You have less than eight seconds to convince visitors to stay and browse; after load time, it will be less. Are you ready to capture someone’s attention in three to five seconds?
Remember. Website visitors have a short attention span, need to be led from one section to the other and need to be told what to do when they are done looking. All of those factors should go into your website design.
Think billboard. The optimum amount of words for a billboard is five. Can you capture the essence of your business in five measly words and an image? Effective web copy wins visitors over or bores them into bouncing. (term)
And that’s just the Home or any Landing Pages you will have designed.
Your entire website design and structure will be evaluated in just a few seconds more. Is your website ready for that kind of scrutiny?
Here are some important elements of a small business website.
Simple navigation that makes sense helps the visitor find what they are looking for more quickly. You should have your pages into as few categories as possible. You want the visitor to make quick decisions. They’re willing to make general choices knowing there are more specific choice waiting.
One of the design templates that irritate me as a Social Media user is having to scroll down to the bottom of the page to find a page’s SM icons. If you are really trying to interact with your customers and potential customers, then those SM icons need to be seen within the opening view of every page.
One of the most visited pages in your site will be the About page. When you’re a local business, what visitors find on that page could be a huge factor in the purchasing decision. Make sure that you keep the content brief and about the benefits your company can offer.
Each of your pages should have a strong Call to Action (CTA) (term) that tells the visitor what it is you want them to do. Do you want them to read more, download, go to, sign up, buy or another action? CTAs need to be noticeable on the page and let the visitor know exactly why they should click there.
Especially with the soon-to-be dominance of mobile users, having an interactive embedded map on your site becomes extremely important, especially if you have a bricks and mortar store. Luckily Google Maps makes it easy to embed maps of any size into any page on your website.
In addition to a map letting people locate you easily, you should always have your contact information on every page. You need to include your official/legal company name, mailing address, phone number(s), and even an email. It is not only helpful for mobile users, but it also helps the search engines to properly categorize your page in local search results.
Make sure you have an easy and trackable way for people to contact you. Your Contact Us page should offer full contact information and an email capture form. You will usually ask visitors permission to add them to an email subscription list at this time making the process almost unnoticeable.
Recent research has determined that people would rather scroll down a long page of information rather than see pages with less content and wait for the next page to load. This is the reverse from the old journalism term “Above the fold” that all important information should be seen as soon as the page loads.
Even though this is far down this list, the importance of this website design feature can’t be understated: Make it mobile. If your site is not mobile you are losing visitors. According to Search Engine Watch, 99.5% access content, 63% access the internet and 62% check email via mobile devices. Making your website mobile will be covered in another ODNT Blog post
Most people don’t think like this, but as an online communication specialist I am constantly concerned about how a company website will be found and rank in the search engines. But we also have to weigh that against including too many keywords in the content. But as much as SEO changes from year to year, one thing remains constant: you should write for people, not search engines.
Bottom Line
It takes a great combination of a number of factors to make the most successful website for your business.