What Website is Best for Small Businesses?
Whether you’re running a commerce store, a marketing agency, or a restaurant, you need a good, well-designed website to stay ahead of your local competitors.
A proper website will help your company build a solid brand, gather customer info, and advertise your services beyond your locality 24/7.
However, to achieve these things, you must understand what kind of website best suits your small business.
Here are the top five website types that can cater to most small businesses:
1. Homepage Website or General Business Site
The homepage is the front page or cornerstone of any website. So, many businesses that lean on the service side of the market often use a homepage or general business site to showcase their services, offers, and other relevant info to their potential clients.
In a way, it’s similar to e-commerce websites. However, the homepage site focuses more on explaining its services and offers instead of showcasing a bunch of physical products like the e-commerce stores.
You can see these sites taking many forms. It can be an educational site, membership site, portfolio, or other types of site depending on your small business needs.
These websites will introduce the visitors to your business, tell them how it works, generate interest, and slowly persuade them to purchase your company’s services.
If your business offers a limited number of services or specialized products, building a homepage site for your business will be a wise choice.
2. E-commerce Website
If your business sells physical products, you can build an e-commerce store that is a site selling your products online. An e-commerce site will help your company display its products online.
This way, visitors coming to your site can browse every product you sell, find what they are looking for, and buy them at any moment.
A carefully designed e-commerce site should make browsing and shopping online effortless for your potential customers. It should also integrate with your inventory, marketing tools, payment gateways, and logistics with zero hassle.
You also need to ensure that the site is mobile-friendly, easy to navigate, visibly pleasing, and has a fast page loading speed.
Of course, these things make building e-commerce sites more expensive than homepage sites, portfolio sites, or booking sites. However, this type of site will also help you display and sell your products across a vast geographical region.
3. Booking Website
The booking websites are, in a way, similar to the e-commerce sites. However, instead of displaying products, they specialize in showcasing the offers of hospitality businesses like restaurants, hotels, or transportation.
These sites will help your customers book or order things from your company online first, so they can physically visit your store or location to complete the deal.
For example, if you own a hotel, you can help your customers book rooms in advance through your booking site online. And then the customers who booked the rooms can visit your hotel later to enjoy your hospitality.
Similarly, restaurant owners can use booking sites to help their customers book tables online.
So, if your company works in the hospitality industry, you should consult an experienced web design company to build a stunning booking site for your business.
4. Magazine Website
The magazine website is a type of media site that helps educational organizations, magazines, and news businesses publish their magazines or articles online.
These websites usually showcase or publish articles, photos, videos, or research papers of media businesses targeting specific audiences. They usually have a minimalist theme and a balanced layout that make reading or consuming the published content easier.
If you own a local news, magazine, or media business, you should build a magazine website.
5. Blog Website
Almost all businesses need a blog to attract organic visitors who are more likely to become paying customers than the traffic generated through ads. That’s one of the biggest reasons why we have over 600 million blogs today.
No matter what kind of business you have, you must rely on content marketing to improve your website’s SEO ranking. Creating a blog will help you with content marketing, build a loyal follower base, and drive more organic traffic to your main website.
How?
Well, with blogs, you can use multiple different yet related keywords to target a diverse range of audiences who may be interested in your offers.
For example, if you own a gift shop, you can use the following topics to target a diverse range of highly convertible audiences:
- “Best Valentine Gift Ideas”
- “Top Mother’s Day Gift Ideas”
- “Friendship Day Gift Ideas”
- “Meaningful Wedding Gifts”
- “Christmas Gift Ideas for Your Child”
Building a simple homepage website or booking site won’t attract organic customers. That’s why you should build a blog as a part of your main business website to improve your site’s SEO and drive high-quality traffic to your site.
Final Thoughts!
A well-designed website will help you build your small business’s online presence and create a distinct brand. This way, your business won’t be limited to your locality, and you can offer its services across the state, country, and even the globe.
But for that to happen, you need to understand what kind of website suits your business best.
So, don’t be hasty. Consult an experienced web design company to build a website that will help you flourish your business.