Micro-enterprise website - what to keep in mind?

It's impossible to deny that it's always difficult to start, but setting the right standards at the very beginning will pay off in a few months.

By this, I mean, first of all, what a micro-enterprise website should look like.

Below you will find ten tips in the context of what you need to include in such a site in order for it to bring the desired results.

An effective website for micro-enterprise - 10 tips

1. Take care of your own professional domain name

Short balloon: Your website address of the pattern namefirmy.co.uk will be the best choice in the vast majority of cases.

Moreover, the shorter the address, the better . Such a name is simply convenient, easy to use, easy to pronounce and easy to remember.

Of course, you can consider other endings than '.co.uk' (as well as using a keyword in the address instead of the company name) , but such a choice must be justified by a specific reason.

2. Get good hosting and an SSL certificate

The next step is to bet on the right hosting company. Preferably not one that is well represented in search engines, but one whose quality is confirmed by a number of real reviews.

Do not be fooled by "numbers" that are based on low (or even zero) prices for various services during first year. In the next year and beyond, hosting companies will often make up for this first cycle trick with a higher price.

When choosing the right hosting company, pay attention to the total costs you will incur for the domain, hosting and SSL -certificate within the next few years. Set a specific time frame for yourself, such as five years. On this scale, you get a wider range when it comes to any expense.

3. Provide attractive so-called branding

Branding can be used to describe anything related to your brand name and image:

• company name
• eye-catching and timeless logo
• skillfully chosen colors
• using a consistent style across multiple locations (website, car wrap, business cards, folders, employee t-shirts, etc.).

The basic principle is that it should all be consistent. It will be much easier for people to remember your company, because the elements associated with it will be uniform and will be found in a variety of places.

4. Make the home page useful for visitors

A micro-enterprise website should have a valuable home page.

What does that mean?

Typically, the home page is the part of the site that which most users see at the very beginning.

Its goal is to attract the attention of users, to interest them and let them know that this is where they will find what they are looking for.

Therefore, the main page should be a kind of shorthand for the entire site.It should be a kind of "teaser" of what users will find on other pages.

5. Give users a specific goal

Unfortunately, in many situations we have to be led almost by the hand.

The appearance of a subpage of a product in an online store without a clear and bright "Buy Now" button will not be the same effective as with her.

All this because the key elements of the website just need to be highlighted. They must be correct

• size
• position
• color

This definitely increases the chances that an important element (for example, a button) will not go unnoticed by users.

6. Highlight your so-called USP

USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition.

Basically, the idea is that your micro-business site should clearly indicate to visitors that your company stands out from the crowd. competitors.

Exceptionally fast delivery times? Products created or painted by hand? Interesting package contents? Bonuses that no other company provides? There can be many ideas.

Finding something that sets you apart from your competitors can be a great bait for potential customers.

It is also extremely important to skillfully emphasize this fact on your website.

7. Carefully list and explain all services

Small businesses often make a huge mistake on their websites by only casually mentioning what services they can provide.

Suppose someone offers T-shirts with printing and is not very convenient to post additional information about this on his site.

The difficulty is that visitors will be asked a lot of questions about this:

• What colors do you have in stock? And can you arrange a color that is not on your site? When will the size XXL be available?.
• Can I send you my T-shirt to be printed on?.
• What technique is used to create the print?.
• Can I send you any design file to print? However, does it have to meet any requirements?.

These are, of course, examples, but please note that many of these questions will arise periodically throughout the life of the company and in the absence of information on the site .

Therefore, it is better to describe once and for all what services you provide. All this is done in order, on the one hand, to save time, primarily for ourselves and our clients, and on the other hand, to provide users with information earlier, without forcing them to take an additional action (i.e. contact).

Of course, it is probably not possible to list all the questions in this way, since the questions and problems may vary, but it is certainly worth clarifying at least the main ones.

• FAQ, or section Frequently Asked Questions
• How to present the company's services on the site?

Our two texts above perfectly complement this point.

8.Provide whitespace

The term "white space" is used to describe the free space around various elements of a website.

A micro-enterprise website should be full of them.

Why?

For a long time, web design trends have been moving towards greater usability, minimalism, and clear presentation of information. Contrary to these principles is the constriction of incompetently designed pages.

Free spaces allow the page to "breathe" and ensure that our eyes do not "fly" from place to place, but calmly direct their attention to what is important .

In other words, just keep your company's website up-to-date in terms of usability.

9. Start a blog

There is not much chance that your micro-business will outperform the giants of the industry in Google search for very general phrases of one or two words.

Your competitors have managed to win over this time such a huge position and reputation that without the monstrous amounts you spend on SEO, you simply cannot beat them.

Can you do anything about it?

Yes, but you need to choose a different tactic.

Your chance is to start blogging. However, this step won't be enough if it doesn't involve regularly adding extensive blog posts.

I don't know if you know, but the amount of content on a site matters to search engine bots.

Let's say your site has 3,000 words. You don't have a blog on it. So you decide to support it and determine that every week you will add a new article containing 1000 words.

After a year of hard work, this will give you an astronomical (compared to the previous 3,000 words) figure of 55,000 words.

If each blog post is about a specific, well-defined topic in your industry, it will give you long tail traffic. This means that your site will start to be found in the search engine by people who come to the site by typing not short and general keywords (since they are already taken by the giants of the industry), but more specific, long ones.

There is only one an additional condition - your micro-business site must be perfectly optimized for SEO, as well as all the blog posts you add.

If you stick to this principle (along with the regularity of adding articles and, of course, useful content in them), success sooner or later will come. Yes, you will wait months for it, but you will see that any posts in the statistics will grow.

10. Make your company visible

Finally, there is the question of contact details and those associated with your company.

If your company has no problem publishing in a prominent place:

• TIN and REGON,
• your business address,
• phone number
• e-mail address,

then it becomes much more reliable in the eyes of users.Yes, the look of such data alone cannot completely exclude a potential shoe company, but it cannot be denied that they have a positive effect on the level of trust.

Micro-enterprise website - text summary

As you can see, a micro-enterprise website can be effective. The fact that there have been giants in your industry for many years does not necessarily mean that you are doomed to failure.

The main thing is to take all steps within the framework of a pre-designed plan and just with your head.

I hope you find these ten tips helpful.