What Customers Want Out Of Your Small Business Website
We’ve all seen some of the high-scale occasions where a company manages to miss the mark with their target audience. Perhaps it was a tone-deaf statement made by a prominent figure, or a marketing campaign that comes across as cringe-worthy rather than relatable. When most of these stories hit the headlines, we have a good laugh, the company goes back to the drawing board, and things move on.
However, when such a thing happens on a smaller scale, the stakes can be a lot higher. Small businesses that fail to capture a target audience or alienate one they have, they rarely get to go back to the drawing board. Instead, they just go out of business. This means you want to make sure you always know what your customers want, and have a website that communicates those values.
For starters, there are going be some universal pieces that every business website should have. Missing these just makes your site look incomplete in the eyes of your average customer. Make sure that you have, clearly displayed, things like:
- Contact information
- A business address
- An “About us” page, ideally personalized to give an idea about your company history and staff
- Social media links
- Relevant content
This last point can shift based on your situation. With this said, a good example may be pricing if you are offering some sort of service. If it’s hard to give a proper set of pricing based on your service (like a plumber, for example) be sure that you take the time to explain this, and maybe put a link to your contact info so the customer can reach out to you for more personalized pricing information.
Other things that your customer may be looking for are less in the content and more in the design. For example, mobile browsing is starting to overtake desktop browsing for a lot of demographics, so you’re going to want to be sure that your site is optimized and responsible for any mobile devices. This may mean making some changes, like cutting down on large image files and the like, but it’s worth it. If it helps, you should prioritize navigation and simplicity over visual appeal, as people are more likely to associate a simple website with beauty in the first place.
Chances are that in the process of building up your own small business, you’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what your customers want out of your service. A person running a daycare knows parents want to feel their children are safe and attended to. Someone in hospitality knows that customers want quick response and communication to anything that arises. It can be difficult to translate those values into a website if you’re not tech-savvy, though. This is why you may want to bring a web design service into the fold. They will make sure that your customers can get any information they need, showing that you always have them in mind.
