Small Business Website Design

Small business website design Orange County

Welcome to the small business website design orange county page.

Are you searching for small business website design in Orange County?
Well, it so happens that I do strategic small business website design in Orange County. North Orange County to be exact. I just could be the North OC web designer you’re looking for.

When it comes to small business website design in Orange County, we’ve got you covered.

In this article we’ll look at some of the technical aspects of a small business website. You will get different opinions on what aspects of a website are most important depending on the designer you talk to. However, there are some general guidelines and best practices for how a website should perform.

I do have a special page telling more about small business website design in Orange County. I primarily talk about websites and marketing in North Orange County, California.

To learn more you can also call me at:

(562) 423-1691

What should a small business website include?

The technical aspects of small business website design is an essential part of building an easy to use, ready for marketing, and SEO friendly online presence. The technical properties of a website involve building into the site functionality while maintaining a visually appealing look. On top of this, it needs to be both user-friendly as well as friendly to search engines and other technology.

Some of the technical aspects that go into creating a good small business website include:

• Consistent messaging and using well written English. Bonus points for being SEO friendly.
• Security
• Accessibility
• A responsive design
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Intuitive navigation
• Analytics
• Fast loading
• Scalability

All of these elements work in unison making the whole website greater than the sum of its parts.

Consistent messaging and using well written English.

Your website’s messaging has a few key underlying purposes that drive design.
Who is your website for, how do you help them, and what is the website’s purpose? This information is useful when crafting a website that communicates to a certain segment of the market.

A good small business website should have clearly understood messaging that communicates the business’s value proposition and unique selling points. A website should also have the flow and grammar of Standard English. On top of the previous points, the messaging needs to be consistent throughout the site. If the homepage says one thing and the interior pages are contradicting, it’s hard to understand what the business does.

Small business websites need to have consistent messaging written in normal English.
Not Filipino English, Not Indian English, and as of mid 2023 no ChatGTP English. Although the Chat LLMs will soon be good enough to use. I predict that before the end of 2023 it will be good enough.

Clear messaging helps your customers understand more about your business and how you can help them. It clarifies who you are and what you do. There should be a general cohesiveness between pages and tone of the site. Keep the message consistent to make your offer clear. Consistency reduces the effort needed to understand what your website and business is about. Including what you do, how you are different, and why they should buy from you.

Consistent messaging can be achieved through effective copywriting and the use of complementing visual elements. The visual elements include fonts, colors, logo, and the site’s general look and design. Then comes the more obvious visual element like photos, graphics, and video.

Consistency is an important part of branding. Use the same fonts, colors, and look throughout your site. The look needs to tie all your marketing material together. You want to build a brand image. It helps if your brand image is memorable. Too many times I’ve gone to meetings and heard multiple presentations, upon leaving I Can’t remember the name of the speaker or what company they were from. Their branding was not very memorable.

To be remarkable, your business needs a brand voice. What should the brand script say? It’s not all about you, but it is about how you communicate. You need to be the Jedi knight whose job is to help your customers be the heroes of the universe. That’s right, your messaging is all about how your business can help your customers get what they want. While your business narrative is important, it’s not only about your business’s narrative. The important part of your business narrative is that it tells how your story helps your customers become the hero in their own life movie?

Your business narrative has many compartments and is made of many parts. Metaphorically we can think of these as clusters or constellations of behaviors held together by commitments, attitudes, beliefs, emotions, and personality traits. Personal traits of key management and staff are a big part of small business. How these same behavioral traits dynamically interact, also affect the office politics of medium and larger businesses, which ultimately affects business outcomes.

An Individual’s life narrative is made of the rituals and day to day rhythms that lead days into months and months into years. Businesses have narratives that follow day in and day out rituals that carry it through the years. There is a rhythm to ascending and there is a rhythm to descending, to growth and to decay, to becoming and to being.

One of our services is helping business owners and professionals develop new habits that support marketing and sales. Habits makeup the rhythms and rituals that account for about 40 percent of human behavior. All business narratives are built upon human behavior.

