One of the most important marketing tips for startups is to spend as much money as possible creating an optimized business website. It only takes 50 milliseconds for a potential customer to form an opinion about a website. That first look decides whether they like it, whether they’ll stay and whether or not they will purchase from you.
Pump up the homepage
Since your home page is where customers get their first impression of you, it is where the most attention should be focused.
Your header and navigation are where your value propositions, such as free shipping and quantity discount policies should be. Don’t hide your contact information. Build trust by providing your phone number and trust badges up front.
Display the categories of products you offer on the first page. Build them using customer’s requirements. For example, a clothing site could organize their categories by gender, type, size, and color.
Incorporate conversion improvement resources
Similar to how shopkeepers want to maximize the number of people entering the store who make a purchase, most businesses want their website to persuade as many customers as possible. While the design of the website itself and the quality of the product or service provided by the business are the central drivers for good conversion rates, added boosts are recommended.
The use of exit intent technology and other methods of encouraging visitors to act will serve to improve conversion rates of a business website. These tactics sometimes lead to short-term developments – generating a sale at the moment – but in many cases it’s a long-game effort built on establishing an email connection with website visitors. Over time, these efforts combine into noticeable conversion increases.
Provide easy and clear navigation
If your customers can’t find the product they are interested in quickly, they will leave the site. Set up your navigation so that it is simple to follow and leads to specific items in just a few clicks.
Top drop-down menu bars on the front page for main category types and prominent sidebar menus that lead to customer-specific requirements make it easy for your customers to get to what they need. This should be available on every page, if possible.
Don’t forget to provide “back” and “home” buttons so they can easily return to something they previously viewed. There is nothing more frustrating than being stuck on a page with nowhere to go. Also, provide a prominent button for purchase.
Make your site mobile friendly
Another of the important marketing tips for startups is to cater to the mobile crowd of consumers. Use responsive design to make your site easily viewed on different-sized devices. Make use of flexible images and flexible layouts.
Remember that font size and button size are important on mobile devices. Your font size should be at least 14px for the main content, but you can go down to 12px for forms and labels. Buttons should be as big as possible to reduce the chance your customer will hit the wrong button or miss the button altogether. A good guideline is to make buttons at least 44px by 44px.
High-resolution images are important to ensure an exceptional experience for your viewers. Extremely high-resolution images help avoid blurry or pixelated images on retina-quality screens.
At the bottom of your site, include “view desktop version” and “go to full website” options to give your viewers more options. Some people prefer browsing a full website, so don’t bar them from that experience.
Never stop testing your website
Test your website on all types of browsers, not just the most popular ones. Test it on all three mobile operating systems. Test every page, every action, every button. Then test it a second and third time. Last, have someone test the site who wasn’t involved in the design. Don’t unleash the website onto the world until you are sure it works as it should to draw in customers and create sales.
In today’s world, an optimized business website is one of the most important elements of your startup. Your website represents who you and your company are on the web. A well-designed, mobile-friendly website can make a major difference in your ability to build a customer base, so make it a priority.