Features for Successful Small Business Website Design
Great web design grabs your attention and helps you find what you need effortlessly. Your business website is a critical representation of your brand that should uphold and enhance your reputation. After working in the web-design industry in Australia for more than 15 years, we have identified the most important features of any website. For business owners, marketing consultants and web developers alike, these nine essential features form an invaluable checklist for creating a successful website.
Strategic Web Design to Achieve Your Goals
Time is such a valuable resource now that 40% of visitors will leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load—that's just three tiny seconds before, "BAM!", you've lost them. (Source: Akamai Technologies)
Well designed websites load quickly and meet visitors' needs. A great web design will help your business in Australia be successful by encouraging visitors to take action through the use of custom features that work towards your business objectives. Incorporating a strategic feature like a countdown timer will prompt visitors to take action on a time-bounded offer—say to promote a sale ending soon, or a closing window such as the end-of-year order deadline. If you are a mortgage broker in Australia, for example, including loan calculators will encourage visitors to engage with your Australian website, to find value in it and, consequently, to be more likely to contact you about a loan.
Attractive Web Design for Your Audience
A huge 94% of a website user's first impressions are design related, according to widely quoted British research on trust and credibility. (Source: Sillence et al., Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)
The dressing of your virtual shopfront creates an instant perception of your business in Australia, just as much as the choice of clothing sends a subconscious message about the person wearing it. Each visitor's vital first impression of your website should be that it is attractive, polished and professional. Your web design should be consistent with your branding and strike a positive emotional chord with your visitors. Work with an experienced Australia web designer to choose colours, layout and design that are visually appealing. That way your web design will uphold the basic design principles that result in an inviting and impressive online presence, customised to your industry and brand.
Intuitive User Web Design
What are your visitors seeking when they land on your website? What information is most crucial to their decision to buy from you? The navigation on your site and the layout of your content should put your visitors' needs first, making the information they want easy to find. Not only does your website's user interface need to be aesthetically pleasing, but it must also function effectively. An experienced Australian web developer will help you to optimise your website's architecture and usability so that visitors—and your Australian small business business—can get as much value as possible from your website.
Sales Call to Action
Don't rely on a visitor's investigative skills to determine the best way to contact you, or to decide the next steps to take. Your website should guide them through a clear journey to take the actions you want them to take, such as completing an enquiry form or calling you. While avoiding overselling, your calls to action should be visible enough and frequent enough in your web design to be noticed at critical decision points. Experiment with wording to find the balance between subtle and Sell-Sell-Sell approaches that works best for your customers. An experienced Australian web developer should help you with your CTAs.
High Value / High Quality Web Content
The concept that the primary function of content is to support search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts is a misconception that has led to many websites failing to achieve their goals. Your content should be genuinely helpful to your visitors, who are, after all, your potential customers. From your website copy to your blog posts and through to your printed materials, your content should be of high quality, consistent in tone and design, and crated to deliver your marketing message so that people want to read more. If this seems like a tall order, consider engaging a content writer who can deliver expertly crafted content that conveys your marketing message in an engaging, creative way. If you are seeking a professionally designed website in 2021, perhaps for your new Australian startup or even existing small business, high vale, high quality content is also very important!
Mobile First—Desktop Second Web Design
Over 90% of the 4.28 billion mobile users worldwide prefer browsing the web from their mobile devices. (Source: Statista)
Designing first for mobile users is the new gold standard in website design. In Australia and across the globe, the majority of web users find information online and make purchases using smartphones. That's why it's imperative that the visual design, functionality and user experience of your website is optimised specifically for the mobile user. Purchasing via mobile is a fast-growing field, with brilliant mobile ecommerce solutions available to help customers make quick and easy transactions. Complex purchasing paths won't be tolerated by savvy consumers and inevitably result in lost sales. Using thoughtful, purpose-driven website design to provide users with the most efficient path toward their goals is also the most efficient path toward your goals.
Contact Information—Front and Centre
As many as 44% of visitors will leave a website if they cannot readily find contact details or a phone number. (Source: Blue Corona)
This surprisingly common website-design error can have negative consequences, but it's an easy error to rectify. Your business's contact information should always be just one click away on every page of your website. The page footer is a great location for quick visitor access to your contact information. Place your phone number on the top right of the website header—so it is visible on every page—and ensure it has click-to-call functionality to make contact easy for the mobile user. Your website should also include a contact page with all your details, as well as a contact form to capture enquiries outside business hours in Australia. Finally, make sure there is a link to your contact page in the far right of your website's main navigation menu. Smart web design in 2021 must include easy to reach contact information. Make it easy for website visitors to reach out to you.
Your Products and Services Page
At least 47% of website visitors check out a company's products/services page before looking at any other section of their website. (Source: Blue Corona)
The product and services page is integral to the impact your website makes for your business. That's why it needs to include strong sales messages to pitch your business's strengths and your unique selling proposition. You should assume that this is the only page a potential customer will visit and tailor the information it contains to communicate your brand thoroughly and your complete range of products and services. This page should create a sense of credibility and excitement about your business here in Australia. Just as yesterday's bricks-and-mortar stores created eye-catching displays to promote new products and specials, the best of today's virtual shopfronts incorporate rich media—images, videos and graphs—into their products/services pages to achieve the same aims. These visual elements pique the visitor's interest and help them feel comfortable and confident in purchasing items from Australia that they can't see or touch in person.
Premium Web Design Platform
Choose a premium website hosting platform that will offer your business in Australia all of the features needed to make maintaining and editing your website easy, fast and reliable. Most web developers work with a variety of content management systems (CMS).
The one they choose for your project should offer peak performance in speed, SEO and functionality, and be agile enough to scale with your business as it grows. Critically, it must be secure against hacking and also protected by regular backups.
To maximise your return on investment, it's essential to invest in a robust yet flexible architecture for your web design, so that any changes necessary to support your business in the future require minimal additional work to implement.
