When starting to build a small business website you’ll want to follow some guidelines so that you’ll have a chance at being successful in bringing traffic that’s organically driven.
Design a site that provides insight into every facet you want the user to explore. How do you accomplish this? Start by creating a wire-frame for the site, doing so will save you any headaches when you move on to designing the look and feel of the site.
Every site has a menu section that’s usually located on the top of a site. This menu section isn’t suppose to change from page to page. If you find yourself needing to remind the user where they are then make use of breadcrumbs.
The homepage is the best and probably the only place for you to visually expound on what the site really has to offer. On the homepage you can present all of your navigation and its sub-hierarchy in a friendly way through blurbs and images that preview important subsections.
So let’s say you’re developing a website for a local cookie vendor. The vendor would like you to develop a site that provides baking advice, sells cookies, talks about cookie events in her local area, can talk about her business, and offers a free weekly newsletter. She tells you, “All I really need is like six pages”, you know better though, how is it possible to get much traffic to a site that only has six pages and is targeting a well saturated cookie market.
I immediately see a tremendous opportunity to reach for the top in local rankings, along with possibly ranking well in Google for organic content that can target niche cookie segments.
You can either go the simple route of coughing up a six page website that is geared towards creating merely a simple online presence or develop a website where you’re looking to lay the groundwork as potentially lucrative organic SEO traffic magnet. Users love it when they come across niche websites that really know their stuff. Create six sections on the site that each offer their own organic niche content. This kind of design really allows a small business site to breath and open itself to greater possibilities creatively.
Working closely with the client you can create 20 or more pages that accurately describe all facets of the business and keep you from developing a stagnant SEO site which does nothing but add a line to someones business card.