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For business owners, a website is their online headquarters—a hub of information that represents their brand, values, and mission.
For small business owners—roughly defined as business owners with fewer than 50 employees—a well-designed, well-written website is even more crucial. It's the place where prospective clients and established customers alike can learn more about your business and get the information they need to make a decision about a purchase or service. An effective small business website helps you establish a brand and online presence, build relationships, and lay the groundwork for growth.
Read on for tips on thinking through your website design, creating a robust and relevant contact page, your own blogging strategy, search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, and how often to update your website copy.
Creating a high-quality small business website
For small businesses, starting a website is an invaluable step toward building relationships with potential customers or clients and establishing an online brand and presence. Unsurprisingly, website design tips for small business owners change depending on the kind of business you have.
Some entrepreneurs provide services, like creative work, tutoring, or accounting. In these cases, showcasing work using a portfolio-style website makes sense. Other businesses sell goods (e.g., art prints, photographs). For these entrepreneurs, ecommerce tools are key. Still other businesses, like an independent coffee shop, will have a brick-and-mortar location. Their websites need to include contact information such as an address and hours of operation.
Identifying your website goals—what takeaways you want visitors to have or actions they should take on your site—is a good first step. These goals will dictate everything from the kinds of web pages you create to your copy and SEO strategy. To stay organized and not lose sight of your goals, it helps to make a checklist of items to keep in mind as you plan your website.
The top of your checklist will likely include deciding what pages your website should have—for example, a contact page and an about page—as well as sorting through the information you want on the homepage and in the header and footer. Some businesses will also need to include additional industry-specific pages (e.g., a menu, store locations, or client testimonials). Answering these questions will also help dictate how complicated your content strategy will be.
Having this detailed blueprint for your website design and language will make creating a great website go more smoothly. Among other things, it can make it easier for you to choose a website template and explore design and customization options. Squarespace's template library is a good starting point for your web design because the templates are easy to implement and can be customized for your specific business needs.
Designing a website contact page
A contact page is a crucial part of a small business website. Keeping the lines of communication open with customers builds loyalty and strong relationships, two things that help small businesses flourish.
In general, a website contact page should be simple and provide straightforward information about how customers can contact you (e.g., phone number, email address, or contact form) or visit your physical location if you have a brick-and-mortar store. You can specify how you prefer to be contacted and provide useful information like directions, parking details, and social media accounts.
Connecting with customers also includes having other means for them to contact and interact with you. Placing a newsletter block on your homepage and/or contact page gives visitors the option to sign up to receive your email newsletter, which is a great way to open the lines of communication with customers. Small business owners can also add product reviews on their websites, so buyers can provide feedback and rate sales transactions.
Having a website contact page and being open to communication means you might field emails from customers who are unhappy with a transaction or something else about their experience with your business. Outreach like that gives you the opportunity to develop your ability to deal gracefully with challenging situations, which is a crucial skill to have as a small business owner.
Read more about the best things to include on a contact page
Blogging tips for small businesses
Blogs are a great digital marketing tool for small business owners. You can use your blog to share good news, highlight your work, and create content that helps you grow an audience.
Instead of sharing content like thought leadership and client case studies—all popular with large, established businesses—the goal of a small business blog is to build relationships with customers and share new developments. As a result, your content is more likely to focus on business updates—for example, news about business milestones, an event announcement, or the release of a new product—and behind-the-scenes content, like a video tour of a store or an unboxing video.
When writing blogs, it can be helpful to imagine how content might be adapted and shared across multiple communication channels. For example, you could share the summary of a big announcement on your social media platforms, then link out to your blog post to share more details. Small business owners can promote their blog content via newsletters, email marketing, or on their social media accounts.
A blog also gives small business owners an opportunity to use search keyword research to optimize their website for SEO. Writing blogs that include search terms your target audience or customer is looking up will make it easier for new customers or clients to discover you.
Incorporating SEO best practices
SEO is part of the overall online marketing strategy of a small business and can give you a competitive edge. By incorporating high search volume keywords and phrases into your copy, your website can rank higher than other comparable sites on search engine results pages, leading prospective customers to discover your business.
Small business SEO is as much about focusing on the bigger picture—in other words, how your website fits into the internet as a whole—as it is covering the smaller details. For starters, after you launch your website, you'll need to make sure your website is indexed by search engines, meaning it’ll show up in search results. Squarespace takes care of indexing for you, but if you’re having problems, you can make an indexing request yourself.
It’s also necessary to make sure your website design is straightforward and logical—in other words, that the included pages and links are relevant to your business and not broken. Using keywords and phrases in metadata, headers, and URLs is key, especially for local businesses. For small businesses with a physical location, local SEO is a vital way to get noticed in your community because it helps you get discovered by searchers in your area.
As with website design or website copy, small business SEO strategies often need to be adjusted if you don't get the results you want. Search engine algorithms frequently change which content they prioritize, and you might discover unexpected keywords or paths to finding your website that warrant an SEO optimization update.
Read more SEO tips for small businesses
Updating your website
For small business owners, periodically updating your website is an easy way to share business wins and new developments. A website that's frequently refreshed with current information keeps people coming back to visit your site—and can help convert potential clients into loyal customers.
Updating your website on a frequent basis ensures you're sharing accurate information with website visitors. From a relationship-building perspective, this positions you as a business that's trustworthy, dependable, and prioritizes transparency.
Even if you don’t have any new updates to share, it’s worth regularly considering updates you could make to make your website more user-friendly. For example, does the website have a responsive design that shows up well on mobile devices? If you have calls to action (CTAs), are they clear and effective? Do pages have a short load time?
That said, not every website page needs to be updated just for the sake of making an update. When you update your website too often, you run the risk of introducing broken links or inadvertently shifting your website messaging away from your brand’s copy strategy. That's one reason why web development and updates are best done in tandem with a deep dive into analytics.
If you’re already using analytics as a guide to help inform the content you share or products you offer, using metrics to guide any copy refreshes ensures you're making informed choices for your business.