Yesterday, I discussed small business websites and what the Denver small business owner should keep in mind when it comes to browsers. It turns out that you don't need to worry about making sure that your website works properly in every browser out there.
Today, I thought I'd expand upon websites and talk about how big your website should be. I'm not talking about how many pages you should have on your website - I'm talking about how wide your website should be. As with browsers, where you don't need your site to be compatible with everything under the sun, you also don't need your website to be narrow enough to work well for every single visitor.
As a matter of fact, what I'm proposing here is that your website is actually a hassle to deal with for some of your visitors so that the overwhelming majority of your visitors have an improved experience.
Look at Your Visitor Data in Analytics
Below, you can see the Google Analytics data for one of my websites. As a side note, if you have a website on the Internet that you're using for marketing your Denver small business, you have to use an analtyics package. Google analytics is free and easy to use.
As you can see from the table above, the majority of the visitors to this website have a screen resolution of 1024x768 or higher. Very few visitors - just 1.55% of the visitors have a screen resolution of 800x600.
The odds are very good that your website will show similar results. Most of your website visitors are likely using a resolution of 1024x768 or higher.
So How Wide Should my Website Be?
Here's the general rule that I follow with website design and choosing the proper width for your website:
Optimize your website so that the majority of website visitors have a great browsing experience.
Based on my analytics data, I should make sure that my website is optimized for 1024x768. This means that my website should be in the vicinity of 1000 pixels wide. Users that have a resolution of 800x600 will have to scroll around my website to see things properly - but I can't worry about them. They represent just 1% of the audience for this particular website.
I would rather alienate that 1% of users in order to provide an optimal browsing experience for the other 99% of website visitors.
Bigger is Better
By having a wider screen, I can have more information on my website above the fold. This prevents people from scrolling and gives me more room to have a nice design with a spacious layout.
My website also won't look like a narrow sliver when viewed by most of the visitors that have the higher resolutions. This gives my website a newer, more modern look. Most websites that were designed for the 800x600 resolution were designed over two years ago - and it shows.
How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?
As a Denver small business owner, if you want to have an effective website that proactively markets for your business, one of the considerations is the width of the website. If you have a small business website that is optimized for low screen resolutions, your website likely looks older and looks narrow when viewed by most of your visitors who are likely using higher resolution screens.
In order to provide visitors to your small business website a better browsing experience, be sure to optimize for a higher resolution (likely 1024x768) when you redesign your small business website.