{"id":19366,"date":"2014-03-04T13:37:03","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T19:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crowdspring.wpengine.com\/?p=19366"},"modified":"2023-08-14T23:30:42","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T04:30:42","slug":"small-business-marketing-web-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crowdspring.com\/blog\/small-business-marketing-web-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Business Marketing: Smart Web Design Best Practices and Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"

You are not alone if you don’t have a dedicated website for your startup or small business. But you’re in grave danger of falling further behind your competition.<\/p>\n

You might be slowly building a fan base on Facebook (if you’re buying fans on Facebook by advertising, you’re very likely wasting your money<\/a>), sharing small bits of content on Twitter, and posting images to Pinterest. But without a digital home, you’re scattering your efforts and missing an incredible opportunity to engage and connect with your customers and potential customers through a dedicated website.<\/p>\n

Today, we’ll cover small business web design<\/a> best practices and tips. It’s been a few years since we’ve written on this topic. Many things have changed – we’ll point you to great new resources and examples – but the fundamental best practices of good web design have remained consistent.<\/p>\n

Here are our top 10 tips to help you create an awesome website design:<\/p>\n

1. Keep the design simple, fresh, and unique\"cs-site\"<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Your website reflects your brand. It is the first impression a visitor will form when they visit your site for the first time. If you use an off-the-shelf template and your website looks like thousands of other sites on the Internet, you’ll miss an opportunity to create a unique impression. Why would a potential customer remember your site when she has seen dozens of other sites that look just like yours?<\/p>\n

The homepage is typically the most important page in a small business website because your potential customers will likely see that page first when they visit your website. Moreover, because most small business sites have fewer than a dozen pages, the homepage is an important anchor for your overall site. It must answer several important questions – including who you are and what you do.<\/p>\n

Consider the impression you want to make and the message you want to communicate to your customers and potential customers.<\/p>\n

Make sure you have a professional logo design<\/a>. A logo created from clip art or a template won’t be unique and will create a poor impression. Even worse, it may expose you to substantial legal risk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You should keep one very important fact in mind: users typically read only 28% of the words during an average visit.<\/a> Don’t overload your homepage with a lot of text and images. Consider the most important content and images you want your users to see and get rid of everything else.<\/p>\n

Consider too that your visitors might be visiting from laptops and mobile phones, so try to avoid designing pages for a large monitor size or pages that use more complex features such as flash animation or complex navigation (flash isn’t supported on the iPhone and iPad, for example).<\/p>\n

Tip:\u00a0<\/strong>You can implement modern design trends to make your site look current. For example, flat design has become popular. If you’ve used iOS 7 on an iPhone or iPad, or Windows 8, you’ve seen flat design first-hand. Flat design eliminates gradients and shadowing, making images and fonts smaller and easier to read. Other 2014 design trends<\/a> include blurred backgrounds, simple animations, more scrolling, and bigger fonts. For even more about 2014 design trends, I recommend you read 18 pivotal web design trends for 2014<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can consider parallax scrolling for a more sophisticated look, although this is typically overkill for most small business sites. Parallax scrolling presents the webpage as multiple layers; the background layer scrolls at different speeds than the foreground layer (or may not move at all). Sometimes, animation also helps to enhance the effect. For more on parallax scrolling, including tips and examples, I recommend you read 2014 Will Be Year of Parallax<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advanced Tip 1:<\/strong> Once you design your homepage, you can run very simple tests to figure out which buttons, colors<\/a>, and pieces of content earn the most clicks. After all, marketing is as much a science<\/a> as it is an art. For more about A\/B testing, I recommend you read 7 Dead-Simple A\/B Tests You Should Run on Your Homepage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advanced Tip 2:<\/strong> Particularly on your homepage – but also on any pages where you’re trying to persuade the user to take some action – think about what action you want the user to take and create a prominent call-to-action button. For tips on creative effective calls to action, I suggest you review 10 Techniques For An Effective ‘Call To Action’<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The call to action (CTA) on your homepage is an important element to draw visitors deeper into your site. You should consider a few important factors when you design your CTA, including: (a) location (above the fold – visible on the monitor when the page first loads is typically ideal), (b) make sure the CTA stands out from the other content on your site (notice how the crowdSPRING “Learn more” CTA is pink?), (c) create a link to another page so that your call to action will draw the visitor deeper into your site, (d) create a less-emphasized alternative variation (notice the “take a quick tour” link below crowdSPRING’s primary CTA, (e) and test design, content, and placement.<\/p>\n

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