As a small business owner, you face some staggering competition. After all, the US alone is home to more than 30 million small businesses.

Granted, you don’t compete with all of them. Your competition isn’t exclusively the other businesses in your neighborhood or city anymore. Businesses from across the nation compete on the Internet in an increasingly digital marketplace.

That means your website plays an increasingly important role in your business success and must employ the unique elements of small business website design. Of course, it’s not so much that your site must do different things, but it must do them better than the websites of more established brands.

Headline

Too many businesses treat the headline on their website as an afterthought. You shouldn’t. With the possible exception of your business name, it’s one of the first things your visitors see.

That headline should communicate your business promise. In other words, it must show visitors automatically that you comprehend what they need from your business.

Let’s say that you’re a contractor who specializes in houses. A headline like, “Building your dream,” tells customers exactly what you’re about.

Video and Animation

Small businesses have no excuse for not taking advantage of video and animation.  You can get excellent camera equipment at moderate prices and editing tools on demand. Plus, there are numerous companies providing animation at reasonable prices.

People like video and animation. Deploying it across your site encourages visitors to stay and interact with your content.

The longer visitors stay on your site, the better your chance of forming the foundation of trust that drives future sales. You should minimally use video on your homepage.

If it’s applicable, drop some video on your services/product pages as well. Seeing a product or service in action helps cement that necessary trust. 

Speed

Huge websites where a visitor has an established account or a pressing need might receive a little slack if the site takes a little while to load. On the whole, though, website visitors don’t show much patience. In fact, you can wave goodbye to around 40% of visitors if your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Fortunately, you aren’t without some power to fix a slow loading site. You can remove images or reduce image size, for example. You can also remove site-slowing plugins.

Websites that employ responsive design load faster on mobile devices, where more than half of consumer web traffic goes.

Parting Thoughts on Small Business Website Design

Good small business website design is all about doing a few key things better than more established brands.

You need a compelling headline that tells visitors exactly what you’ll do for them. Even better, use video that shows them what pain points you solve right on the homepage. Your site must also load fast, preferably in under two seconds.

All My Web Needs specializes in building websites and marketing services for small businesses. For more information about our web design or marketing services, contact us today