Planning a website for your small business? Don’t make a start without these 10 things in place.
Setting up and launching a new business is such an exciting time, isn’t it? Your ambitious dreams of sacking off the day job, bidding farewell to your awful boss and ditching the commute for good are finally coming true!
There’s a lot to sort out during this busy time; finances, products and actually finding customers will be looming large in your mind for the next few months. One of the most essential assets to organise during this already heavy time is your new business’ brand new website.
Without a great website your customers will struggle to find you online - not ideal! Plus, you’ll have no digital space of your own to showcase your unique brand and build a strong community. It can be tempting to jump right in and throw together any old page quickly at this stage (we get it, we’ve been there) but you’ll save yourself so much time and stress if you get it right from the start.
By simply getting these 10 things in place before you launch your new website, you’ll be in a far stronger starting position than 99% of online entrepreneurs!
Number 1: A strong sense of your target market
When you think (or even know) that you have a really solid business idea, it’s all too easy to get swept away with it. Getting lost in how amazing you think your idea is can be dangerous, you run the risk of forgetting the people who actually matter - your customers. If no one buys from you, you don’t have a business… you have a hobby.
Getting to know exactly who your target market is and how your products/services solve a problem for them is crucial in these early stages. Knowing these things in the beginning means that you can shape your messaging and branding effectively from the get-go and create a website geared to the right people. No messy rebrands or redesigns in 6 months time!
Number 2: Knowledge of your own unique skills (USP)
Equally as important as knowing your customer and their unique problems is knowing yourself/your business and your unique solutions. If you don’t know the special sauce that makes your product/service unique from other brands out there, then you’ll never be able to successfully differentiate yourself. The online business market is saturated af - if you can’t distinguish yourself from the competition then there’s no hope that your customers can. Get to grips with your brand, discover your USP and shout about it early to avoid getting lost in the mire.
Number 3: Inviting, unique imagery
We’re not suggesting that you need to have an extensive brand photography shoot before you even set up your first site, but you need to make strong imagery a consideration. Websites are a naturally visual medium, and our eyes are drawn to imagery first - way before we read even a single word. You can have the best product out there, with incredible persuasive copy, and a strong market position, but if your product images look like they were taken on a half-baked potato no one’s gonna buy ‘em.
If you’re planning on using stock imagery, ensure you’re sourcing them from free stock image sites like unsplash or pexels to avoid copyright issues.
Number 4: A personal brand voice
This links strongly to knowing your target market. How do they want to be spoken to? How are other brands out there missing the mark? Brand voices can be a tricky concept to wrap our heads round (especially for personal brands and solo service businesses) but think of it as your ‘work voice’. It’s not always appropriate to talk corporate biz speak (think craft businesses or Gen Z targeting brands) and it’s not always appropriate to pepper your copy with slang and memes (great from a social media marketer, less so from a personal injury solicitor) so work on your target market first and take it from there.
Number 5: Scannable headings and content
We humans are a fickle, busy bunch. If you make your users work too hard to get the jist of your business and ethos, they’re going to bail and never get to know how amazing your brand really is. Work on breaking your content up into easily scannable sections with clear headings to make it easier for users to scan quickly. Work on making those scannable sections and headings interesting and enticing so make it easier for users to stick around.
Number 6: Plenty of clear CTAs
CTA stands for ‘Call to Action’ and is essentially a button or link through which you’re asking your user to take action. Think ‘Enquire Now’ or ‘Book a Discovery Call’. Your website should be absolutely peppered with clear, concise CTAs that guide your user through a well-curated journey. If this sounds very technical, that’s because it is! Our Squarespace templates can help, as they have much of this user journey in-built. Ideally, you want one or two main actions that you want your user to take, such as booking a free consultation. You should then allow your user plenty of opportunities to take that action with clear buttons or links.
Number 7: Well-structured content & heirarchy
This is very much an SEO consideration as well as a user-experience one. Website content structure is very important to both your users (it gives them a clear journey to follow and makes it easier to keep them reading) and to search-engine bots who want to rank you in Google. Using appropriate heading tags, page structure and writing understandable page titles will make your site more bot-friendly and user-friendly. If you want more info on web structure and heirarchy, you can find videos in our tutorials provided with our Squarespace templates.
Number 8: SEO optimised copy & images
Another big SEO consideration (the biggest, actually) is your copy and imagery. Gone are the days when businesses could just spam a few keywords over and over again until the bots crowned them ruler supreme on Google; now you have to write great copy that reads well while including key words and phrases. This sounds complicated, but once you know your target market and USP it becomes a whole lot easier. Just work hard on writing compelling and interesting copy that speaks directly to your perfect user and the bot overlords will thank you for it. With images, it’s important to make your site accessible to software such as screen readers for those with visual impairments. This means utilising alt text within images to give descriptions of what’s on screen.
Number 9: Striking brand colours & typography
It may come as quite a surprise that this is sitting so low on the list considering we’re literally brand and website designers, but thats how seriously important the rest of this stuff is! One of your big market differentiators will be your visual branding - this largely means your logos, your colours and your typography (though there are extras like patterns you can work in if you’re feeling up to it). Building a visual brand that accurately represents your business is super important to building a successful business. Learn more about how to do it here and here.
Number 10: Some expert help and guidance
This list feels extensive and likely a bit overwhelming, but with the right support in place it can be a piece of cake. You could try and find yourself a mentor through local networking groups, or join a supportive online community where you can work through your struggles. If you want more targeted help, we offer a range of web design products and services for businesses at every stage. Our templates are a great low-cost option for new businesses and they come pre-packed with all this high-converting web goodness. All you need to do is follow the extensive video tutorials and write your content using the guided prompts and you can be launched in no time! We also offer free downloadable resources that can help you get started.
Thanks for reading, beaut!
For more web design know-how, check out some of our other posts. You can also download exclusive resources here and shop our template range here. Contact us for information on our bespoke web design services!
Stay creative!
Naomi | Lucky Night Studio
