Simple Ways to Improve Your Small Business Website Today

Wonderful! You set up a website for your small business. It’s doing well, bringing in regular visitors and sales, but you feel there is more you could be doing to increase your sales. Websites are evolving things and there are always ways to tweak and enhance it.

Making updates to your website doesn’t have to be a complicated process, nor does it have to take months to do. They don’t need to be significant changes either. Minor changes over time can contribute to the overall improvement of the site.  Here are some simple ways to improve your small business website today.

Update your meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are used to describe the contents of your website to visitors and search engines. Typically, they appear in search engine results under your page heading.

Because of this, your meta description plays a vital role in getting people to click through to your website. In a way, these meta descriptions allow you to “advertise” to potential visitors. However, Google has a limit of 160 characters for their meta description. Your meta description needs to be descriptive enough to encourage clicks but within the character limits.

A good meta description should be descriptive, incorporate keywords the webpage is targeting, relevant to the page it is describing and different from other pages.

Read more: 7 Things Every Startup Website Should Include

Have clear call to actions

As the name suggests, call to actions are the prompts on your website that encourage your visitor to do some sort of action. The clearer they are, the more likely you will see your desired results. Your call to action doesn’t necessarily have to be to make a purchase. It could be something smaller like following you on social media or signing up for a newsletter, allowing you to build up your potential leads.

Switch up your images

Attractive images are what capture visitor’s attention – especially if they’re just doing a quick scroll through your website. They do more to sell your product or service than just words. You’ll want to ensure that your images are well lit, in focus, and highlights your product or service. On product pages, consider adding multiple photos for your products showcasing them from different angles and use scenarios. In addition to images, you can also add a video showing your product in action.

Update your content

When was the last time you updated the content on your website? One of the most important aspects of maintaining a small business website is ensuring your content is updated. Maybe you’ve discontinued a product and having new items to offer or perhaps you have new hours. Your customers go to your website looking for this information.

Alternatively, you can also update your content to increase sales or any other actions you want your visitors to make. Maybe you’re unhappy with the number of sales a particular item is getting – now is the time to make adjustments to your copy to try and improve it.

Tell your story

Visitors want to know the people behind a small business before they will want to buy from you. What makes you different from all the other businesses doing something similar? One way to build this trust is to be transparent about yourself and the team running the business.

Read more: 8 Things to Include To Make a Brilliant Company About Page

Add customer testimonials

Social proof is one of the most important things people look at when making a purchase online. It adds credibility and builds trust in your product, encouraging visitors to make a purchase. If you don’t already have testimonials on your website, now is the time to add them.

Sprinkle your customer testimonials throughout your website – not hidden away on a testimonial page. Add relevant testimonials to your pages. If you have a great review of one particular product, consider putting it on the product page or if someone is raving about your company in general, that would be a good fit for your homepage.

Simplify your website navigation

Simple navigation is essential for your small business website. If your customer can’t easily find the product or service they’re looking for, they’re going to leave your website. Navigation menus should have simple and straightforward headings so visitors know exactly what to expect when they click on the link. It may also be helpful to have a search function for visitors as well.

Improve the mobile experience

Phones are being used for everything these days and doing your shopping on one is standard practice. You want to make sure your website is well equipped to provide a seamless experience for your visitor regardless of what device they’re using.

Read more: 6 Things Small Business Can Do Now to Prepare for Black Friday

Links

Keep visitors on your website by including internal links to other pages on your website. Add internal links wherever it may be helpful to your visitors. For example, on a services page, you can link to your contact page so they can get in touch with you or you can include related product options. Links that go nowhere are bad for SEO and overall user experience, so it is essential to remove those.

Great websites are always a work in progress. Pick one or two of the above simple ways to improve your small business website to tackle today. Work on another in a month. Make a habit of adjusting your website every so often to adapt to your changing marketing efforts and customer needs.