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6 Pages That Every Small Business Website Should Have

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1. Home Page
Obvi­ously every site has a home page, but what should you include on your home page? And what should you save for another page?

A good home page includes a brief overview about what your com­pany does and/or the prod­ucts you offer, com­pelling imagery speak­ing to your ser­vices and/or prod­ucts, and con­tact infor­ma­tion (your phone num­ber if you want cus­tomers to call and/or your address if you have a retail location).

You also want to add some spe­cific direc­tion for the viewer — what do you want them to do? Call you for a free quote? Sign up for you use­ful newslet­ter? Shop your store? Giv­ing your viewer clear direc­tion with easy lan­guage will help them nav­i­gate through the site and get the response you want.

2. About
Your About page is where you’ll go more in depth about the com­pany and/or the own­ers. This the place where you get to tell the company’s story. It might include your Mis­sion State­ment, the Company’s His­tory and/or owner’s Bios.

3. Prod­ucts
If you sell or man­u­fac­turer a prod­uct, you need a prod­ucts page. You don’t have to show every­thing you offer, but you should show the range of your products.

Depend­ing on how many SKUs you have, you can either list out prod­ucts by cat­e­gory, show your entire prod­uct line, or just high­light a few items.

Be sure to include images of your prod­ucts and logos of well-known, key brands that you carry.

4. Ser­vices
If you offer ser­vices, with or with­out prod­ucts, your Ser­vices page is the place to list them. I usu­ally rec­om­mend a brief para­graph about each for the top 3–5 ser­vices you offer. Addi­tional ser­vices can be listed out in bul­let form.

Be sure to let peo­ple know what sets you apart from the com­pe­ti­tion. Do you offer a bet­ter price or a bet­ter value? Higher qual­ity work­man­ship? More expe­ri­ence to do the job right?

5. Tes­ti­mo­ni­als
Tes­ti­mo­ni­als help build trust with your poten­tial cus­tomers or clients. If you don’t have any, ask your best clients for them. Then include them on your site. If you’re busi­ness is on Yelp, include a link to Yelp as well.

6. Con­tact
While I rec­om­mend your phone num­ber and/or your address on your home page (and pos­si­bly every page), your Con­tact Page is the place to include all your con­tact infor­ma­tion. You should include your phone number(s), your address, a map that links to dri­ving direc­tions, your hours of oper­a­tion and an email form.

I gen­er­ally advise against list­ing email addresses since bots spi­der the inter­net search­ing for email addresses to sell to spammers.

The 7th Page: Your Blog
If you can write, you should blog. If you can’t write, you should hire a ghost blogger.

Blog­ging gives you the oppor­tu­nity to illus­trate your exper­tise, to show off your lat­est work, build trust with poten­tial clients and cus­tomers, and to improve your site’s SEO.

I’m Stuck with a Bad Logo — Now What?

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Way back when you started your busi­ness you didn’t have a lot of money, so you cut a few cor­ners on your logo. Either you designed it your­self (and you’re not a designer) or you bought a pre-made logo from one of those $99 logo web­sites or pos­si­bly you hired your cousin’s sister-in-law’s kid ’cause she’s “good at art and stuff”.

What do you do?
Hav­ing a bad logo will def­i­nitely hold you back when you’re look­ing to take your busi­ness to the next level. You may not even real­ize you have a bad logo, but you find that you can’t seem to gain trac­tion with your brand.

There are two approaches to chang­ing your logo, each with their own mer­its and challenges.

The first is to toss the old one and start from scratch. The advan­tage to this approach is you get the strong, tar­geted logo you wanted right away (assum­ing you hired a good designer).

The prob­lem with this is that maybe you have a lot of clients who won’t rec­og­nize you when they see that new, splashy, com­pletely dif­fer­ent logo from the one you had. With this approach, you’ll also need to launch a cam­paign to exist­ing cus­tomers telling them all about your new look. And depend­ing on what you offer, you may need to reas­sure them with copy like, “brand new look, same great service.”

Depend­ing on how big your com­pany is or if your reach is wide, this could be an expen­sive endeavor. You might need to send a printed direct mail piece in advance let­ting them know about the upcom­ing change, and fol­low up with a sec­ond after the launch. You’ll want to announce it in emails and on your web­site and on your Face­book page if you have one. You might even need to include new tv and radio spots, if you’ve adver­tised there in the past.

The sec­ond option is if you have a good idea, but a bad, or dated look­ing exe­cu­tion. You can evolve this type of logo over time, mak­ing small changes over the course of a year or sev­eral years. This solu­tion doesn’t require the big announce­ment and expense of the first option, but it requires patience and an ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with your designer.

When is a bad logo a good thing
Does your logo look dated and cheap? If you’re in the dis­count busi­ness, or sell cheap prod­ucts, a bad, dated logo can actu­ally help you. That’s because it’s con­vey­ing just how cheap you are, which is what we call a sell­ing feature.

Ulti­mately, you don’t have to put up with a bad logo. The sooner you change it the sooner you can start build­ing and posi­tion­ing your brand exactly where you want it.

Is Your Website Keeping Pace With Your Business?

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As your busi­ness grows and evolves, so should your web­site. The site you put up 5 or even 2 years ago may not reflect what you’re com­pany is doing today.

When I first began build­ing web­sites, I was keen on a sta­tic page that would look and feel like a print piece. But unlike print pieces, web­sites are around for a long time. And if you aren’t a large com­pany with a full time web team, it might be dif­fi­cult to keep your web­site on pace with­out spend­ing a lot of money. Today I forgo tra­di­tional web­site build­ing tools for web plat­forms like Word­Press and Ning, that let com­pa­nies add and delete fea­tures eas­ily and seam­lessly as busi­ness requires, sav­ing them both time and money.

Don’t know if your web­site is keep­ing pace? If you don’t know, it prob­a­bly isn’t. Take this quiz to see if you need to update your website:

Does your con­tent reflect the prod­ucts or ser­vices your busi­ness offers?

Are you uti­liz­ing tools that let you keep in touch with and engage your customers?

Are the images cur­rent and fresh?

Do your graph­ics reflect the tastes of your tar­get cus­tomer or client?

Can poten­tial cus­tomers find your site via Google and other major search engines?

If you answered no to any of these ques­tions, then it’s time to get cur­rent with your web­site. At Shim­min Design, we can help you move your site to a plat­form that will keep pace and evolve as both tech­nol­ogy and your com­pany evolves. We can inte­grate tools that will help you stay in touch with clients and poten­tial cus­tomers, show off your lat­est accom­plish­ments, share media, and so much more. Con­tact us today for a free esti­mate, or to get started.