Your Small Business website build is a group effort.

It takes a team. Even if that team is only me and you. I can’t do your website build without your help. You are the expert about your business. You know who you serve, what your capabilities are, as well as what your short term and long term goals are. You may also have ideas on how you want to reach your ideal customers, although I will also have some suggestions.

Security

Security Is next on the list. A small business website needs to be secure. A hacked website is not good for a company’s brand image and it can erode trust. Every modern website needs an SSL certificate. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. The purpose of an SSL is to authenticate the website and encrypt the connection between the web server and a visitor’s device, usually through a browser. Both using an SSL certificate and a firewall can help mitigate security threats to users and help keep the website safe.

Another important part of website security is software updates. This is part of maintaining a website. Vulnerabilities are constantly found and they are also patched on a regular basis. Patches and updates need to be implemented as they are made available. Sometimes it makes more sense to test the updates before applying them. This is most often necessary for more complex websites. To keep your business website running smoothly you will need some type of maintenance system in place. Maintenance is part of my support and growth services.

Accessible

Accessibility is becoming more important for small business websites and is a metric in the Google Lighthouse audit/report. Google Lighthouse is an open-source automated tool for testing and then improving the quality of web pages. You will notice in my WordPress build, overview, and tutorial videos I pay quite a bit of attention to the Google Lighthouse accessibility audit. For small businesses this may be more important than a high SEO ranking in the Google Lighthouse audit.

Responsive web design.

All websites now need to be Responsive. A responsive website is one that adjusts to the screen size of the viewer’s device. This means they respond or adjust from desktops, to laptops, to tablets, and to mobile devices in a graceful way. In other words they look good and are easy to use on all devices. This is an important feature because more than half of all website visits are now from mobile devices.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Web design for a small business website needs to be built for Search engine optimization (SEO.) Many of the technical aspects of SEO are covered by developing the other essential web design elements talked about in this article.

While good site structure is the foundation for good SEO, it takes more than good site structure to get first page ranking. Getting on the first page of Google SERPS usually involves a considerable amount of additional work. However, it is usually easier to get first page Google ranking by doing local search SEO.

Well-structured and Intuitive navigation

Intuitive navigation can help a small business website become more functional and also contributes to good SEO. Intuitive navigation makes it easy for users to find the information they’re looking for and should lead them toward making a purchase. Navigation as a design element encourages the user’s journey through a website by organizing the content into logical categories while using clear labeling.

Website Analytics

A small business website should have some type of analytics tool for analyzing user behavior. There are several instances where this information can be useful. First and one of the simplest uses is just to know how many people visit the website and where they are coming from. Analytics can also be used to track marketing campaigns and how users flow through the site. In addition it’s sometimes helpful for identifying the type of content that resonates with users.

Fast loading speed

A website needs to load within a reasonable amount of time. Most people are a bit more forgiving on desktops than on mobile. There are two reasons we need a fast loading site. The first is that it creates a good user experience. A slow loading site will lose visitors before they even see the site. Why you ask? Well, people tend to be impatient and will click away from a site if they have to wait too long to see the content they want. The second reason is one that a lot of people talk about, although it’s not as important, is that it’s a low value ranking factor for search engines. While it may have some impact on your SEO, it is probably not a huge ranking factor. At least if the speed is within reason. This is something to be discussed with your web designer during the discovery phase of the project.

Scalability

A small business website should be designed to scale as the business grows. This is the purpose of a starter website. It starts off modest, with the ability to grow more substantial. We first build a solid foundation. Then over time build out the site while iterating growth concepts as we gain experience with how the site performs.

Most businesses will consider using a content management system or a website builder. I imagine that most new businesses and those looking to update their website will consider using WordPress or one of the proprietary website builders.

I primarily build websites using WordPress as my content management system of choice. If you are in the North Orange County area and looking for a strategic website designer to work with, give me a call. Let’s see if working together makes sense. I can do the web work so you don’t have to.