There are 3 things I believe are a great thing to do for most small business websites. We will be releasing some research on these things in the coming months but for now here are 3 tips for every small business website.

1. OPEN HOUSE

2.  There are 3 things I believe are a great thing to do for
most small business websites.
 We will be releasing some research on these things in the
coming months but for now here are 3 tips for every
small business website.

3. 

The Heading – Stop Them
Skimming and Start Them
Reading
If you can, try to avoid generic boring headings.
Ask a question or state what makes you different, or say something
surprising or interesting.
 Requires a bit of thought and also you need to consider how long it
will remain useful and how long it will last. See our main site for an
example http://www.webcircle.com.au/. Our heading is “Web Circle
is a progressive agency with a relentless drive” to discover and
implement.
 Stop them skimming and start them reading and that way they might
stay in your site long enough to actually learn what you do.

4. The Welcome Message
You might not have a big welcome message – like in our case we
have a heading that covers the basics of the welcome message and
then we have the about us section further down.
 There are 2 other things you must include:
1.
what makes you different
2.
a call to action
1. Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), competitive advantage or
various other consultant buzzwords. It’s important to say what you
do
2. What do you want them to do? Make it clear both in words and
visually where the visitor has to go next.


5. Personalisation

When you are thinking through what makes your business
different, will find that it is them that make the business unique. It’s
the personal relationship they have with clients. It’s their story, their
history, their unique blend of skills.
 People generally respond a lot better to a personal welcome message
with images of real people.
 People love stories – they love success stories and small businesses
love working with other small businesses.
 That’s for my boring web design business! Imagine if my story
actually was interesting! This is an easy way to separate yourself
from other competitors because most people don’t do it.

6. Bringing It All Together

We recently built a site for Act2 Solutions who sell Actuarial
Certificates. See this post for some info on the site.
 It includes an engaging heading that states exactly what they do (and
how they are different – i.e. they are cheap), a welcome message that
focuses on how they are different, personalisation by using pictures of
Andy and a call to action telling people to download the forms.
 We will be posting back with some more evidence on how the
performance of this site compared to it’s predecessor in the next little
while but suffice to say that it works.