Creating a Company Website: A Guide for Small Businesses
Operating a business, especially a physical one, without a website is becoming unfeasible. Customers use the internet for everything, including product research, business locations, and hours of operation. If you have things to offer, your website may help you reach new customers and grow your business quickly and affordably. Even a basic, well-designed website can provide you an advantage in your industry.
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The ease of use of website design tools has increased. Coding knowledge is not required to create a visually appealing and useful website. Whatever tool you choose, there are a few fundamental guidelines and best practices to adhere to in order to present your business in the best possible light, make your website easy to use, and give it a polished appearance.
How to create a website for a business
1. Establish the main goal of your website.
A business website may be used as a direct platform for e-commerce, allowing you to sell products online, or it can be used to give basic information about your firm. The most crucial thing you need to do is clearly state what your firm does on the homepage, regardless of whether you design a straightforward website that informs visitors about what you do or a more intricate online buying experience. According to Erin Pheil, CEO of The MindFix Group, a website design firm formerly known as Followbright, clients shouldn’t have to go far to find out whether your business can meet their needs.
“Considerate your unique user experience and the path the user will take while browsing your website,” advised Gabriel Shaoolian, Digital Silk’s founder and CEO. “Users should be able to quickly attain the core objective of your website, whatever the focus may be, and the purpose itself should be reinforced as users go across your site.”
You won’t have to spend as much time setting it up if you don’t want to take payments through your website using Apple Pay. However, you’ll need to employ an outside service to take your payments if you’re a merchant or service provider and want to provide consumers the choice to pay online. We’ll go over this in more detail later in the article.
2. Pick the name of your domain.
One of the most important aspects of your website is your domain name. It’s the URL you’ll advertise on social media and share with both present and new customers. It should therefore be descriptive, simple to remember, and straightforward to put into a web browser. To prevent confusing customers, try to keep it brief and avoid using acronyms, numerals, and abbreviations.
Selecting your top-level domain (TLD) is another need. This is the last character (.com,.net, or.biz) that appears at the end of your domain name. Nontraditional TLD names, however, have been more popular recently. These TLDs might be based on the sort of company, like.marketing,.agency, or.law, or on the geography, like.nyc. The most popular option is still.com, even if these can be descriptive.
After deciding on a domain name, you must buy it from a domain registrar and verify that it is still available. Here are a few well-known domain registrars.
Domain.com
Wix
Squarespace
GoDaddy
Make sure you are not violating anybody else’s protected name when you choose your new domain name by looking up copyrights. If your intended URL is already taken, you may either utilize a domain-buying service from a business like GoDaddy, which will contact the proprietors of your desired domain name, or you can phone the company using it and ask to buy it from them. Each domain costs about $70 for this service, in addition to a fee for their work.
3. Select a web server.
Every website requires a host, or a server on which all of its content is kept permanently accessible to the general public. It’s likely too costly for your small business to host your own website, so you’ll need to choose an outside host.
Based on the financial constraints of your company, there are two options available to you. The less expensive alternative, a shared web host, entails sharing a server with other websites. Dedicated hosting, the second choice, is much more expensive but comes with your own private server and eliminates the need to compete with other websites that might slow down your website. A few website builders, including Squarespace and Wix, incorporate web hosting as part of their monthly plans.
4. Create the pages you want.
Static homepages are only one aspect of a decent website. You should make several pages with different sections of your business, such a comprehensive catalog of your goods or services or a blog area for corporate updates, using platforms like WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace. Regarding your website as a whole, make sure every page has a clear purpose, supports the main objective of the site, and has a call to action (CTA) that directs the visitor to another place, such “Learn More,” “Sign Up,” “Contact Us,” or “Buy This.”
One of the most important parts of a website is the contact page, which is your clients’ primary point of contact. Make sure it has all the information your consumers need, including your company’s phone number, email address, and, if applicable, physical location. In order to give your brand a human face, it’s a good idea to add information about the founding team or personnel on a “About” page.
Use a graphic designer or make one yourself if your company doesn’t already have one for your website, business cards, and social media accounts. A unified brand image will make it easier for your customers to find your business online.
Senior user experience manager at Evernorth Health Services Justin Zalewski provided the following fundamental pointers to assist you in developing effective, content-rich pages for your website:
Be specific about what your company does. Condense your mission statement into a single, succinct sentence and start there. It should be apparent to visitors what you do from the moment they appear on your homepage. Dozens of badly written pages are not as impactful as a few skillfully written ones.
Position the CTA wisely: CTA buttons work best when they complement the content on the page. On a product page, for instance, a “Buy Now” button might make sense; but, a “Contact Us to Learn More” button could be more suitable on the “About Us” page. Similar to this, a website with client testimonials may feature a button directing the visitor to your price and product offerings.
Increase speed automatically: Use internet tools to set up as many automatic speed increases as possible. Installing the appropriate plugins will cache some elements of your website if you use a content management system, saving users from having to download anything more than once. Zalewski suggested WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache for WordPress users, which compresses data and speeds up site navigation. If you’re not very tech-savvy, you might need a web development partner for some of the more complex parts like caching and compressing data.
Steer clear of stock photos: The easiest way to take a fantastic website and make it average is to use tacky stock imagery. Using a snapshot of your team or workplace is the ideal option if you’re looking for images to publish on your sites. Pheil continued, saying that excellent product photographs boost revenue, so make an investment in outstanding images of the goods or services you offer.
5. After testing, launch your website.
Verify that your website functions properly across all popular browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, before declaring it is live online. Verify that pictures appear, links work properly, and the format is fluid by clicking on every page and feature on every browser. Although it may take some time, the work you do today will prevent future complaints from users who are unable to use specific functions. [Discover how to build a website that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act].
Additionally, confirm that your website functions correctly on mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones. Given that Google and other search engines have switched to mobile-first indexing, which gives the performance of your website’s mobile version priority when it comes to search engine results, you shouldn’t skip this step.
Analytics is another crucial component that should be included from the start. Prior to the website’s launch, you may resolve any problems and arrange for a suitable arrangement, according to Shaoolian. After the website is live, you may track page performance and use analytics to ascertain why a certain page works well or poorly.
“To get some insight into how your audience is interacting with your site, you can look at which of your marketing campaigns are displaying the highest conversion rates and examine any [user] metrics, such as city, browser, etc.,” Shaoolian advised. “You’ll lose out on important data and be unable to determine which aspects of your website are successful or unsuccessful from the beginning if you… implement this [after] the site goes live.”