For many small businesses, the first year or first years of owning a small business are about laying a strong foundation for future success — getting to know your business, your clients, your customers, and refining your processes, procedures, pricing, and more. Following those years, though, it’s common for small business owners to become more mindful of the ways their small businesses could evolve, grow, and scale. We are firm believers in how creating a strong, meaningful foundation for your small business can lead to meaningful growth — that when you master the basics as a small business owner, you create a more solid and long-lasting foundation for growth. Today, we’re sharing 5 ways your web design can help scale your small business.

Scale Your Small Business Through Strategic Web Design

Welcome to Episode 182 of The Brand It, Build It Podcast: Scale Your Small Business Through Strategic Web Design. We often say your web design is more than a place to showcase your products and services, but a first impression your preferred clients and customers can form a meaningful connection with — a roadmap to lead and guide your visitors toward confidently choosing your business. In other words, it’s usually not enough to simply have a website, it’s essential to have a web design rooted in purpose, intention, and service — a space intentionally and strategically designed to help your business grow and thrive. When it comes to creating a web design with scaling your business in mind, where do you begin? Today, we’re sharing how to scale your small business through strategic web design.

1. Pursue a Professionally-Designed Web Design. Whether you choose to hire a professional web designer, or customize a professionally-designed website template, a professionally-designed web design can make all the difference in how your business is perceived. In an increasingly digital and visually-focused world, simply having an online presence to showcase your offerings is no longer enough; instead, having a space strategically-designed with your vision, goals, and audience in mind offers a meaningful and effective path toward growing your small business. We think of your web design as the foundation for your small business. After all, it’s a space to house all of your offerings, to speak to your audience clearly, authentically, and intentionally, and to lay a foundation for future growth. When the foundation of your web design is in place, you give your business the best chance to grow and thrive.
2. Leverage Search Engine Optimization. In Episodes 072, 073, and 074, we journey through The Small Business Owner’s Guide to SEO — sharing misconceptions about Search Engine Optimization and meaningful ways to leverage search engine optimization within your website and beyond. Summed up, Search Engine Optimization is made up of a variety of approaches for increasing your website’s ranking and discoverability for searchers who use major search engines like Google. Having strong SEO is made up of a variety of factors — both within and beyond your website — and your goal is to be listed at or near the top of Google’s search results when someone searches for keywords related to your business. Strong SEO should help grow the quantity of quality visits to your website. Tune into Episodes 072, 073, and 074 for actionable ways to enhance your Search Engine Optimization and scale your business.
3. Engage Your Audience. A committed, involved, and engaged audience can help you to foster connection and community within your business. When you do so, not only do you create a welcoming space your past clients and customers connect with and care about, but you also create an opportunity for past clients and customers to return to your business when new products and services are offered. Creating consistently-branded content, creating opportunities for your clients and customers to connect with you, and fostering connection and community through an engaging web design can help you lay the groundwork for fostering a committed and caring audience.
4. Create a Mobile-Friendly Web Design. At With Grace and Gold, we pride ourselves on creating mobile designs that are just as detailed and experience-driven as their desktop counterparts. With more than half of users browsing via mobile devices, creating a user-friendly, engaging space is central to successfully scaling your business. When visitors have a bad experience on your web design, they are less likely to return — so creating a user-friendly, engaging, connection-driven space is especially helpful.
5. Diversify Your Offerings. In Episode 011: Your Passive Income Action Plan, we share actionable ways to diversify your offerings, boost your passive income, and create offers your preferred customers and clients will connect with and value. Part of scaling your business is ensuring your web design showcases your unique and diverse offerings in a user-friendly way — seamlessly leading and guiding your visitors to purchasing your products or booking your services. Overly-complex web designs, or unprofessional-looking web designs can cause visitors to continue their search for specific products or services, so as you look to diversify your offerings and scale your business, ensure your web design showcases your offerings in a way that will uplift and grow your business. Oftentimes, this is where relying on the expertise of a professional web designer becomes paramount.
6. Bonus: Create Newsletter Funnels. FloDesk is our preferred newsletter system, because it is user-friendly and visually-engaging. Newsletter funnels, or a sequence of newsletters your subscribers will receive, can help you to effectively connect, build community, and sell your offerings at scale. In Episode 016, we share three lead magnet ideas you can use to grow your newsletter community. Including newsletter opt-ins within your web design creates an opportunity for you to continue connecting with and serving your audience, long after they’ve left your website.

Today, we shared ways your web design can help to scale your business — through a professionally-designed web design, by leveraging Search Engine Optimization, creating an engaging space for your visitors, ensuring your web design is mobile-friendly, diversifying and presenting your offerings with purpose, and creating a newsletter funnel with fostering community and boosting sales in mind. We are so hopeful today’s episode equips you to scale your business with purpose. Thanks for tuning in!

About Brand It, Build It Podcast, Hosted by Kelly Zugay

Hosted by Kelly Zugay, co-founder of With Grace and Gold, The Brand It, Build It Podcast is a leading small business marketing podcast for small business owners, creatives, and founders. Weekly, brief, actionable episodes will equip you to build a successful, sustainable small business. Since 2014, With Grace and Gold has provided award-winning custom brand and Showit web design and completely customizable Showit website templates for small businesses worldwide.