A business website is an amazing online marketing tool. You can use your website to tell potential customers about what your business does. You can even use your website as a way to get in touch with new customers, or to give potential customers a way to reach you for service quotes.

Doesn’t matter if you’re getting your first website, or simply redesigning the old one, your small business website should echo your excitement for your business and help customers see what separates you from competitors. A good website is an excellent branding tool that helps customers not only understand what your business does, but why they’d want to work with you.

Should I Plan My Business Website?

So, if you’re a local small to medium sized business and you want a simple business website, how much planning will it take? Well, that depends.

When planning your website, your main priority should be the results you want from it. With too little or no planning, your business website will look dull and disorganized. Your visitors might have a hard time finding what they came for and you might not attract new business through your website at all.

What this means is even small business websites needs proper planning if you want good results. If your business website consists of poorly-written words on poorly-designed pages that were poorly-planned out, it’s unlikely to be an asset for your business. Harsh, but true.

How to Plan a Small Business Website

Most business websites are reasonably uninspiring. And unfortunately, website quality tends to go down the smaller the business is. Small business owners are often swamped with all the demands their business places on them, so many don’t want to invest much thought into creating their website.

But when it comes to your business website, your input is definitely important. The better you know what you want from your website, the better your chances of getting an end result that lives up to your expectations.

To get a small business website that helps you effectively communicate your message, it’s always great to work with a professional. But that doesn’t mean you should expect good results by simply paying someone to do everything for you. As a business owner, this website is going to be at the center of your business’s online presence. It’s basically like the online extension of your business. In the same way you wouldn’t leave the fate of your business in someone else’s hands entirely, you shouldn’t leave your web designers guessing what you want from your website.

Before rushing out to hire someone, it’s a great to think about the basic structure you want for your website. In other words, what pages do you want on your website? Also think about what information you might want on different pages. Once you approach the designers, they might make some good suggestions for changes, so don’t feel like everything you plan is set in stone.

The important part of planning some of what you want for your website beforehand isn’t about creating a rigid guideline that can’t be altered. It’s about your vision and passion for your business. Not even the best designer can communicate your passion for what you do if you don’t help them to understand your vision.

Creating your business website should be a fun and exciting process. There are so many possibilities! Think about the design elements you want in terms images, color schemes and more. You can also look into expanding your online presence by blogging, or starting a YouTube channel for your business. Apart from this, you might want to start an email list and offer a free e-book as an incentive to gain new subscribers.

With online marketing, the possibilities are endless. But almost anything you can do to promote your business online starts with a good website, so don’t hurry over the planning without putting thought into it.

Here are some things you’ll want to know before approaching a designer for help with your website:

• Color scheme: Choose a color scheme that fits your business brand and logo.
• Driving sales: Plan carefully how you’ll approach selling your service or product on your website.
• Brand: Think about the look and feel you want. Do you want a vintage look? Or modern and minimalistic? Creating something like a Pinterest board to share with your designer might help here.

Keep It Customer Focused

When planning your website, remember that it’s not about you entirely. It’s about telling customers about your business. With a really good website, potential customers will feel just as excited about working with your business as you feel about getting new customers!

So when planning your business website, think about who your customers are. Try to answer some common questions your customers have and put yourself in a potential customer’s shoes.

As far as you can, aim to be concise and effective when telling customers about your business, but don’t be vague.

Remember, your website is a marketing tool, and in the same way you’d want an advertisement in a local magazine or newspaper to focus on getting new customers, your website should also focus on customer acquisition.

Get Found with Local SEO

No matter how good your website is, you’ll need to attract visitors to your site before you can expect to get customers from it.

For local small to medium sized business, local SEO is one of the best ways to get relevant traffic. SEO is short for search engine optimization. In short, it’s the process of creating a website that can be found in relevant Google searches.

Creating a website that’s optimized for both attracting traffic through Google and converting that traffic to sales for your business can help you get the best results out of your business website.

Not sure where to start? Call Serious SEM today for a free consultation to help you answer all those burning questions!