Menu
If you’re a small business owner, you know the value of a web presence. It helps new customers find you. It keeps current customers connected. It is an important way to improve your small business marketing.
But if you’re planning to design your own website, what are the most important things to consider? First things first: let’s answer the question that’s on many minds.
A website isn’t just a place you can point potential customers to with more information. It’s also the only place online that you have complete control over. Sure, you can have a great presence on social media, but you have less control over your account and how it works. Between policy, term, and service changes (or even legal changes), you might feel like you’re constantly playing catch up.
On your own website? You make all those decisions. You can control your messaging and branding all in one place.
“Even in today’s world of social media, having a dedicated website can play an important role for small businesses,” said Tony Price, Senior Web Designer at EarthLink. “While many people may look you up on Instagram first, having a website link in your bio can provide more useful information that even a well-curated Instagram cannot. A good website with a recognizable domain name can go a long way to providing a sense of trust between a customer and a business that is unfamiliar to them.”
You have full control over choosing your domain name. You can choose which sites link to yours. You also decide how many resources to use. That means fewer surprises for you or your customers.
“Finding the perfect domain name can be a challenge,” Price said. “It’s important that it makes sense and reflects the name of your business. You’ll need to consider its legibility/readability if it’s hard to spell, and most importantly, if it’s available.”
Most website hosts have a domain lookup tool, or you can use the ICANN tool here to check your preferred site name’s availability.
“I would also avoid using dashes and more obscure domain name extensions (TLDs) like .social or .store, unless they work well with your business name,” Price said. “Depending on your type of business, the best options are still .com, .org, and .net, but look over that list to find what’s right for you.”
If you are not a web expert, a template might be a good choice. This is especially true if you have a limited budget. Many businesses don’t know where to start when choosing a content management system.
Some of the most popular options are WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace, so that’s what we’ll focus on here. But many of these tips are applicable to templated site builders in general.
Each option varies in terms of the time and monetary commitments required. Most people can find a few extra hours in their week, but money is often a different story. Websites can range from basically free to tens of thousands of dollars (like a custom-built WordPress site).
WordPress and Squarespace are quite similar. They both offer good templates or themes that cost under $50. You should also think about the domain name. Check for any extra benefits included in your service.
Wix is more of a DIY approach and is much more hands-on. Unfortunately, this can mean that your site ends up functioning poorly if you’re not familiar with site-building. You often have more control over the visuals but that can also be difficult to execute correctly.
“If you’re not familiar with website development, or you don’t have large amounts of time to dedicate to learning, I’d recommend sticking with a more templated option like WordPress or Squarespace,” Price said.
To understand optimizing website readability, you need to think about how your target audience looks at a page. In the English-speaking, left-to-right reading world, most people navigate a site in an F-shaped pattern. If you have international users, you may want to consider how they read. One example of a right-to-left reading language is Arabic.
But let’s focus on the left-to-right reading world. First, they see the logo on the left side, then scan to the right over the website navigation or menu.
Next, they cut back to the left at a diagonal, where they typically find a headline, image, or body text. From here, most readers continue going back left to right.
Many people only read about 80% of your content and don’t reach the far-right side of the screen.
Think about where to put images or forms to attract attention to specific features on your page. If someone can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll typically scroll back to the top and look for a search field. If they can’t find that, most people will leave.
The bottom line is this: website visitors are often impatient. Many people won’t scroll very far on your page. If you have a call to action (such as signing up for a newsletter or buying a product), put it closer to the top.
A good rule of thumb is to place forms less than 600 pixels from the top of the page. That way you’re covering your bases with different screen sizes, different zoom settings, browsers, and more.
Understanding website navigation is crucial when thinking about website layout. Is it better to have a lot of shorter pages? Or a smaller number of long pages?
You’ll find both out there on the web, but before you decide, think about the purpose of your website. What are people coming here to find? What industry are you in?
Writers, journalists, and other long-form storytellers may benefit from fewer pages that are longer. Site visitors are coming to read your work and are willing to put in the time to do so.
If you’re offering a product or service, chances are your customers are looking for something specific. In that case, you should probably choose to create specific pages that break out your offerings. That makes it easier for prospective buyers to find what they’re looking for.
When deciding on your content updates, you should consider what your goal is for your website. If you’re a reporter or blogger, you might be updating your site every day or once a week. Other businesses may update their website less often.
To improve search engine optimization (SEO), regularly update your content. This practice helps boost your website’s visibility and ranking. Fresh content is more appealing to Google, which means more people will have the chance to see it.
You should also remove any old content that’s no longer helpful. Instead of just deleting this content, redirect any traffic from those old pages to newer ones.
Security updates, on the other hand, should be a regular part of your website maintenance routine. Cybersecurity is a constantly evolving space.
The older your security becomes, the more likely you are to experience a hack. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that this won’t happen just because you’re a small business. Simply put, hackers are looking for what else they can get from you, such as banking information.
Not sure where to start with digital security? EarthLink Business offers a variety of security options ranging from Website Security, to full business Managed IT Services.
When a security update becomes available, wait 3-7 days to make sure it’s stable, but then make the update. Waiting too long can put you at a disadvantage and it will take longer when you do make the update.
While coding is a helpful skill to understand, you can build a site without knowing much about HTML or CSS. That’s truly where the templated sites we discussed shine. Because of the tools they provide, you can build out a site and you don’t have to know how to code.
You can create an attractive and functioning website as a beginner. While it may not perform as well as custom built sites, there are tools built to help small businesses improve their website. If those aren’t enough, you might need to hire someone to tweak your site or improve your SEO performance.
Whether you’re hiring someone or doing it yourself, make sure your choices fit. Just because you can do something flashy and unexpected on the page doesn’t mean you should. It could make your page load slower or just create inconsistencies within the page and your brand.
