Finally, mobile-friendly makes for a better user experience. And ultimately, it’s all about the user. They’re the ones opening their wallets to keep your business afloat. So what’s a non-designer to do? First, see if your site is considered mobile-friendly by Google with their mobile-friendly test. It’s also a good idea to check it yourself by going to your site on your phone. If it doesn’t score well or look good, you have some work to do. Mobile-friendly test Yay, we’re mobile-friendly! Besides hiring a designer, your best bet is to change your site’s template. This is the easiest and most affordable way to make your site mobile-friendly and responsive.
Here are some mobile-friendly templates for popular site builders: Mobile-friendly WordPress templates Mobile-friendly Shopify templates Mobile-friendly BigCommerce templates Mobile-friendly Magento templates Template Monster for multiple platforms Fast Website Load Speed According to surveys done by Akamai and Gomez.com, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded in 3 seconds! That doesn’t give you much wiggle room. But if you’re still not convinced, get this: Roughly 79% of online shoppers who have trouble with website performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again, and around 44% of them would tell a friend if they had a poor experience shopping online. In other words, if your site speed sucks, you lose. Big Time. So how do you ensure a fast load speed? Try this: Like the mobile-friendly test, Google also has a page speed test. However, some believe it’s not very accurate, so it can’t hurt to also try Pingdom and GT Metrix.
All three will give you an idea of what’s hurting your load speeds, with suggestions to improve. Page speed test As you can see, there are a lot of ways to improve your site load speed, like browser caching and making above-the-fold content load first (the content you see without scrolling down the page). However, one of the easiest ways is optimizing and compressing your images. As I said in the visual section, images take up a lot of bandwidth. Which is why it’s important to only use images that are highly valuable. You can use a tool like Gimp to compress your images for free. (Here is a tutorial to do just that.) Pre- and post-Gimp image file sizes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO means optimizing your site to show up in search engines like Google. It’s the bread and butter of what makes a good website.
Done right, it can drive thousands in traffic to your site every month without any extra effort. Done poorly, not a soul will find you on Google. According to Jon Rognerud, there are four steps to SEO. Here are some of Jon’s actionable takeaways: Know who you’re targeting and perform keyword research. Optimize your site pages with on-page SEO targeting those keywords. Create a strong sitemap for Google and Bing to index your site. This is highly simplified and there are a lot of other SEO factors, but these three tactics will get you well on your way to showing up in search results. This next piece of web design advice helps with both SEO and building trust with your visitors. Securing Your Site with SSL Encryption
HelpYou’ve probably seen the little green lock in your address bar next to a website. SSL Encryption This is called SSL encryption. Google gives encrypted sites a small SEO boost. But perhaps more important than that is the trust factor it gives your visitors. This is especially true if you sell anything on your website. People want to know their information is safe before they open their wallet. Migrating to SSL is a delicate process. Here’s a guide to migrate your site to SSL without hurting your search rankings. Site Architecture & Navigation Remember design principle #4: Have a clear site navigation. Navigation is important for two main reasons: Better SEO (because it makes it easier for Google to index your site). Better usability (because it’s easier for visitors to find their way around). Remember to use the “three click rule”: Every page on your site should be within three clicks of any other page on your site. To help you with this, consider mapping out your website. You can do it with a tool like Slickplan or just use pen and paper. They look like this:
Site Architecture Map Example Creating a physical map helps you see where you’re missing out on linking pages together, and keeps things organized. You should also keep your most important calls-to-action at the top of the page. This is where the most people see, so it’s a great place for a “shop now” button, a “contact us” tab, or a “learn more” button. Website Tools (AKA “Useful Stuff to Make Your Website Better”) Website tools are mentioned last because they can’t fix a broken website, but they can enhance an already good website. Here are a few of our favorite tools: Live Chat live-chat-widget Live chat is an essential part of a business website. Or at least, we like to think it is. We do offer it as a service, after all. 😊
But in all seriousness, live chat can help you provide excellent customer service, close customers who are on the edge and learn more about your target market. In fact, in this post, we detail how to use live chat to survey your customers so you can improve your marketing. You can also receive notifications when visitors arrive on your site even before a chat conversation! Conversio Cart Abandonment Recovery Cart Abandonment Recovery Email If we wrote “What makes a good eCommerce website”, Conversio would top our list. It automatically sends emails like the one above to try to recover abandoned carts. (Side Note: The advice in this article does apply to eCommerce sites as well. So if you have an online shop, rest assured you’re not wasting your time by reading this.)
