For many small business owners, building a website is necessary, but they don’t know where to start. Procrastination kicks in and before you know it, two years have gone by, and you are still emailing your clients as jdoe@yahoo.com. While this might be fine early on, a website establishes credibility for your business. Instead of a generic address, your email address will be you@yourdomain.com which sends your readers a message that your company is the real deal. Your website is a view into what your business is all about, and it helps you showcase what you offer.
Many people make the mistake of stuffing way too much information into the website in small print. Studies show that readers are attracted to clean pages with lots of white space and a logical layout.
For your content pages– pages about the service or product you sell – write some relevant information that will answer questions that your readers might have. If you find one page is getting too long, then consider breaking that up into multiple pages. Include a few relevant images to splash some color onto your page.
Finally, include a blog page where you simply “post” an article on a regular basis. Write an article relevant to your business every other Friday and post that online. These posts can be short and also more opinionated than your regular pages. Perhaps you write a review of something you sell, or post a testimonial and tell about how your company met someone’s need. Blog content keeps your site current and also shows Google and other search engines that new activity is occurring on your site regularly, and that’s good for your rankings.
Building a user-friendly website is really quite fun if you just keep it simple. Naturally you enjoy what you do for a living, or you wouldn’t be doing it. Let some of your passion for your business show on your blog page, and get those emails coming through to you via your own website domain so you can stop being joeschmo@nowhere.com and begin to establish credibility for your business.