How to Get Small Business Website Design

Every business needs a website nowadays. But how to build your website? And what’s the best way to get your small business website design? We have the answers!

Wondering why small business owners hire web designers? Because their businesses can’t survive without a website and professional design. 

It used to be a case of getting out in the street, and finding the nearest place that  is of interest, whether it's a bakery, cafe, shop, or something else. Nowadays, people usually google their interest and only then decide to visit the brick-and-mortar shop. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a vital role in helping clients discover small businesses. However, website design also impacts your search engine rankings. 

In this post, we’ll cover the characteristics of a good web design, along with some examples of small business websites. We’ll finish off by comparing different options for getting website design for small business owners. 

What makes a good website? 

There’s a solid reason why small business owners hire website designers - they probably know very little about web design themselves.

And while there’s absolutely no need for you to know the ropes of web design, it’s useful to understand what makes a website effective. 

So how to design a website for a small business? Here are a few vital elements you need to think about.

Simple navigation 

Although website design for small business brands is highly important, functionality always comes first. Make it easy and intuitive for users to interact with your website. 

Bennet Tea is a great example of a small business website. Thei homepage has. You’ll also find a navbar with just 3 sections: Tea Shop, About Us and Contact. Remember that simplicity is the key for a good user experience, and make it dead-simple for potential customers to find what they are looking for.

Clear CTAs

For brick-and-mortar businesses, a CTA button should take customers to the Contact page, so they can see the location of your shop.If you sell products online, your CTA button will lead either to the products page of checkout. 

Good Vibes is a great example of small business website design with two CTA buttons. For customers already familiar with your product, you can use a shop now button to move them down the sales funnel fast. The second, About button is meant to provide additional information and get potential customers interested.

Mobile-responsiveness

Close to 60% of the world’s internet traffic comes from mobile devices. So, ensure your customers have a seamless experience on mobile, and can learn everything they need to know about your business. 

Partake has a gorgeous website design and the display on mobile also works perfectly. This is especially important when you have seasonal promotions as non-optimized mobile displays can become cluttered easily.

‍

‍

Legible fonts

If you want people to read your content, a reader-friendly web font is a must. You can use slightly more decorative typography for headings, while legible sans-serif fonts are preferred for body text.

You can see how Livso combines several fonts, but each section (promotion banner, heading, body text, even text on the product packaging) is perfectly legible.

‍

Testimonials

One of the biggest challenges for a small business is building a loyal client base. So, a local business website design needs to create a strong sense of trust and community.

This example for a handyman website has a really simple and sweet testimonials section. Small businesses usually don’t have access to a big digital marketing team and expensive video production to create flashy customer testimonials. 

However, a genuine quote from one of your customers, and maybe a high-quality image if applicable can be more than enough.

‍

‍

A user-friendly online store

Not all small businesses dabble in ecommerce. But if you do, there are a few simple rules that you must follow to ensure your ecommerce site performs:

• Provide a simple checkout system (avoid mandatory account creation).
• Offer multiple payment options.
• Use plenty of white space on your products page.
• Create a user-friendly search and filter option.
• Make all shipping and additional costs transparent.

Sophie Ratner has a wonderful products page that features high-quality product shots. But if you hover over them you can also see how this custom jewelry looks in real life, which helps with understanding size and scale.

‍

‍

‍

‍

How to make a small business website?

Hopefully these examples of small business websites give you plenty of food for thought. But how can you create a website of your own? Here are the steps to follow.

Choose a domain name and pay for hosting

A website is usually a part of a bigger business strategy. So in case you’ve already chosen your brand name, you should ensure whether there’s an available domain that fits. You can check out free domains at:

• Name.com
• GoDaddy
• Namecheap

If your preferred domain is not available, you can always try a different extension (e.g. use .co instead of .com).

Find a website builder

If you don’t want to hire a web developer, you’ll need to find a platform that does this for you. Note that many popular website builders also offer integrated hosting solutions.

There are numerous free website builders, howevr you usually have to purchase one of the paid plans in order to have a custom domain, and make use of advanced functionalities, such as ecommerce, design customization, social media integration, etc.

Design the site

In the last section we’ll go over some options to get your site professionally designed. However, if you take the DIY route, here are a few things to know.

Platforms such as Wix, Shopify, Instapage, Squarespace and others (most of which support WordPress websites), are popular for a reason: for a small price, you get a large library of design templates and many integrations you can use in your website.

However, plenty of companies use website builders, so you probably won’t end up with the most original site. Still, if functionality is your primary goal, as a small business, a website builder is perfect for your needs and budget. 

Launch and maintain your site

Static websites are a thing of the past. If you want to keep your site at the top of SERPs, you’ll need to update it regularly.

‍Blogging is the most popular and cost-effective way to keep your site SEO-friendly. You should also conduct regular audits and check for any broken links and bugs. Some tools that can help with that are SEMrush, Moz, Ahrefs and Google Analytics.

Where to get a small business website design?

Now that you know how to design a website for a small business, one big question remains: can you do it yourself?

The answer is: yes and no. You can always use a website builder and depending on your budget and design skills create something pretty decent (more on that later).

But remember that a cheap website design for small business brands isn’t always worth it in the long run. 

It goes without saying that creating a website design is time consuming. Moreover, there’s always a risk of ending up with a bad website, and having to redesign the website before long. 

So, here are 4 options for getting a professional website design for small businesses.

In-house web designer

If you are not a startup, chances are you will not have the need to tweak and update your website all the time or change the services as you grow.

That means that, for a small business, hiring an in-house web designer is a waste of resources, as you would only need them for one project, and then they wouldn’t have much work on their hands.

The average salary for a web designer in the USA is more than 56.000 dollars a year, based on Glassdoor’s data. In reality, you would only need a website designer for a month or two for your small business website, so there is no need to strain your budget this much.

Web design agency

A web design agency will take care of your design needs, and can scale up and down based on the complexity of your design.

Web design agencies usually include way more services than just the design, such as SEO copywriting, responsive design, ecommerce features, custom themes and style, domain names, content management systems, etc.

The cost of hiring a web design agency can be anywhere between 3.000 to 100,000 dollars on average for the US market. For the smallest price, you can expect to get just the look and layout of the website.

It definitely won’t be a cheap website for a small business, but a higher level of professionalism and larger scope of services are to be expected.

Freelance website designer

Outsourcing freelancers is an affordable and flexible opportunity for almost any type of one-time project. From web designers to narrators, you can find any kind of freelancer on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr.

You can hire freelancers to take on the full website building process, or just the design portion of it, and discuss the details, time management and scope of work with them.

But, the risk of working with freelancers is the time of delivery, lack of quality assurance and the possibility of a lot of back-and-forth without effective communication.

Essentially, if you can handle managing an outsourced freelance worker, you can have a good and cheap website design for a small business in very little time. However, if you don’t quite understand what you need, it’s better to go for an option that includes management of output and scope of work too.

Unlimited design services

An unlimited graphic design platform instead of a web design agency or company? It might sound unusual, but it is an extremely effective and affordable option.

We’ve already mentioned that freelancers offer affordable website design. But the average cost of a website with a freelancer is still a few thousand dollars.

Unlimited graphic design services allow you to get professional web design for as little as a few hundred dollars! Best of all, the flat-monthly rate also includes other services like, social media design, landing pages, ads, even motion graphics that can improve your online presence!

There are many great unlimited design services out there, but we believe no one compares to ManyPixels. We trust we offer the best quality-speed-price ratio, and have the resources to tackle any type of website design you need!

‍Book a free consultation for a chance to ask us any questions. Or find out more about our small business website design service here.