Amazing Strategies For A Great Business Website

There are 3 things I think are a great thing to do for most small business websites. Some study on these things will be released by us in the coming months but for now here are 3 amazing techniques for making every small business website an effective one.

1. The Heading - Stop Them Skimming And Start Them Reading

If possible please try to avoid annoying and monotonous titles. You will never see a newspaper article with a monotonous heading. Journalists take it pretty seriously; they know how important the headline is. Never ignore having a great heading.

Usually website owners think that a heading that reads 'Welcome [Business Name Goes Here]' will be sufficient. We really encourage small business owners to have a heading that engages people right from the beginning. Ask a question or state what makes you unique, or say something surprising or interesting.

You'll need to be a little ingenious while also thinking about the time period for which this title can last and be helpful. See our main site for an example http://www.webcircle.com.au/. Our heading (at the time of writing) is “Web Circle is a progressive agency with a relentless drive to discover and implement what works on the web. But what does work?” It informs people what we do, it gives a clue to our point of difference and it asks a query to engage the visitor and draw them towards the main content in the website - all in just 2 sentences - stop them skimming and start them reading and that way people may stay in your site long enough to actually learn what you do and find out that you may be an apt choice for whatever they are looking out for.

2. The welcome message -

There are several ways for doing this. You may not have a lengthy welcome message - for instance in our case we have a heading that includes the basics of the welcome message and then we have the about us section further down. You may consider it’s appropriate to have a more in depth welcome message. If you do, don't forget to tell people the essentials of what you do, maybe where you are located but do not stop there. There are 2 other things you have to incorporate:

1) What makes you different
2) A call to action

Firstly what makes you different - your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), competitive benefit or several other consultant buzzwords. It’s important to say exactly what you do - i.e. you sell widgets but it’s as vital perhaps a lot more important to talk about how you are different in ways that will engage prospective viewers. Most people who look around for widget selling companies will land on your site as a result. The people would know completely well that you sell Widgets. But what is it about your business that will keep them on your website for a long time and think ‘yeah these guys sound really good’. This could be done in different ways, you will perhaps know from your clients or from the factors you started out your business in the first place exactly what you do really well and why your business is a success. This is exactly what you need in here. Just stating how you are different, ideally, in a way that will draw in the people you are trying to target is the key. Some ways could be to discuss your history, your people, personal stories, everything that adds credibility in the eyes of your customers, any accomplishments, testimonials and anything that adds to your point of difference and builds the dependability of your business.

We (http://www.webcircle.com.au/) make use of the words ‘what actually works on the web’. We tend to talk about "building websites that work" only because we are specialists in knowing what works. We do not just build websites.

Secondly, a call to action is imperative. What do you want them to do? Be sure to guide the visitor as to where they have to go next. It may be be to contact you, to download something, to buy something. Whatever it is- But Make It Clear. The last thing you want is an attracted visitor coming to a different site because they have given up trying to work out how they can take the next step. I’ve done it plenty of times, there is only so much patience a person can have so make it easy.

3. Personalisation

Personalisation is extreamly vital for small business. When you are thinking on the lines of what makes your business different a lot of small businesses will find that it is you that make the business one of a kind. It is the personal relationship they have with their clients. It is their story, their history, their unique blend of skills. That’s why we emphasize on personalising as much as possible for most small business sites.

This is very effective particularly for the types of businesses that have a lot of in-person contact with their customers. People generally respond a lot better to a personal welcome message with images of real people. People love stories - they love success stories and small businesses love working with other small businesses.

We recently made few changes to our homepage, I put my photo on the homepage and changed the ‘about us’ section to ‘The web circle story’. I also wrote half of the story on the homepage, despite that I looked at the stats after a few weeks and lots more people had visited the page and people were spending almost 3 times as long as the page - implying they were actually reading it not just clicking on it and skimming it and passing it off as another ‘about us’ page.

And that’s for my monotonous web design business! Imagine if my story was in fact interesting! This is an effortless method for separating yourself from other competitors since the majority people don’t achieve it - indeed a group of small businesses cautiously make an effort to present themselves look bigger than they really are no matter what the reason might be.

Bringing it completely as one

We just designed a site for Act2 Solutions who sell Actuarial Certificates. Read this post for a number of info on the site. It includes an engaging heading that states just what they do (and how they are unique - they are reasonable), a welcome email that focuses on how they are different, personalisation by using pictures of Andy and a call to action telling people to download the forms.

Do feel free to put up any comments or examples of websites you have also your experiences among some of these thoughts.

AWebsiteDesigner.com.au is a company specialising in small business websites. We have been established for 5 years. A Website Designer website which was previously the main website for another web design company. Since then the website has been a leading blog and resource for Australian small business owners. Visit http://awebsitedesigner.com.au to learn more about web design.