents the business in a clear and concise way. This shouldn’t be too complicated, considering the various benefits that it brings. Here are five quick steps for building your first website for your small business.
Choose a unique website address
Your website address is one of the key elements that determine how and what kind of visitors you will attract. This serves as a short intro to your business as this is the first thing that the visitors will see. Choosing a well-defined website address also makes a big impact from a technical standpoint since it factors in the way that the search engine ranks keywords and outputs search results. If you get a good domain name, you will be able to significantly boost your outreach and grow your business with ease. A good example would be if you own a private tutoring business you could go for school-name.com. This is simple enough for your potential clients to get the right message and it ranks your services for the search engine in the appropriate niche.
Consider cybersecurity
Since digital capabilities are becoming more and more complex and packed with personal information it is vitally important to stay secure online. Luckily, cybersecurity is on the rise and one of the best ways to do it is by getting an SSL certificate, which plays a huge role in making your website secure for your clients. This is important because your website’s visitors will leave personal information, especially when ordering your products. Even worse, they could be leaving their credit card details which could greatly compromise them if your website is not secured and falls prey to a cyberattack. Furthermore, by getting certified you signal to your clients and also new potential visitors that your website is secure, with the security tag HTTPS which is now integrated into your web address. This will automatically boost your traffic since Google ranks secure pages much higher than those which are not certified.
Pay attention to the design and user experience
One of the emerging trends is the extra attention given to creating a good user experience (UX) and a nice-looking and accessible user interface design (UI). The way people interact with digital products, including your website, is given more and more priority nowadays. Since, it has been shown that good UX/UI can significantly boost your client retention, SEO ranking, and digital identity and it provides an overall easier way for your customers to interact with your business which might help them understand your brand better. Some of the UX principles include the layout and the wireframing of your website, information hierarchy, choosing an attractive and symbolic color palette, choosing the right typography to fit your company’s image as well as creating a good call to action (CTA). A good-looking, functional website that is user-oriented will go a long way towards establishing your business as a trusted and premium brand.
Benchmark
In order to understand what you are supposed to put on your website, it is always a good idea to see what the websites in a similar niche are doing. This is a great way to explore the functionality and features that they offer for similar services or products. This is not to say that you should directly copy another business’s website, but there are useful tricks that you could learn from your competitors which can be adapted to suit your client base.
Pay attention to SEO
SEO principles are what drives the internet traffic and ranking of your website from a technical point of view. Some of the things to consider are; creating relevant content that fits your niche, optimizing the visuals of the page and images that it uses, linking your social media accounts, creating a blog that will store valuable keywords in titles and posts, and building links from other websites that lead to your site.
Staying digitally relevant is by far the best decision you could make for your small business. It comes packed with many amazing benefits and the increased traffic for both new and current clients is destined to soar. It is in fact quite simple and all it takes is learning just a few simple steps. You can start by choosing a simple website address that resonates with your clients in the best way possible and ranks your higher. Cybersecurity is also crucial if you want to be regarded as a trustworthy business. User experience and interface design play a big role in the way your clients interact with your page. Lastly, consider what others are doing and optimize your SEO.
