9 Website Design Tips for Small Businesses

9 Website Design Tips for Small Businesses

Your website's design has a 75% influence on your credibility. Without brand credibility, consumers might decide they can't trust your business. They'll turn to your competitors instead.

Meanwhile, you only have 10 seconds (or less!) to leave a strong impression on your visitors.

When building a website, it's important to consider both functionality and design. Here are a few website design tips that can help you wow your audience. With these tips, you can turn your small business website into a marketing machine.

Read on to discover the nine tips you need to apply when designing a website today!

1. Add Negative Space

As you're building a website for your business, remind yourself to keep it simple. You don't need flashy animations to draw consumers to your brand. Instead, you need to make sure your site is appealing to the eye.

Start by adding negative space throughout your pages.

Negative space will give your web content room to breathe. Without it, your pages will start to look cluttered. Visitors won't know where to turn their attention as a result.

They might miss your call-to-action language, buttons, and other important elements, too.

Adding more negative space throughout your site can improve the user experience (UX) and your content's readability. A negative UX could scare visitors away. As people leave without exploring additional pages, your bounce rate might start to increase.

A high bounce rate could hurt your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and digital advertising campaigns. For example, Google will recognize you're offering a negative UX and decide to lower your rankings. Lower rankings can make it difficult for potential customers to find your website during online searches.

A negative landing page experience can increase your cost-per-click, making your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns more expensive.

Instead, you can use negative space to encourage visitors to explore the page. You can also use a lone element, like a button or form, to draw their attention to converting.

Ensuring balance throughout your pages could help you generate more leads.

2. Help Links and CTAs Stand Out

As you apply these design tips, make sure you're optimizing your website for conversions.

First, make sure your hyperlinks stand out within the content of your website. Don't use the same font color for your hyperlinks as you do for text. Otherwise, readers might not realize the anchor text contains a link.

Adding internal links within your content can help Google's bots crawl and index your site. It can also encourage visitors to explore other pages.

Make sure your CTA buttons stand out on the page as well. Use a contrasting color between the page background, button, and button text.

Use strong call to action language for your buttons. Make sure each CTA is clear, compelling, and concise. The CTA should align with the page's ultimate purpose.

3. Improve the Readability

Most people skim-read through content. Successful websites are designed with readability in mind. Ensuring your content is easy to read will keep visitors on the page.

It could also help them gather the information they need before they convert into a lead or sale.

To improve readability, first run your page content through Grammarly.com and HemingwayApp.com. Try to write using shorter sentences and paragraphs. Otherwise, organize your content using headings and subheadings.

As you review your site content, make sure each page has a singular purpose. The page title, content, URL, and CTA should remain aligned. Otherwise, you could risk confusing the visitor.

4. Reconsider Imagery

Try to avoid putting too many stock photos on your pages while building a website. Successful websites feature unique, branded images.

Otherwise, stock images might make your brand look cheap and ingenuine. Consumers are getting better at recognizing stock photos, too.

Consider hiring a professional photographer to take your website photos.

5. Get Mobile-Optimized

Google now uses mobile-first indexing to determine organic site rankings. If your site isn't mobile-optimized, you could scare away potential customers.

In fact, bad mobile optimization annoys 48% of consumers. Over 50% will leave a mobile page if it takes over three seconds to load.

Instead, make sure your site is mobile-ready and responsive. Make sure it's easy for visitors to complete forms or shop from their mobile devices, too.

6. Maintain Brand Consistency

Maintain brand consistency across all web pages. Brand consistency can help awareness and recognition grow. Consumers will have an easier time recognizing your brand on other platforms, too.

Eventually, you can remain top of mind with a consumer, encouraging them to recall your brand in the future.

If your site features different brand elements, however, the consumer might think they've traveled to a different website.

7. Design for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) can help your site rank higher on search engine result pages. Improving your organic rankings will ensure consumers find your site first. Then, you can generate brand awareness, website traffic, and leads.

Your website's design can impact your SEO rankings. Consider hiring a web design and development agency that understands SEO. Otherwise, make sure your site appeals to Google's Core Web Vitals.

8. Establish Credibility

Establish your credibility by adding social signals to your website.

For example, you can use a plugin to feed Google Business rankings onto your pages. Generating positive reviews can encourage future customers to trust you.

If you post user-generated content on social media, use a plugin to add the photos to your site. On-the-fence shoppers might feel more inclined to trust your brand after seeing consumers use your products.

9. Hire an Agency

You don't have to create your small business website alone. Instead, consider hiring an agency this year.

An experienced web design and development agency can improve your site's appearance and functionality. You can generate more leads and sales through your site without losing potential customers.