As a small business owner, your website is one of the most important parts of your brand and of your marketing efforts. Even if you don’t make sales directly on your site, even if you get most of your work from referrals and networking, nearly every prospective customer or client will look you up online and spend time reviewing your website.

Emily Brackett, Founder of Branding Compass, put together a quick video (1 minute) compiling the top three issues in small business websites.

1. Unclear what you do

The most common issue with small business websites, is that it’s not easy to understand what you’re selling, what it is, or how it would benefit me.

It must be immediately clear—with your images and in just a few words—what you do. So most important, make it easy to understand:

  • your product, service or offering
  • who you work with
  • the benefit they can expect

Branding Compass can help you develop your Unique Value Proposition and then turn your UVP into a headline for your website.

2. Too many type styles

Using too many type styles makes your website design look unprofessional. Often, there are too many different fonts, different colored fonts, different sizes, capitalization, centering, left aligned, etc.

Simplify your fonts and choose ones that are easy to read.

Here are some more tips on how to choose and fonts in your branding and marketing and why you should have one set of corporate fonts that you use consistently.

3. Lacks impact

On many small business websites, it’s unclear what the most important thing is that I should look at.

You might have heard your site is busy, it feels unpolished, it lacks white space. These are ways of saying you need to determine the first thing people should know (and then maybe the second or third) and lead them down the page in an easy-to-follow way.

Figure out what’s most important and put that at the top of your page, make it big and bold and even consider repeating it on your site.

Do you need a professional website? Branding Compass can help you with a one-page website, or completely custom WordPress website. Try our free website estimator tool.