How to Build a Small Business Website: 10 Must-Have Elements That Increases Conversions
A well-designed website is crucial today for small businesses. However, it’s not just enough to throw together a small business website for free on Canva or Wix and hope for the best. In other words, just because you have a small business website, doesn’t mean it’s going to effectively market your business, reach or appeal to your target customer, let alone convert them into paying customers to grow your business. In this article, I’ll be sharing the top 10 key elements your small business website must have to not only look professional, but be functional and effective to increase your visibility and conversions.
What is a Small Business Website?
In general, a website for a small business should be set up to include information about the business that a targeted audience would want to know, and ideally leads them to the next step for the action the business wants them to take. Typically, you will find a ‘Home’ page, ‘About’ or ‘Our Story’ page, ‘Services’ or ‘Work With Us’ pages, ‘Shop’ especially for product-based businesses, and ‘Contact Us’ page.
Do I Need a Small Business Website?
I am a strong believer that a well-designed small business website is crucial – and not just because I’m a website designer.
When you are first getting started in business, I actually recommend NOT starting with a website, which I’ve mentored many of my customers on this as well. At the startup stage, you need to focus on getting clear on what you sell and who it’s for, and then selling it to land your first customer. Instead, I actually recommend starting with and selling from a Google Document first – I explain how here.
However, once you’re more established with a couple of first customers, a bit of cash flow (and confidence), and a commitment to take your business to the next level, I definitely recommend that you invest in your business to build a small business website. Let’s dive into the 10 must-have elements for small business websites.
TL;DR
The Ultimate Website Checklist
10 Must-Have Elements for Skyrocketing Conversions
This Free Training and Checklist was designed to help you create an effective website with 10 must-have elements to increase conversions and grow your business to the next level!
Table of Contents
10 Must-Have Elements for Small Business Websites That Increases Conversions
Target and Position Your Website
Clear and Compelling Value Proposition
Clear Navigation
Logo and Branding
Photos for Website
Testimonials and Social Proof
Content Flow and Direction
Compelling Call-to-Action (CTA)
Mobile-Responsive Design
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
10 Must-Have Elements for Small Business Websites That Increases Conversions
1. Target and Position Your Website
First and foremost – literally before you even start to build your small business website – you need to determine WHO your website is for and WHAT you will be selling to them. This seems simple, but I promise you, it’s easier said than done. You’ve probably heard before, “If you’re speaking to everyone, then you’re speaking to no one.” For that reason, you need to decide who you want your website messaging (i.e. copy) to target, and how you will position your offer to sell directly to them. In order for this to be effective, you need to get clear and dive deep into understanding your target customer.
Consider this: Your business most likely targets multiple types of customers – each offer will have its own target customer, but you may also want to speak to and target investors, referral partners, collaborators, or even future contractors or employees. So, how do you build a small business website that speaks to everyone?
Short Answer – you don’t.
Long Answer – you use your website as a tool to speak to different types of customers in different ways. For example, you might decide that you want to primarily target potential customers for your best selling offer, so you position your homepage to lead that type of customer to that specific offer, go deep in your copy to appeal to that type of customer, and set your call-to-action to get them to take the next step (walking them through to the conversion). You also might build a page on your website that specifically speaks to investors that isn’t linked to your main menu, but instead is a stand-alone page that you can share with potential investors only. These specifics need to be considered before building your small business website.
2. Clear and Compelling Value Proposition
At the top of your website's homepage, it should immediately and clearly answer two important questions – WHAT you do and WHO it’s for. This is your value proposition. Let’s be honest, people are busy and have short attention spans. When a person lands on your site, they’re only going to allow minimal time – usually within seconds – to understand if they should continue looking at your website or if they should exit out and get on with their day. Many websites I see don't effectively do this – and if you don’t, you’re going to lose people before they even know what you do.
Which leads me to my next point. Your value proposition needs to be a part of the “first fold” of your website – which essentially means the top of your website someone sees before they start scrolling. This helps people immediately understand what you do and who it’s for right away so they know whether or not they should scroll to keep exploring further – which is what you want.
3. Clear Navigation
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is when you build a small business website that the navigation needs to be clear and easy to understand. First, I’ve seen a lot of people who want to get clever and name their different pages something that fits with their brand or come up with fun names for each thing. Although this might seem like a fun idea to be “on-brand,” is it potentially one of the worst decisions you can make for your website. It may feel boring to stick with the typical ‘About,’ ‘Services,’ and ‘Contact’ page titles, but people who land on your website know exactly what these mean and what to expect when they go to these pages – this is how they will understand to navigate your website to find exactly what they are looking for. The last thing you want is for a website visitor to feel confused by your clever page titles, not know where to find the information they are looking for, and instead give up and exit out. Think of how much money gets left on the table just because your website visitors can’t find what they are looking for!
Moral of the story, don’t get clever – keep it simple.
4. Logo and Branding
Your website isn’t just a pretty page to show off your business – it’s a marketing tool and asset for your business.
Whether you are first getting started in business or you’re continuing to grow, you ideally want to have some kind of branding and logo for your business and brand overall to help build brand recognition and eventual loyalty. I could write an entire article on branding alone – coming soon – but what you need to know when you build a small business website is that your logo should be immediately visible and your branding (even simply your color palette) should help tie everything together.
I make it a staple in the small business websites I build for my customers to include their logo right at the top by the menu and in the standing footer at the bottom that shows up on each page. This way, the logo doesn’t necessarily have to be the center of attention (which it shouldn’t be because the website visitor needs to understand what you do and who it’s for, not just your logo), but it is visible to start planting the seed for the visitor to see and start to remember and recognize your business for.
At a minimum for your branding, the colors you use throughout your website, as well as the way you speak about your business and offers, should remain consistent throughout your website, tying it all together to look and feel cohesive – like it’s all part of the same business and brand.
Pro Tip: Also pay attention to the photos you choose to use. If the photos include lots of red and blue colors, but your branding is purple, green, and tan pastel shades, these colors are going to clash and cause inconsistencies for your small business website.
5. Photos for Website
Let’s talk about choosing photos when building a small business website. When you are first getting started in business, you may not have any photos to work with, let alone a budget to get website photos or branding photography taken. Sock photos, even free stock photos, may be your best option. While stock photos may make for great placeholders for a new small business website, stock photos won’t help your conversion rates – in fact, stock photos actually hurt your business. The truth is, stock photos are generic and many other people are using them, which don’t help your brand recognition. Instead, the best thing you can do is book your own branding photography session to get real photos of you (especially if you are the face of your brand or sole service provider) that’s designed around your brand and business.
Learn more about this in my The Ultimate Branding Photography Guide where I dive into branding photography, how to find and book a photographer, how to prepare for your shoot, mistakes to avoid, and more.
I actually dive deeper into what exact photos you need for your small business website, technical aspects for your website photography, copyright information to consider, as well as a free website photography shot list here in my other blog post, The Ultimate Guide to Website Photography.
6. Testimonials and Social Proof
Think of these as sparkly and shiny bits to sprinkle throughout as you build your small business website. Customer testimonials and reviews, certifications ,accreditations, and badges, and other logos of customers you’ve worked with or press you’ve been featured in – i.e. your bragging rights. These not only help your website and business look professional, but these elements provide potential customers with ‘proof’ to help them decide to buy or work with you.
Rather than building a single page dedicated to reviews or testimonials, use all of these elements as a tool sprinkled throughout your entire website. These can be especially helpful on services or sales pages as you lead your potential customer closer to the Call-to-Action where you ideally want them to buy. These elements can help build credibility and trust with your potential customers bit-by-bit throughout your small business website to help increase your conversions.
Pro Tip: You might consider including photos with your customer testimonials or screenshots of things they’ve said to you (just make sure you have permission from them before using them). This way potential customers see real reviews from real people just like them.
7. Content Flow and Direction
When you build a small business website, one of the things you have to consider is the overall flow of your website, and how that flow of content (copy, images, buttons, etc.) seamlessly leads your website visitors (your potential customers) to the next step you want them to take. Remember how we covered deciding what you do and who it’s for? Your website layout and design needs to lead people through your content flow and to your Call-to-Action (which we’ll get into next).
If you have different offers for different types of customers, then it’s important to use your homepage as a way to guide your visitor into which offer is right for them or what they are potentially looking for. For example, some of my customers have served both patients and providers with different offers – working directly with patients for their services or offering a how-to course, and working with providers consulting or teaching them how to also perform the service for their own patients. In this case, it’s important that you use your homepage to ask if visitors are a provider or patient, then linking each of those to the corresponding next website pages that speak to each type of customer separately.
Pro Tip: Consider thinking of this in the way of mapping out your customer’s journey – a map of your website that each type of targeted customer can follow to get to the information for them that flows together to lead them to the next step, your Call-to-Action.
8. Compelling Call-to-Action (CTA)
By this point, you know what you do and who it’s for, visitors know your value proposition and how to navigate your website, and your branding, photos, and content flow leads them to the information (and offer) they need. Now, you want them to take action! So ask yourself, what is the single action that you want your potential customer to take? This is where your conversions happen.
Here’s the tricky part and something I want you to consider. While we all want people to buy our offers or hire us right away, or at least book a call with us to get started, the majority of people won’t. They need more time to get to know you, like you, and trust you before investing their money in you or your offer. And, they want to have some proof or idea that it can work and work for them. Because of this, consider two CTAs per potential customer (but no more than two or you will overwhelm people and they won’t take action at all – avoid too many CTAs). Lead your potential customer to your offer and then invite them to take the next step to get started with you or buy (i.e. Book a Call, Buy Now, Get a Quote, etc.) Then, consider a second CTA if they are not ready just yet. This could look like asking them to subscribe to your newsletter, following you on social media, or potentially downloading a free resource by giving you their email address. The goal here is to capture your potential customers' information who aren’t ready to take action so that you can stay top-of-mind to warm them up as a lead until they are ready to buy. Otherwise, you’re going to lose people and hope they come back when they’re ready.
9. Mobile-Responsive Design
Nowadays, building a small business website that is mobile-responsive is a MUST. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly or designed to fit (and make sense) on a mobile device or tablet, you’re going to lose website visitors immediately and potential customers (goodbye conversions). Today, most website platforms include a way to design your website specifically for mobile devices. (I personally use and design client websites on Squarespace, and their mobile-responsive design options are fantastic!) This may look like adjusting your website’s menu, layout, resizing images and elements, making sure that your website copy (text) is in the correct order, etc.
Pro Tip: Always test your website on your mobile device and tablet. Not everything will show up on mobile correctly, images resize, text gets overlaid with images or falls out of order, and some elements get lost. Always test it all to make sure your website visitors and potential clients will have a seamless experience across any device they choose to use.
10. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
I could fall down the rabbit hole and write multiple articles on search engine optimization (SEO) alone. Honestly, if you aren’t doing at least the bare minimum of SEO on your small business website, you almost may as well not have one – it’s that important! Simply stated, SEO is the process of identifying search terms (a.k.a. keywords) that your potential clients would search for to find your website and offers, thus helping people find your website. The internet is massive and there are ump-teen-zillion websites out there. SEO, as well as other marketing strategies to share your website and business, creates a way to help your website get found. You might think of this as a filter – identifying your website through specific keywords to filter the websites that include only that type of information. Because if your website can’t be found, then you won’t have any conversions (or customers).
When you build your small business website, consider a few keywords that make sense for your business to help your business and website get found. First, use these keywords on your website – in your headings and copy. If your small business website includes a Blog, write blogs on these topics or that include these keywords. In the settings for each of your website pages, include these keywords in the SEO title and SEO description for each page, as well as your website’s metadata descriptions. You may even include at least your main keyword in your site title.
Bonus: Analytics and Conversions
Once you launch your small business website, you’ll need to regularly look into your website’s analytics. Installing or integrating tools like Google Analytics can help monitor your website’s performance, visitor behavior, and SEO keyword engagement. Your goal for your small business website as a tool and asset is to help market your business and convert visitors into paying customers. So, you need to review your website analytics in order to know what’s working and how you can overall improve your conversions.
Keep in mind that this is a process that takes time, assessment, and testing. Much like any other marketing strategy, it takes time to get it working, time to assess and make adjustments, and continual measuring and adjusting as you go to get it optimized and effective.
Pro Tip: Schedule dedicated time for this. I recommend reviewing your analytics and testing small adjustments monthly or at least quarterly for your small business website.
Closing Notes
By incorporating these 10 must-have elements into your small business website, you'll create a strong marketing tool and asset for your business that not only attracts visitors but works to convert them into paying customers. Remember to continuously review analytics and test adjustments to optimize your website to be as effective as possible in driving conversions to grow your business.
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