I am talking about creating efficient and effective “Business” websites. A business site is not the same as a personal page, fan site, or hobby site. A business site should have one purpose, to create revenue for the owner. A business may be a labor of love, a business site is not. With this mindset, and over 8 years experience in the Atlanta Web Design business these are the top factors in building a business website.
- Keyword Research - Without a doubt the single most important factor. Your site must be built upon a set of well researched keywords and keyword phrases. You must understand exactly what keywords people are actively searching in your market. Find the top 5 - 10 keywords or keyword phrases and target those aggressively. Once you have achieved first page status on the major search engines, do your research again and start over. Remember it takes as much effort to build a site upon poor keyword choices as it does to build in on great keywords.
- Focus - Avoid trying to do too much on your website. Decide what single thing you want a visitor to do; place a phone call, leave an email address, buy a product or download additional information. Then laser target your design around that goal, after you are finished, review your site and remove anything that does support that goal.
- Simplicity - Do not overwhelm your visitors with any unnecessary distractions. Simplicity is the hallmark of all successful business sites. At most a visitor should only 1-2 actions or decisions they can make on any page. Avoid a too many colors, or whiz-bang widgets moving all over the screen, keep it simple
- Security - Make sure you have an SSL certificate if you ask the customer for any information; and email, name or address. Even if you shopping cart is handled by a third party business, if you ask you customer for an email address or name, make sure it’s on a secure https page with an SSL certificate.
- Customer oriented philosophy - A common mistake of a small business owner is to make the site about themselves or their business. They have a need or problem and want an answer or solution. Do not make the site about your business - always make it about your customer and their needs. An “About Us” page is fine for service oriented businesses, but keep it simple and don’t let it distract from the purpose of your site; it should be short, simple and to the point.
An effective small business web design, can also be an affordable web design. In reality a good business web design is simple fast and should not cost a small fortune. Of course an e-commerce shopping cart will add complexity and cost to a business website. You should not pay a well-qualified professional web designer more than $2K dollars for a complete business website. Before you hire a designer, make sure that can provide you with a thorough keyword research. If not hire someone to do the appropriate keyword research first.
Roger Alexander Sibaja has been creating websites and programming for the web since 1991. He is the lead web developer for GOBI Web Designs an Atlanta Web Design, Peachtree City Web Design company focuses on making the entire web design process as simple as possible for their clients. By choosing one of a handful of very affordable packages, clients have everything they need for a small business website for one price. One price includes everything, you just provide GOBI with the content, and they take care of everything else. How’s that for simple.
