From security concerns to workplace culture lessons, here are some of the business blog posts and articles we’ve enjoyed reading lately. Have any to share? Let us know in the comments!
From the archives: Three website tweaks you can make right now
Looking to revamp your small business’ website for the new year? Good news! There are three easy fixes you can make to your website right now.
Why bother tweaking your website? Because in this day and age, the internet is the first place many of your customers will try to find you. It’s becoming more and more difficult to run a successful small business without some sort of internet presence.
Check out our three things you can do right now to help make your website more effective.
12 tips for a great small business website
These days, it’s almost impossible for a small business to be successful without a website. But with all that goes into making a website, how do you know what specific things to look for?
Your small business’ website is how your customers will find you and serves as a major point of interaction with many of them. To help you get the best website experience possible, we asked some entrepreneurs just like you to share their tips for a successful small business website.
Here’s what they told us:
- Design your website to be search engine friendly. If you don’t know how to do this, get help.
- Keep everything up to date.
- Make it easy for customers to get in touch with you. (Oh, and respond promptly when they do!)
- If you’re going to be offering e-commerce, make sure to choose your provider carefully to avoid customer service and security issues.
- Make sure your site is optimized for mobile and different screen sizes.
- Your site should be consistent with your branding and company image.
- If you’re having your webpage designed by a third party, take your time choosing that design agency or person. Check out their previous work and make sure you can all work well together.
- Autoplay videos are annoying for many people. Videos on a site can be great, but it’s better to allow the visitor the control over playing them.
- Test your site! Make sure the links work, the pages load, the text is legible, the colours match, and it’s easy to get around.
- Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities — make sure your website meets WAI’s accessibility standards.
- Be sure your website can handle traffic loads.
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Keep your website relevant, keeping in mind what your visitors will be looking for (hours, services, prices, contact info, etc.). Resist the urge to write too much!
What do you think your fellow entrepreneurs should know about a successful website?
Three website tweaks you can make right now
We’ve talked before about tips for making your small business website as effective as possible. We wanted to keep that theme going and share with you three easy website tweaks you can make right now to increase the strength of this very important marketing tool.
1) Do a quick and basic website functionality check
Are all email links going to live addresses? Do your contact forms work? You can have the world’s most engaging content and an award-winning design, but if your customers can’t get in touch with you, there’s no point.
2) Make it easy for customers to find you
On the internet, time is a precious commodity. Make sure your site has your small business’ name and all the contact info that applies: hours, location, phone number, and/or email address. And put all this info on a page that makes sense and is easily found, either on your home page or on your Contact page. Your customers want to find you – don’t make them click around forever or you could lose their interest.
3) Add calls to action
A call to action is as it sounds – it’s a prompt for website visitors to perform the action you want them to, whether that’s phoning you, filling out a form, or downloading more information. You can do this on each page, and it can take the form of a “Get a quote now” link that leads to your contact form, or a beautifully-designed button that viewers can click to start a download. This way, your website will do a lot of the work for you in making sales or generating leads.
See? No sweat! Your website is one of your most important marketing tools, so make sure it’s working for you, and not against you.