15 Website Design Tips for Small Businesses

The battle over quality vs quantity has been an age old one. And till date the struggle continues. Websites are the face of companies. The first impression on the user or a visitor is often the last impression, given the scarcity of time these days. Here are a few website design tips for small businesses that can help grab the attention of its users and lead to conversions or make them keep coming back until they are ready to invest in a product or service.

 

Website Design Tips for Beginners

 

1. Readability Quotient with Reader-Friendly Fonts

Often, while choosing the fonts for our website, we go for the ones that look the best or go the best with the website aesthetics. But while doing this, we miss a very crucial point, readability. We do not check if the font is user-friendly in terms of readability. There are websites that guide choosing the right font, like Canva Font Combinations, Fonts In Use, and GoogleFonts.Website font consistency with brand logo helps users with the assurance that they have landed on the right brand page.

 

2. Uniform Color Scheme

Color increases brand recognition by 80% Loyola University, Maryland. Maintaining a universal color scheme consistent with the brand colors Increases the effectiveness of color schemes in keeping brand loyalty intact and keeping brand experience seamless. Keeping landing pages and marketing materials of uniform brand colors helps as well.

Some companies keep the color of their landing page similar to the color of the brand packaging. It helps in keeping the color scheme consistent.

 

3. High-Definition Photos

When users visit the website of a particular brand, they can only see pictures of the product and not the actual product. Under these circumstances, it becomes critical for the product pictures to be of the best quality, preferably high-definition images that can catch the users’ fancy. The right images can make the visitor actually make a purchase.

 

4. Mobile Screen Viewing

Time is of essence in the present market. Most users browse their products on the go. Out of 7.1 million mobile phone users, the probability of checking a website on their mobile phones is approximately 50%. Most applications are customized for mobile viewing these days. But not all small businesses have the budget to create an application for their products right at the beginning. Many users prefer to view web pages on their browsers instead of downloading an application for each product. For purposes like these, the websites and the web pages need optimization for mobile screen viewing. For best results, use large clickable buttons with responsive templates and easily scrollable content to stop any breaks in the flow. 

 

5. Call to Action that Stands Out

A call to action icon reminds users to take the next step in completing their experience on the website, be it buying something, asking for a demo, or call back. The call to action has to be unique and should stand out in a positive way. A beautiful website can only bring potential customers to the website. Make them stop and browse through. But a call to action that is strong and bold can help with the conversion. 

 

6. White Space

What you show, the customer sees. Information and visuals are necessary, but they should not be overwhelming or blinding to the users. So, using the blank or white space is crucial to redirect your user-attention towards visuals or messages that would help them to make decisions. Correct and generous use of white space will help you to divert their attention to critical elements; overcrowding and cluttering the webpage with information would eventually puzzle them and drive them away from conversion.

 

7. Site Navigation

A journey might be difficult, but its navigation shouldn’t. For users, time is crucial. You might have the best possible options waiting for them, but if they cannot find them, the effort of keeping so many options becomes futile. Before launching the website, try navigating through it as an independent user, to make sure you are satisfied. Put yourself in the users’ shoes and navigate through the website. If you find the journey to be smooth, if you find that you can find everything you have to offer, without being lost, then you know you have done it. Otherwise, your users will not only be lost but also leave the website forever. 

 

8. Clutter-free Website

One of the worst possible things you can do to your website is cluttering and overcrowding it with information, visuals and other elements. No one is questioning the relevance of this information. They are important yet not every information or image can be equally crucial to be published on the page. More choices and more distractions, would leave the visitors split for choices and delay the conversion. The motto is to direct the users towards conversion, not confuse them to leave the page. Simpler the page, easier the sales.

 

9. Attention Grabbing Headers

How do you direct your visitors or users towards a particular action? By using the appropriate headings. They have to be catchy. Both in terms of the words as well as design. It helps users to go through the website and find the information they require, hasslefree. Introducing the products and services with the best offers using the right words and header placement can prove lucrative for the business. 

 

10. Design Element Organization

Organizing the design elements on a page may seem very trivial, but holds a lot of weightage. Placement of images and texts helps the seller divert the attention of the users towards the product and towards the call to action icons for successful conversions.  

 

11. Furnishing Feedback and Reviews

Detailed feedback can give an elaborate idea of the product or the service offered. Statistics show that approximately 92% of online purchases depend on reviews, testimonials, and feedback. Thus online businesses that get feedback or reviews from customers can experience approximately 15% - 20% hike in traffic resulting in sales increment. 

 

12. Custom User Experience

An attractive website can pull customers, however crafting the user experience that can provide smooth navigation, easy understanding and lightening fast loading time will make online visitors stick to the website longer. 

Recommendations based on browsing patterns or previous purchases, offers (upsell and cross sell), location-based product choices help businesses make more conversions and align with market demand and supply trajectory. 

 

13. Tactful ‘Call to Action’ Positioning 

Thoughtful ‘buy now’ button placement can showcase optimistic results in sales. Bargain seekers, impulse buyers, loyal customers can be retained and converted at a higher rate if the ‘buy now’ button is placed in a way that it lures the customer to take action before clicking on the ‘x’ button on the top right corner. 

 

14. Accessibility

Easy access to business websites can facilitate user-friendly experience for visitors including specially-abled audiences.

User friendly UI can have following features:

• Distinct color schemes: Distinctive and contrasting color combination for text, background, header, footer, etc. aid partially-sighted individuals to browse through the website.
• Easy Navigation: PWDs have to depend on keyboard and mouse to move through the pages. Repositioning tabs with various options like home page, cart, contact us, etc. would make it easier for them to navigate through the website. 
• Text for Image content:  Each image uploaded on the website can have 'Alt text' which basically function as the title for the image hidden in background that not only helps the people using dictation software to understand the subject of the image (as they cannot see it on the web page) but also helps the google spider (algorithm) to move through the website and move the results higher in order. 
• Video titles: Videos with titles and translations of dialogues promote a comprehensive approach for both domestic and international visitors. 

 

15. Run A/B Tests Involving Target Customers

Creating a beautiful website is the first step to attracting customers, but it is not going to translate to high conversions, just like that. A/B testing can help finetune the website with research-backed changes in color, design, content, placement of content and icons. 

 

Conclusion

Just because a business is small, does not mean it cannot be high converting. Understanding the tricks of conversion through visual aids, placements, content, user behavior can support conversions. There are various website builders with custom templates that can help you build a super website for your small business, to start with.