20 Small Business website features

Websites are a necessity for almost every business whether it is small or big one. But surprisingly half of small business don’t run their own website. For all small businesses, a website is a heart of online marketing. Today online shopping is very common, we easily get various products and services through online orders. If small businesses can make their presence online through their websites, then there is a possibility that they can double their present revenue scale. Here we have tried to present 20 small business website features that every website should have.

1. Domain Name: First thing one small business must do is to secure a good catchy domain name. And make sure it senses your business. Before buying the domain name, check for its availability and try to get a creative domain.
2. Web Hosting: Which Web Hosting, you should choose is the most important decision for any web developer. There are various packages of hosting. Whatever plan suits your requirement you can consider it. In web hosting world, there is no less competition. Every small business wants to grow and achieve new levels of clients with high efficiency, a well-hosted website can help you to do so. When you purchase a good plan from a reputed web hosting company, you can increase traffic and customers on your website. There are several hosting services such as Bluehost, HostGator, SiteGround, and GoDaddy etc. You can select forms of web hosting.



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3. Mobile Responsive: Once you have set up your domain name, now it’s time to build the website and make some big decisions that can increase your customers. Since everyone is aware that 90% of consumers search and surf the web using mobile technology. So, your website design should be mobile-compatible. High traffic is gained through mobile technology (smartphones and tablets) and it is only going to grow among consumers. Therefore, a theme of any website should be responsive to all devices such as Computer, laptop, tab and mobile phones. The demand of consumer market is to surf mobile-friendly websites.
4. About Us: Before buying any product from your website, consumers would like to visit the ‘About Us’ page of your website. To know about your business and work. If they find it reliable only, then they would purchase anything from your website otherwise no. That’s why one should give complete information about themselves in their ‘About Us’ page and all the small business owners should have this important page.
5. Contact Page: It plays a very crucial role for every website. Contact forms serve as a lead-generation tool. According to a research, 66 percent small to medium size businesses websites don’t contain this important page that can increase the potential customers. The major of consumers trusts those websites who have contact forms so that they can contact them to enquire anything.
6. Live Chat: Live chat is also another method of contacting the company. It adds 3 stars to a small business website. As consumers have lots of options available in the market so if you don’t provide them something new and reliable options, they can flee to another website. Live chat is a great option for any website to convert visitors into customers. With this lead-generation tool, visitors can interact with you by asking questions on live chat. It builds rapport with prospects.
7. Social Media Interaction: In today’s business environment, social media is an important factor. Consumers expect to communicate with businesses through social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus. Some sources explore that small businesses websites are less connected with social media platforms. This is an important feature of any small business website.  And in this new modern era, social media platform identity is very important. You can add social media share buttons and link to your company accounts as well.
8. Professional Logo: Logo of any website is an important part of their brand. So one should make sure that it is created professionally and a polished logo should be placed prominently on your website. Use a high-resolution image of the logo, consider featuring it in the upper left corner of your website. Link your logo to home page of your website so that visitors can easily navigate to it.
9. FAQ: Visitors have lots of questions. So what you can do is to gather up the most frequently asked questions into a list and present it on the website with clear and concise answers. It can help several visitors to understand your business. Questions revolving around shipping information, company history, sizing, cancellation or return policies are very frequent and should be added to FAQ (Frequent Asked Questions).
10. Google Map: Provide a logical roadmap to the customers so that they can visit your company or office directly. Using a Google map on your website can improve the efficiency of the business. As it increases the engagement of visitors. You should increase your business revenue by increasing visitor traffic and get interactions by embedding maps into websites and applications. Putting a Google Map on any website is a simple process, you don’t need any special training or programming skills to manage it.
11. Customer Testimony: If people love your services and products then don’t hesitate to get feedbacks from your users and use them to promote yourself. There are numerous ways to integrate testimonials into your website.
    • A complete page dedicated to customer testimonials.
    • Snippets or quotes texts next to the product.
    • One section of the introductory page.
    • The combination of all of the above.

    When you put customer testimonials on your website, it helps visitors to trust your company and products or services. It can give you a hike in your business. You can add customer feedback with their photo and name.

12. Call to Action: Website’s owner always wants to catch the visitor’s attention and to do so what one can do is it to provide Call to Action (CTA) facility on the website. A Call to Action (often abbreviated as CTA) is a piece of an image or text that prompts the visitor to take some sort of action. A website designer can put CTA above the fold which is on the top of a website from where one start scrolls down. Many big brand websites have these features to attract customers.
13. Sign Up Form: Give an option to the visitor to Sign Up on your website. One can access a single account on your website after signing up. The user can enjoy latest products and services through their account. Make sure the Sign Up Form is simple and easy to fill.
14. Blog Page: A small business website also should have a blog page, where they can share news related to their website’s products and services. A blog page is a page where a business company shares their event’s information on regular basis. A blog page should be updated regularly to drive more traffic to your website.
15. Coupon, Discount or Incentive: Customers loves coupons, discounts or incentives. If you offer them discounts or coupons on any service or product they would love to visit your website and refer it to their friends as well. There are several websites in the market who offer coupons, discounts or incentives on international festivals or holidays.
16. Clear and Simple Navigation: Small Business website should make a clear and easy navigation so that there is no reason to leave the website. If you want to sell your product, then let the visitor experience easy navigation and reach all the options one want to see easily. In case you don’t provide clear navigation to the visitors they can get distracted after facing umpteen choices of buttons to click and give up, they can move on to your competitor’s website. A website can easily steal your clients with its simple, clear, easy navigation design.
17. Tagline: A Tagline or punchline is very necessary for any website. A single tagline can become famous among your users, and these days, taglines spread like fire among youth.
18. Balanced and Accurate Content: Avoiding grammatical errors in the content and providing great information in a systematic way, it is helpful to the customers. Visitors don”t have time to spend their precious time in reading long articles of a long web page. So try to make your website”s content informative, precious and crispy. Give it a professional website look. Don’t use double meaning words. Remove unwanted information and products that you don’t product now.
19. Modern Simple Design: Old and too much heavy flash website designs should be left to the past. Since these days no one has time to go through such a trouble. Visitors like simple modern designs. A combination of bright colors is a symbol of happiness and it make a visitor feel nice about a website. Text should be bold and readable. A pleasant-looking website attracts several visitors whereas a dumb, old looking website decreases visitors.
20. Security: Web Security is an important feature of Business websites. If you are selling anything online, then you must have an SSL certificate. It will encrypt communications between your client and you (i.e. a social security number, credit card number details etc.). Since customers, fears of providing such sensitive information to any business website as there”re so much hacking tools and identity theft are present in the web world. GeoTrust, VeriSign and TrustE are a good option to explore.