Small Business Website Design: A Guide on How to Get Started

How’s Your Small Business Website Design?

It can be very tempting to skip spending time ensuring that your website looks great.

After all, you do also have social media platforms to promote your product or services.

But take note that 75% of consumers admit to judging a company’s credibility based solely on their website design.

This means you are more likely to build trust and lead to better sales if you have a website that looks well put together.

If you’re not sure how and where to start, you’re in the right place!

Because in this post, we’re going through how to get started with your small business website design.

Now let’s dive in!

Where To Build Your Small Business Website

Before you proceed with designing your website, and all the images and graphics within it, you have to decide on where to build it.

Great choices include:

• WordPress,
• Squarespace,
• Wix, and
• Shopify

…among similar sites. 

If you know what you’re doing and want in-depth customization WordPress is the perfect choice.

But because it has so many options, it can take a while to finish your website and it can be very easy to overdo certain things.

And if you don’t have solid experience in website and graphic design, you may end up with a website that looks outdated or cheap.

At the same time, it may take you longer to finish your website. 

On the other hand, there are sites like Squarespace that are very beginner-friendly and super easy to use.

If it were a cup, you could call it spillproof.

You can’t customize parts of your website as in-depth as WordPress though.

But, you’re more likely to end up with a crisp professional-looking website with its easy-to-use interface and be able to put together your page faster. 

When you go to their website, right off the bat you have multiple template choices.

And you can pick which one suits your nature of business and branding best.

Make sure you pick a layout that compliments your social media graphics as well.

This is so you don’t confuse visitors with a website that looks totally different from your social media visuals. 

Wherever you decide to design your website…

…be sure to do your research on the pros and cons and that you’re picking one that suits you and your brand best.

Aside from the template and your website’s color scheme, which by the way should follow your branding colors…

…a website’s design can be enhanced by ensuring that the images used on its 5 main pages are curated and quality controlled. 

These are images for your Home page, Shop page, Blog tab, About/info page, Contact page. Now let’s discuss more of these pages.

Pages For Your Small Business Website Design

1. Logo
2. Home page
3. Shop page
4. Blog tab
5. About/info page
6. Contact page

1. Logo

Starting from the very top of all your pages, you need to make sure your logo is high resolution and is a transparent PNG file.

This will let you customize the background of your logo to any color or image…

…as opposed to limiting your logo’s background to white, black, or whatever background color on your logo image you didn’t remove.

2. Header

It takes about .05 seconds for visitors to form an opinion about your website that determines…

…whether they like your site or not and whether they’ll stay or leave.

And, your header happens to likely be the first thing that visitors see on your website…

…being the biggest and most attention-grabbing part of your home page.

This makes it essential to your website’s effectiveness in building trust and keeping interest.

There are multiple styles of website headers you can try out for your small business website design.

For example, the background can simply be a picture behind some headline text like this.

A simple feature image on one side, and with the headline on the other side like this.

Or, something more dynamic like this.

Regardless of what you think fits your brand best, you need to make sure your images aren’t blurry.

And that your header image, along with the headline text, doesn’t look overcrowded.

When it comes to picking your header image or graphic, make sure it doesn’t have clashing elements like this.

And whatever text placed on top of it is readable.

This is so that you are presenting your visitors with a visually pleasing banner image…

…all the while making sure that whatever message you place in your headline is effectively communicated. 

You can optionally add headers to each of the other 4 pages, which depending on the layout can elevate each page’s visual dimension and design.

But if you do, be sure to, again use high-quality images, keep it simple to avoid overcrowding.

And make sure that if you add any text over your header images, they’re easy to read.

3. Shop tab

This tab features either your product or service, and it goes without saying that you need to make sure you are cleaning up.

And optionally, add some designs to your images before you feature them on your website.

The last thing you want is to make your product or service look cheap with badly taken photos that look blurry or poorly lit.

If you want to know how to fix blurry photos, then read this tutorial next.

Make sure you do a proper shoot of your products in proper lighting to produce quality product shots.

And post-edit them in either Photoshop, Canva, or similar applications…

…to remove dust, dirt, and other unwanted elements, as well as color-correct them if needed.

We have a tutorial here on how to use patch tool in Photoshop, something that will help you clean up your product images.

Alternatively, you can also have your images rendered through 3d or photo manipulation.

You can then use the same apps to lay them out in different lifestyle setups if you want to add more flair and style to your product shots. 

For service-type images, you’ll want them to look as authentic as possible…

…as well so avoid using stock images and use actual photos of what you’re offering.

4. Blog graphics

You’ll want to add a blog portion to your small business website design to help with SEO…

…and it so happens that our brains process images 60,000 times faster than plain text. 

And having great blog visuals means readers are more likely to retain their attention to your blog.

Be sure you take the time to design your blog images and make sure they fit your blog topics, as well as the visual style of your website and branding.

5. About us section

Since your about page tells your visitors more about you and your business, it would be a huge shame to miss out on the chance…

…to show them behind-the-scenes photos or pictures of you and your team among other images that help tell the story of your brand.

These don’t have to be designed graphics, but you do want to make sure that the images you use are 100% yours.

And that you don’t use stock photos when you add images to your about page. 

6. Contact page

Lastly on your small business website design is your contact page.

You don’t have to make too fancy, but you’ll want to avoid letting it look too plain.

You can add positive reviews or images of customers using your product or service before the contact form.

This is to help further entice your visitors to contact you.

When it comes to your website, remember that the quality of its design is only as good as its weakest component.

So make sure you do a double check on your website layout, your photos…

…as well as your graphics to make sure that your website is visually appealing and represents your brand well.

And if you need help in creating your website, head over to our graphic design services. Contact us today!

The post Small Business Website Design: A Guide on How to Get Started appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog.