Essential Ingredients for Small Business Websites

Businesses that have already invested the time and energy to create a website need to make sure that it is effective. After all, visitors spend an average of only 10-15 seconds on your homepage, so it’s important to maximize that time as much as possible by providing a clear path as to where they should go next.

So how effective is your site? To find out, use this checklist of small business website essentials created by our team here at TruePresence.

1. About Us
Who are you? Include a company overview, history, and background information on management teams.

2. FAQs
Answer the questions most people ask. Ask your employees for input and put up the questions and the answers. This will save time and money by letting clients service themselves. If you don’t think your customers have questions, you’re wrong. If you don’t know what they might ask, ask them to submit questions via a form. As you see repeats, turn them into FAQs.

3. News
A regular update of press releases and/or media hits shows that your company isn’t stale. However, if you can’t update it at least once a month, lose it.

4. Services
Don’t write a book here. Tease your audience and give them a reason to contact you. Provide a breakdown of what your company does and how it is unique. Think of this as an elevator pitch and a corporate summary rolled up in one.

5. Product Info
If you sell a product, feature it and make it easy to locate or buy. Bury the technical details because those who are interested will find it, but those details will only confuse the average consumer. Make this section as striking and promotional as possible. If your company has multiple products, organize them logically from the client’s perspective. For example, by broad category or description (ex: Digital Cameras) rather than model numbers (DLIK-321-G).

6. Contact Info
Make this a main section that is accessible from any page. Repeat your address, email address, and phone number in your footer. Lack of contact information is a common frustration point, especially for visitors who like to pick up a phone.

7. Contact Form
This is important. Your users may be surfing from a public computer, from a hotel lobby laptop, etc. In short, they may not have access to their default email account. The solution is simple: add a form. This also eliminates free-flow text dumps that you will never read. You can structure the inputs, capture only the data you need, and make it easy for users to contact you.

Here’s our best advice for a small business website: make sure your site has a purpose. If it is to simply provide information, do it well. If it is to sell products, make it easy and create a great experience for your customers. Believe us when we say it pays off in the long run.

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