Small business homepages are shockingly bad. Roasters, restaurants, and art studios worldwide have bloated websites not optimized for mobile devices or network connections. They often cobble together vendor sites that don’t match their branding and deliver a bad user experience. Sometimes, entire site functions are left broken. What’s worse is that small businesses are paying to have these awful web presences!
I suppose web development is not where most of these business owners want to be spending their time, and I don’t blame them. While their web presence is essential, it isn’t what sets their products apart. Customers expect great affordable coffee from their specialty roaster, fresh ingredients from the neighborhood pizza shop, or elegant handmade crafts from their local art studios. The web presence is primarily a means to an end. Many of us are willing to look past a poor web experience, and we expect it to a certain extent.
Almost every small business website I encounter has the same set of issues. Pages contain large images not optimized for the web or many JavaScript files and widgets loading in the background, leading to lengthy load times and high data transfers. Sitemaps are needlessly complex and spread information across multiple pages when a single page could have served the entire website. Even when content is on a single page, critical information is often embedded inside images or PDF files, making the content hard to read or search.
Modern Design Principles
Current solutions are needlessly complicated, expensive, and provide a poor experience. With the recent advancements in web technologies, business owners have no reason to spend exorbitant amounts of money or time to have a decent website. Yesterday’s web developers have failed these small businesses. There exists an opportunity to provide excellent web solutions to enable business owners to deliver great products and experiences for their customers.
Modern web solutions should aim to achieve the following design principles.
Responsive and Functional
Websites should work on a wide array of devices such as cell phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. Content should fit on a wide range of screen dimensions. Websites should quickly load so that they accommodate the broadest range of network conditions.
Flexible
Staff should be able to update content on their own. They can add, edit, and remove the content as they see fit and publish the website changes. Updating site content should not require additional technical skills or the intervention of a webmaster.
Affordable
The architecture should have minimal overhead costs. The system should require minimal labor costs to develop and maintain to maximize its business value.
Consistent and Integrated
Customers should experience a consistent look and feel that matches the brand throughout the entire transaction. The web experience should integrate with business functions across multiple systems.