A great web design is more than just an on-line brochure. For many small businesses, your website is the only store-front your customers will experience. Are you ready for visitors?  Make sure your web design makes guests feel welcome.

Here are a few suggestions to improve your visitors experience.

Be a Good Host

Before you tell visitors about your expertise, great service, smart employees, etc. take the time to prove you understand their needs, desires, and challenges. Lead with copy demonstrating to the reader they are in the right place:

“If you are a small business owner struggling to balance, etc.” or “Are you looking for, etc.”

What else should be on your home page? Consider including a “What’s New” section. By keeping this content fresh, with links to press releases, new white papers, articles and resources visitors have a reason to come back. Be sure you change this frequently!  This is where a blog can be invaluable.  While your core content doesn’t change, new blog posts feature relevant, key word rich information for search engines, and information that is interesting to real people as well.

Put Things Where They Belong

Often Web Site navigation is organized logically, from the company perspective “products,” “services,” “solutions,” etc. grouped together. Consider instead a flow based on user groups or customer challenges:

• Are you a Homeowners, builder or contractor?
• Want lower taxes? Or Planning for your Retirement?

And while you are organizing you content, get rid of the testimonials page! Don’t get rid of the testimonials, it is very valuable to have satisfied customers talk about you. Just get rid of the page, and insert testimonials and links to case studies on each page.

Share What You Know

When you add content such as relevant news, how- to instructions, helpful guides, industry reports, and links to other sties, you give visitors a reason to come back. And while they are visiting, the will be exposed to your company messages as well.

Make sure it is easy to access the content, with simple download procedures and printer friendly pages. Be sure all downloads include company logos and contact information.

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Need help getting your web site in shape? Contact Roundpeg, an Indianapolis Web Design Firm