So you’ve decided to create your own business. Congrats! Now it’s time to create a new business website that reflects your brand, message, and goals. But what exactly do you need to do in order to achieve those things? It might seem a little intimidating, especially if you’ve never done this before. Below is a list of tips you can use to guide you through the process.
Establish the Purpose of Your Site
When you’re first creating a website, you have to decide what you want your site to do for you. If you wish to sell items online, you will need a shopping cart site that allows customers to safely and easily purchase your products. However, many websites serve as a way to bring awareness to information or a service. It is essential to determine what you want your website to do before putting it together.
Whatever the goal may be for the site, your users should be able to achieve that goal quickly. This will determine things like your website design and development.
Purchase a Domain
Your domain name, or the URL that people will identify with your website, should be easy to remember and be closely related to your website. Most companies try to use their business name. Often you can use sites like GoDaddy to check if a domain name is available. If your desired domain name is taken already, find something closely related that still makes sense for your business.
You will also need to decide your top-level domain. This is the suffix at the end of your URL, such as .com, which is typically the default. However, in recent years, .net, .biz, and other top-level domains have become more popular.
Hosting Your New Business Website
When you create a website, it has to be “housed” somewhere for the data to be accessible to the public. Often times the companies that you purchase your domain from can offer hosting as well, but it is best to do some research and see if there is a host that could better suit your needs.
You can use shared hosting, which is less expensive, but it means that you will share a server with other websites, which could affect your site’s speed. Or you can utilize dedicated hosting, which means you will have your own server, but it is more expensive.
As your business grows, you might find that you need to make changes to your hosting company. Or, you might need to move from shared hosting to dedicated hosting. Your goals and needs may change as your business grows.
Creating The Pages For Your New Business Website
An effective website will have more than just a home page. You want to entice visitors to check out the rest of your site and learn different aspects of your business. Also, you want your website to be easy to navigate with clear navigation options.
Some of the things your website should include are:
- Content: Describe who you are and what you do. Don’t make visitors guess!
- Clear call-to-action or CTA’s: these are the buttons, forms, and directions on a web page that encourage a visitor to take the next step
- Contact information: Whether it’s through phone calls, emails, or contact forms, make sure your website visitors can easily visit you. If you have specific office hours or times of operation, make sure to list this, too. Then your readers will know when they can expect to hear back from you.
- Reviews and Testimonials: As soon as possible, you will want to include the reviews people have left for your business. This makes your company look more transparent, which is vital to online customers.
For some, this start-up process might be daunting or confusing, and that’s ok! Spin A Web Designs can handle all of this and more. Give us a call today to tell us about your business, and we can get you started right away.