How to build a successful SMB website: Made with Mono

With more than 110.000 active websites hosted on the Mono Platform, it's safe to say our partners - and their designers - are always very busy coming up with new ideas and designs. Made with Mono (the Best Website Competition) was created to provide them with a wide breadth of inspiration for future site creation. 

Made with Mono is an opportunity for these designers to compete for the honour of being named Best Website Designer using the Mono Platform. The designer who creates the most well-designed and professional real-life site for their small business client on the Mono Platform wins!

If you are a Mono Partner, and have created a site on the Mono Platform in 2023, now is the time to showcase your work! You can submit your site here.

How do you design and build a successful SMB website - in real life as well as for the competition?

The Mono Team is excited to see all of your submissions. We are always extremely impressed by the talent of the designers, and it can be very difficult to vote for a favourite. So we wanted to give some insight into how we do make that decision. 

Crafting a great website involves different elements—think seamless usability, sleek design, tech finesse, and driving those conversions. Looks matter, like having a sleek layout, on-brand design, and fonts that pop. But more than that, a winning site has all of the crucial trust-building elements, performs well, meets customer needs, and incorporates call-to-actions and informative content. Especially for small business websites, providing value for both the business and its visitors is key.

Here are the five key elements we look for in a small business website:

1. Does it meet the visitor's expectations?
2. Has it been optimised for conversions?
3. Does the site feel trustworthy?
4. Does the design stand out?
5. Does your website perform?

Let's get into each of these elements in greater detail!

1: A good website should meet visitors’ expectations

A website is the foundation of a small businesses' online presence. Therefore, it is important that the website has been designed to meet the needs and expectations of both the small business and its website visitors.

Part of meeting customer expectations is following the conventions for the industry, such as having an "About us" page, a cookie banner, and a way to contact or find the business. A convention could also be having menu if your customer for example is a restaurant. It is also important to avoid mistakes; professionalism is an expectation that is very important to keep, so making sure there are no typos or broken links is important.

2: A small business website should be optimized for conversion

The purpose of a small business website is to get more business – whether that is by being found online, receiving online bookings or increasing sales via an online shop. That is why we judge the Made with Mono - Best Website Competition entries by how well they have been optimised for conversions. Are there clear Call-To-Actions above the fold? Is it clear for the customer where to go and which actions to take? And is the website generally designed for the visitor to take the action you most want them to take?

Learn more about how to build a conversion focused website here: How to optimize a small business website for conversion.

3: SMB websites should build trust

What happens if you visit a website you don’t trust? You probably leave it to find a safer option. No one wants to risk their money or data on a site that doesn’t feel legitimate. As consumers, we want to know who the business is immediately after we open their site so we can decide if this is a business worth investing more time, money and energy into.

There are two “trust-building” zones on a website: at the top of the page and in the footer. Visitors consciously and subconsciously scan these two areas of a webpage to see if the site is trustworthy or not. Small business websites need to make effective use out of these areas and create a position of trust.

Here are five must-haves in these areas that, when present, builds a sense of trust with the visitor: 

• A logo in the header
• An about page
• An SSL-certificate in the URL
• The Contact page
• Privacy and Cookies policy

Learn more: How to create a trustworthy small business website.

4. A creative layout can help the website stand out

Websites that use eyecatching visuals and fonts, use the Mono Platform in a creative way, and also provide accessible and responsive websites, are regarded more highly by the judges in the competition.

We consider:

• Visual 'extras'
• Fonts
• Creative use of the platform
• Layout
• Overall look
   

Check out this blog post for advice on how to build a beautiful and unique customer website: How to make your website come alive.

5. Performance should be front and center

The judges like to see quick loading time, easy-to-use navigation and a logical layout. Mono Templates consistently score in the 90th percentile on all parameters in the Google Lighthouse report, and are designed for the different viewports (desktop, tablet, and mobile). We will test Best Competition Website entries on Google Lighthouse and the result will impact the final score. 

Responsiveness is another key factor in a website’s performance. Not only have 79% of US consumers bought a product on a phone; nearly 40% of purchases in the 2018 holiday season in the United States were made from a smartphone.

As we wrote in 5 user experience tips for small business websites, “Small business websites need to look great and work well on different devices, so visitors and potential customers can have a great online experience - whether they are on a laptop or mobile device. Make sure your website looks at least as good as it does on desktop, or you will risk losing out on potential customers.”

Learn more about how to optimise your customer website in our blog post How to optimise website performance on customer sites.

We value performance over pizzazz . That said if you can build a website that has both, we will definitely be impressed!

How to enter the competition

Simply fill out the form on the link below by providing your name, company, email, the URL to the website for submission, and a brief description as to why you think your website should win. Each individual designer can submit up to three entries.  

A select panel of Mono team members from Marketing, Partner Support and Product will select the winner! We look forward to seeing your beautiful websites!

The deadline is 29 February 2024.

Submit your entries for the Best Website Competition 2024.

Find inspiration in the 2023 showcase

The title "Best Mono Website 2023" went to our partner Heise RegioConcept with their small business website Ramme Drehteile GmbH. The designer Tobias Ritter wowed us with a well-performing website that fulfilled all the best practices for the industry and trustworthiness, while giving us a beautiful, eye-catching and unique design.

Visit the Best Website Competition 2023 showcase for more information and to see the other contenders.

Not a Mono Partner?

The Best Website Competition is open to Mono Partners (i.e. companies that use our platform to build and sell websites to their own customers). If you are not a partner, but would like to learn more about Mono's white-label website builder, simply click here to request a demo.