Images are the first thing people see when they come to your website. They make your website more interesting and entice your visitors to stick around and learn more about your business. But, they can only do that if they’re the right kind of images.

Not all images are made equal. If your website has a bunch of cheesy stock images, you’ll turn off your visitors and send them toward the back button.

Replace stock images with pictures of your team, products or property. If possible, hire a professional photographer to take and edit photos for your website. You can also use these images on your social media timelines, in your ads and beyond, making them well worth the investment.

Internet users aren’t patient. In fact, they’ll decide whether or not to stick around on your website after just a few seconds of landing on it. Don’t waste those precious seconds on loading your page.

Large, uncompressed images are one of the most common website elements that can hurt your page speed load times. Make it a point to optimize every image you upload to your website.

Is your website fast enough? Find out by running it through PageSpeed Insights, Google’s site speed test. Best of all, Google also tells you exactly what is slowing down your website, and what you can do to fix it.

Your business website doesn’t (and shouldn’t) operate in a silo. It needs to be interconnected with all of your digital marketing channels, including your social media profiles.

Make sure that your social channels point to your website by adding a link to your website on all of your social profiles. But also, make sure that your website points to your social channels by adding social share and follow buttons to your website.

Adding buttons to your social media profiles makes it as easy as possible for your website visitors to become your social media followers, and for them to share your website content on their social media profiles as well.

Most of the people who visit your small business website will be using a smartphone or other mobile device. It’s imperative to your success that you build your website with mobile users in mind.

A modern, mobile-first website starts with a responsive design. Responsive websites will automatically reconfigure themselves to provide the optimal user experience on the device being used.

It’s also important to make sure that you format your content properly by breaking up your text into short paragraphs, using headlines and leaving plenty of space around clickable elements, like buttons.

Pro tip: Any time you make changes to your website, always preview them on a mobile device to ensure a smooth mobile experience.

These days, most internet users would rather watch a video than read text. Videos help you communicate your message in an effective, memorable way. They also give your visitors a reason to stick around longer and interact with your website.

At the very least, every small business should have a brand video. A brand video is simply a brief introduction to your business and an overview of your offerings. The best brand videos tell a story and connect on an emotional level.

Once you have a brand video, you can use it on your website, as well as on most — if not all — of your other marketing channels. Share it on your social media timeline, include it in your ads and beyond.

The best small business websites meet their visitors’ expectations. But, that can be easier said than done when those expectations are constantly changing and evolving.

If your website is performing poorly, it’s reasonable to assume that it’s not meeting the expectations of your visitors. But the only way to know for sure whether or not your website is working is to monitor its performance.

Keep track of important KPIs (key performance indicators) on your website, like impressions, traffic and conversions. Analyze where your traffic is coming from and keep track of the quality of your website leads.

By monitoring your website’s performance, you’ll gain the knowledge you need to do more of what’s working for your small business website and less of what’s not.