Earlier this year, Entrepreneur.com posted a story reporting that an Ad-ology study found 46 percent of small businesses surveyed said they did not have a website. This news was shocking to me. Even if your business doesn’t offer an online service, your website is how consumers will look for information about your company, whether it’s your hours, location, or details regarding services or products your company specializes in.
For the small business owners out there with websites already, what impression does the site leave on visitors? Every once in a while Erika and I take some time to look over someone’s website. Whether for a client, colleague or friend, it always serves as a reminder to me that organization and details matter. You can have the best marketing strategy in the world, but if your site is confusing or unprofessional, making the sale can become impossible.
Whether you already have a website or are creating yours for the first time, here are a few tips for making sure your site is crisp, clear and consistent:
1. Think about the information you want included on your site. Erika and I tend to agree there are standard pages every site should have, and information should be organized to fit within them. This includes a/n:
- Home Page – Text here should be basic, but should provide compelling information about your company and what you specialize in.
- About Us Page – This page include information about who you are, how you started the company and any other members of your team consumers might want to know more about.
- Products/Services Page – If you have a lot of products and services, use this page as a main overview and link to additional information.
- Contact Us Page – Make sure you include your company phone number and email address. It’s also a good idea to include your physical address and links to any social networking sites you’re on (Twitter, Facebook, etc).
Additional pages we recommend (but that aren’t required) include a/n:
- Client Testimonials Page – Ask a few clients to write a couple of sentences about their experience with your business for your website.
- Press Page – Include information for the press in an easy-to-skim, comprehensive format. Check out www.UltimatePressPicks.com for the type of information to post, and make sure your press contact information is listed (email and phone) in addition to high-resolution images.
- As Seen In Page – This page is a fabulous way to showcase any media coverage you’ve received in the past. Upload the article so anyone that visits your site can check it out.
2. Keep navigation simple. Make sure every page has tabs at the top or on the side that make navigation easy for visitors and allows them to click from the ‘Products/Services’ Page to the ‘Contact Us’ Page without needing to go back to the ‘Home’ Page first.
3. Read the text out loud. After you write the copy for your website, read it out loud, and/or have a friend read it out loud. Not only will this help you catch typos, but it will help keep the flow of the site conversational and easy for visitors to digest.
4. Keep your font consistent. One of my biggest pet peeves is inconsistency. Ultimately, we’re all human so it happens, but an easy way to keep the feel of every page (or even all your marketing materials) the same is to use the same font. Find one you like and use it for everything – your website, your brochures, your business cards, etc.
5. Make sure the text is easy to read. When you pick background and text colors, think about what they will look like on the site. We recommend a light background with a dark text or a dark background with a light text. If the background and text colors are too close to each other, the copy you spent time developing be hard to read and frustrating to your potential customers. Think about the size of your font, too. Although you don’t want it to be huge, you don’t want it to be tiny, either.
Here are a couple of companies that have done a fantastic job with their websites:
If you have any specific website design questions, feel free to contact us by phone
(408-871-0377), email, Twitter or Facebook.