Only 52% of small businesses have websites. That is an astonishing number in 2016. If you want to stay competitive in the modern marketplace, your startup needs a website—an actual website, not a Facebook public profile.
Building a website is easy. You can use a free CMS like WordPress and download a great theme. Designing the site to drive traffic and conversions and to capture leads is the hard part. Here are some tips to help you create an attention-grabbing website for your startup:
Table of Contents
1. Use a Simple and Clean Theme
Your site should be designed to make an impression and entice visitors. The theme you choose should reflect the unique nature of your brand as well. So, don’t download a free theme and risk making your site look like a thousand others. Instead, spend some money on a top-notch theme that offers a sleek and professional look for your site.
The overall layout of your website should be kept minimalistic. A straightforward and clean design will keep your site slim, and will also be easier to navigate. Do not clutter your site with unnecessary components that distract the visitors from the main aspects: your brand and products.
2. Show Products or Services on the Homepage
Obviously, the point of your website is to sell a product. You will not sell this product or service unless it is prominently featured on the home page. Use your images and concise text copy to show off your products on the homepage.
However, don’t show all the products on the home page. Show one or two that are the most important. Don’t go overboard with graphics either. To show visitors the benefits of your products, list them, don’t write paragraphs about them.
3. Make Sure the Site Loads Fast
Site speed directly correlates with conversion rates. A desktop site should load in under 3 seconds, and a mobile site should ideally load in under 5 seconds. If your site takes longer to load, you will lose more than half of your visitors.
Keep the design simple, as mentioned above, to reduce unnecessary bulk that adds to loading time. Keep the source code clean. Compress graphics and remove unwanted plugins to improve page speed.
4. Optimize User Experience
User experience is everything when it comes to e-commerce sites. If your site is uninteresting, hard to navigate or to load very slowly, users will be unimpressed and leave for a competitor’s website. Therefore, try to see your site from a user’s perspective to improve the experience.
If you organize the website well, you can immensely improve the user experience. For example, put CTA buttons above the fold, and keep disclaimers at the bottom. Make sure the fonts you use are easy to read. There should be enough white space around each component, so the site does not look cluttered.
5. The Site Must be Accessible
The people who visit your site will come from all walks of life. Some will have certain disabilities that need addressing, like color blindness. Individuals with disabilities are your customers too. So you need to make your site accessible.
Use disability-friendly colors that everyone can see on your site. Also, do consider people with slow internet connections. Offer a basic HTML version if someone’s connection is too slow to load graphics.
The above are only the tip of the iceberg. However, try to get them right first before you move onto other aspects of SEO. Having a clean, appealing, and easy to navigate site will drive your startup’s conversions like nothing else.
About Carson Derrow