And if you’re hiring someone to create your site, be open-minded about the different ways you can reach your goals. Be willing to go in a direction you didn’t expect and listen to the people who have been doing this for several years.
Creating a user-friendly website is vitally important. A user-friendly, small business website design can improve user engagement, improving your sales. One of the most important things for a user-friendly website is website accessibility.
Web accessibility is important for businesses of any size. It includes core standards to ensure that anyone can successfully use your site, not just those who have perfect vision or great motor functions.
Your site needs to be as accessible as possible. This is because you don’t want to discriminate — or lock interested customers out. If you make this a priority from the beginning it can make your job easier in the future. It’s much easier doing it from the start than trying to retrofit your entire site.
Every designer or website builder should be sure it’s part of their toolkit. If you’re designing your own site, you can take this into your own hands. If you’re hiring someone else to help, be sure to ask how they address accessibility before making a hire.
There are tons of great tools for learning more about web accessibility and checking your site. Some of the website accessibility checkers we recommend are the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool and the W3 Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool.
The ranking system for compliance can feel confusing, too. Level A is the most basic compliance; Level AA is mid-range compliance; and Level AAA is the highest level of compliance. If you have Level AAA, this means the site is fully accessible.
Your website should aim to meet at least the AA level of web content accessibility. A good way to achieve that? Implementing these basic website accessibility standards.
“Accessibility is essential to every website. An accessible website provides the means for anyone to use it, not just those with fully functioning eyes, ears, and hands,” Price said. “For example, many people cannot use a mouse or see every color on the screen, so some measures must be taken to ensure that they have full access to a website’s content (screen readers), navigation (keyboard access), forms (keyboard tabs and proper labels), and that it’s readable/legible (color contrast). Not only is this helpful to ensure all potential customers can use your site, but it’s the right way to approach a product or service.”
First, make sure your site is easy to use for individuals using the keyboard in place of a mouse. This means users can hit the tab key and skip past the navigation to get to the content. Otherwise, they’ll have to wait for the entire navigation menu to be read out loud to them — you can imagine how frustrating that would be, especially for sites with expansive menus.
Make sure any forms on your site are accessible via keyboard, too. If you press the tab key, you should be taken to the next form field without needing to pick up your mouse.
When you post an image on your site, it should include alternative text, also known as alt text. Alt text is helpful for individuals who have vision issues or who are using a screen reader and listening to the page.
But don’t just use the file name as your alt text. It must be helpful.
It should be a short phrase or even a full sentence that describes the image and its purpose. It should also include any text within the graphic.
Context matters, too. If the image is of a specific place or person, such as Central Park or Julie Andrews, use the names instead of “city park” or “actress.”
As a bonus, it can help with search engine optimization (SEO). When Google is crawling your website, it uses the alt text to understand what it’s looking at. So, it’s possible that someone could find it via an image search. It’s a win-win for you and your customers.
The exception to this rule is that any purely decorative images don’t need alt-text. Same goes for anything that is textually represented nearby. When in doubt, adding helpful alt text won’t hurt. But you can also use this decision tree from Harvey Mudd College.
Just like books have titles and chapter titles, so does your online content. And you must ensure it’s written and coded in a sensible way to a screen reader.
That means you need to keep everything in the correct order.
Most templated websites will have options for things like Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and normal text. You’ll want to keep things in that order.
For example, Heading 1 is probably the title of your post or web page. Then, Heading 2 is a subheading. Heading 3 is a sub-subheading, and so forth.
You should never skip from an H1 to an H3, or have an H2 followed by an H1, and so on. These should be kept in the same order.
If that sounds confusing, you can think of it like this:
The order above is acceptable: An H2 follows an H1 and an H3 follows the H2 (multiple headlines of the same level can follow each other, like three consecutive H2s).
This order above is incorrect: an H1 should not follow an H3 (skipping an H2); an H4 should not come after an H1 (skipping any number of H2s and H3s).
While the styling can and will vary, generally the visual representation will always be your best indicator of hierarchy.
Did you know that roughly 8% of males and 0.5% of females are colorblind? Using distinct colors will help ensure everyone can use your site as planned. AAA compliance for color contrast means there is no difficulty reading and distinguishing between the background and text. This is essentially black text on a white background.
When considering what to use, think of the color wheel. You might use adjacent colors like red and orange in a design. But you wouldn’t want to use them for text because there isn’t enough contrast.
Similarly, white text on a yellow background is ineffective. But dark gray or black text on a yellow background would work, and so would white text on a dark blue background. (Pro tip: this goes for any buttons on your website too, such as submitting a form or entering an email address.)
Color contrast makes your site easier to read for people with vision problems. It also helps everyone else. This means visitors are more likely to stay on your site or click a button.
Forms are an essential part of every website, from contact pages to job applications to ecommerce checkouts. For accessibility, the most important — and most often misused — part of the form is the label.
Labels usually show up above or to the left of fields like first name, last name, street address, and credit card number. Their purpose is to explain what should be entered in that field.
This is for both sighted users and those with low or no vision who use a screen reader. They are important for helping visitors fill out the form correctly. However, people often ignore them and focus on the less useful placeholder text.
Placeholder text is the text you see within a form field that provides context, such as an example of the kind of information a field is looking for. The problem is that placeholder text is completely ignored by screen readers and not read out loud. They are strictly for visual purposes.
Creating a website for your small business can seem overwhelming when you first start. But with these tips in mind, we hope that you find it a little bit easier. If you need more help, we offer a variety of digital marketing and website services tailor-made for your small business.
980 Hammond Drive, Ste 400
Atlanta, GA 30328