Anyway, with 69% of people abandoning their carts on average, you’ll be taking full advantage of this tool. They also offer services like newsletter sending, product recommendations, and a stronger site search bar. MailChimp Email Opt-in Forms Have you ever seen an in line opt-in form like the one below, and wondered how to get one on your site? Free Bonus: Enter your email to get a free website redesign checklist, along with a PDF version of this post. Enter your email address SEND ME THE CHECKLIST Well, we use MailChimp and a premium MailChimp WordPress plugin to do it. Here’s a 60-second explainer video:
Wix: Wix is very similar to Squarespace, but it is a bit more user-friendly. It offers a monthly, but not annual, subscription and includes similar features. Wix is also a drag-and-drop builder—you can freely drag and drop elements anywhere on the page; in comparison, Squarespace is more structured in where you can drag and drop on the page. The learning curve to using Wix is even shorter than Squarespace, so if you need to publish a site quickly, this may be your best option. Wix has a lot more templates than Squarespace to choose from, but once you choose a template, you must stick with it or be forced to completely rebuild your site. With Squarespace, you can change your template anytime without having to rebuild the entire site. Choose a good e-commerce platform If you plan on selling goods and/or services through your website, you will need the right technology to do so. (If you do not currently sell anything, you may want to consider doing so since e-commerce could potentially increase your profits.) If you decide to allow users to financially transact with you online, you will need to choose the right platform for your business model. Here are some popular small business e-commerce platforms:
WooCommerce: WooCommerce is one of the world’s most popular e-commerce platforms—it can turn your WordPress website into an online store. Like WordPress, there are many plugins available, and it attaches to WordPress, which makes it extremely flexible. There are many free and premium themes pre-built for WooCommerce. (As a rule, it is better to use a premium theme from a reputable developer because it will offer better security and support.) If you are not tech-savvy, you will most likely need a WordPress developer to help you set it up and use it. WooCommerce also offers a very high amount of capabilities and scalability that your small business might need. Shopify: Shopify is a cloud based e-commerce platform that allows you to create and customize an online store, and to manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping. It is not a WordPress extension like WooCommerce—it is a standalone platform that is hosted on the Shopify server—so if you have a main website, your e-commerce site would technically be separate from that. You can link to your Shopify account from your regular website built with WordPress, Drupal, Wix, etc., unless your main website has a Shopify integration plugin. Features include unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, fraud analysis, discount codes, reports, and much more. The key benefits of Shopify are that you do not need a developer to set up a store, and everything on the backend is already set up for you when you subscribe. The downside is you do not have as much control or flexibility over your store as you would with WooCommerce.
Shopify Plus: Shopify Plus is Shopify, but with a higher level of customization, more staff accounts, and international e-commerce options. It also has a higher level of support. However, all of this obviously comes with a higher subscription cost, and it still does not have all the flexibility and customization abilities as WooCommerce. Business Squarespace: Squarespace has an e-commerce subscription option, so if you chose Squarespace to build your site and have very simple e-commerce needs, you can choose this route. Business Squarespace charges a transaction fee, but this can be bypassed by upgrading your subscription to a basic online store. It includes a free domain, SSL security, SEO, abandoned cart recovery, discounts, real-time carrier shipping, and more. However, it has been noted it is not as user-friendly as Shopify. And like Shopify, it is simply not as flexible as WooCommerce. Wix: Wix actually has a Shopify extension which is very user friendly. You will have to upgrade your Wix account and subscribe to Shopify in order to use it.
GoDaddy Online Store: GoDaddy has a relatively new e-commerce standalone subscription platform that is relatively easy to set up and use. Very little technical knowledge is required to launch your shop with GoDaddy Online Store. The templates are simple and clean, and somewhat customizable. Features include marketing and SEO tools, social media integration, appointment booking, SSL security, rapid page loading, and more. Other Articles From AllBusiness.com: The Complete 35-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business 25 Frequently Asked Questions on Starting a Business 50 Questions Angel Investors Will Ask Entrepreneurs 17 Key Lessons for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business Create an interesting, memorable, and engaging website user interface Make sure your small business website interface leaves a positive impression that drives results. You can do so by implementing the following suggestions:
FixUse beautiful graphics and easy-to-read fonts. Make sure your graphics are compressed and optimized for fast loading. If your website is slow, search engines like Google will penalize your ranking. Research the competition to see how they have designed and optimized their websites; implement similar components that will work for your small business website. Research your target audience to see what they want from your site and make it easy for them to accomplish it. Stay consistently on brand throughout your website design. Design an intuitive navigation system which allows users to get to the pages they need quickly. Publish easily accessible contact information. Incorporate obvious call-to-actions (especially “buy now” buttons). Create pages that are standard for small business websites, such as:
Home About us Products/Services (with descriptions and visually appealing images) Sitemap (for SEO purposes) Management team Contact us Terms of use (the online contract governing how users can use your site) Privacy policy Additional pages relevant to your specific small business Optimize your small business website for search engines SEO is a set of practices you apply to your website to ensure search engines index and rank your website appropriately and then show it to search engine users. Once your website is “crawled” by search engines, it competes with websites that have similar content. The better your website design and content is, the higher your site will show up on search engine result pages. SEO mainly includes the following practices:
Keyword research and implementation Optimal website code Fast loading speed Being secure and having an SSL certificate installed; SSL is the standard security technology that ensures data passed between web servers and browsers remains private Having a mobile-friendly site Existence of high-quality backlinks (links on external websites with related content) that lead to your site Having lots of positive reviews online (Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc.) Using internal links throughout your site to keep people clicking and reading Using social media to link to your site (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) SEO is an extremely important ongoing process that can mean the difference between showing up on the first page of search engine results pages (resulting in large amounts of free traffic to your website) or page 300 (resulting in no traffic).
Regularly create and publish quality content Both content quantity and freshness are important to search engines, so it’s important that you create a plan to publish quality articles and/or blog posts on your site and on external sites that link to your site. If you want to rank highly in search engine results and encourage people to return to your site again and again, you will have to update your website with new and relevant content as frequently as possible. In addition to static page content and articles, a great form of content to post on your website is testimonials. Asking for testimonials from your customers and then publishing them on your website is a great way to post fresh, high-quality content on your site that makes your small business more attractive. Make sure your content uses an appropriate, on-brand tone that people will enjoy reading. Install webmaster tools Make use of vital data to help you analyze traffic and site performance by installing Google Analytics and Google Search Console (both preferably via Google Tag Manager), and Bing Webmaster Tools. These tools can be used to track the following types of information:
