Copyright 2005 Modern Digital Marketing LLCIf you are going to have a web presence for your small business, it only makes sense that it should actually help you get more business. In order to do so, your website design should focus on performing only one function – and that’s to convey your sales message to your site visitors in an effective and efficient manner.
No matter what your web designer tells you, simplicity is best when building your small business website. While having a website with lots of bright colors and flashy interactive graphics might win web design awards, it will probably not help you win customers. In fact, more complicated your web design, higher risk that your sales message will be lost amidst all fancy bells and whistles on your site.
For most small businesses, a simple and elegant four or five page website is all they need to get job done. As an added bonus, such sites are inexpensive when compared to flashier multimedia sites. If you want your small business website to increase your profits instead of emptying your pocketbook, pay close attention to following design guidelines when you build your site.
Make Your Website Easy to Read In order for your website to get sales and/or leads, your small business website design needs to be user and consumer-friendly - that means it needs to be easy to read. So, short sentences and paragraphs, dark text on white (or very, very light) backgrounds and lots of white space should be norm.
At risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again - purpose of having a website for your small business isn’t to win design awards. It’s to convey information about your product or service that guides consumer toward making a buying decision in your favor.
If you think that dark websites and colored text on colored backgrounds looks better, you may be right. However, as I mentioned earlier loud colors and excessive graphics only serve to distract attention from sales message contained in your site content and makes your site harder to read. Remember: keep it simple and you’ll keep sale.
Also, remember that web users tend to scan text instead of reading it start to finish like printed text. Since majority of your visitors will not read all your content, use headlines, subheadings, and bolded text that quickly convey your overall message. Done correctly, a visitor should be able to scan all your headlines, subheads, and bold text in just a few seconds and understand central message of your site or page.