Websites For Local Businesses - A How To Guide

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With the digital age in full swing, your local business may not be thriving quite as much as it used to be. From 2020 onwards, technology and the online world saw growth and development at a rate unlike anything in the past, making websites the new key to driving sales and gaining new customers.

In fact, digital advertising/ marketing is said to reach over 60% of global adspend this year, with social media taking up over half of that! Now, on paper, making a website for your local business sounds easy right? Well, that’s true if you understand the fundamentals of web design and know a thing or two about the backend and SEO etc. If this isn’t the case, it can be tricky, but fear not! Sleeky have you covered with a short guide of what you should include in your local business’ new website, using our friends over at Urban Concept Hair as an example!

Relevancy is Key

The very first step to making your website is to establish a domain. Your domain name should be relevant and memorable, keep it short and sweet to avoid confusion with recurring visitors.

Relevancy is a crucial concept with web design, this feat applies throughout all of your text, links and imagery, practically every piece of content placed on your website should be relevant to you in some way. Looking at Urban Concept, their domain is short and punchy (www.uchair.co.uk), and throughout their page you can see all of their own imagery, with relevant products and services to match.

Make the Important Things Obvious

Anything you think would be important to driving a sale or providing information to a user, don’t let it hide away. Using feature text and graphics to highlight certain areas of your page can be the difference between an uninterested user and an engaged one. This also should apply to things like your addresses and contact information, basically anything you would want the user to see, help them see it!

Make Your UI Interesting and Engaging

Whilst relevancy is the key thing to consider when looking at your content plan, it can be rather counter-productive if your content is relevant but boring! Don’t put people off your service with poor-quality imagery and Comic Sans.

Sleek functionality, along with some implements of colour and nice imagery, will make your site much more user friendly. Afterall, the purpose of your website is to push for more customers and engagement, not put them off! Urban Concept stick to a bit of a blank colour scheme on their site, but their imagery provides splashes of pastel colours that stay consistent throughout all their pages.

SEO

SEO is the powerhouse for all websites, the thing that brings in all the traffic from search queries, this is no different for your local business. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of SEO, you can check our other blog – How SEO Works. A solid SEO strategy can be the difference between your website showing up on the first page of Google, and the last! Here are a few key things to consider:

Keyword Research, Ranking and Analysis
Optimise Your Websites Performance (Resize Imagery, Reduce Loading Times)
Internal Links

The Wrap Up

Making your first website can be a tough job, don’t do it alone! Sleeky love to get involved in projects, all shapes and sizes, whether you just need a helping hand or the whole project – We’ll work something out! Get in touch.

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