Building a Business Website: A Small Business Guide

Your small business needs a website. Here’s how to build one.

It’s crucial to create a small business website to educate your customers, articulate your value proposition, increase brand recognition, and promote sales.

Selecting a domain name and reliable web hosting is the first step in creating a company website. Then, optimize your website to raise its position in search results and increase visitors.

Ensure that your website is current and mobile-friendly. Make sure your site is loading quickly enough to boost your search engine rankings.

Small business owners who want to create a website or enhance an existing website should read this article.

Without an online presence, running a business — even a brick and mortar one — is no longer practical. Internet users look for everything from products to locations and business hours. If you have things to sell, your website may extend your business easily and affordably by opening up new markets. Even a basic, well-designed website can give you an edge in your industry.

Software for creating websites has developed to be user-friendly for everyone. You may create an appealing and useful website without knowing how to code. Regardless of the program you use, you only need to adhere to a few fundamental guidelines and regulations to give your website a polished appearance, make it simple to locate, and present your business in the best possible way.

Here is our step-by-step instructions for building a profitable company website.

1. Determine the primary purpose of your website.

A company website typically acts as a place to provide out basic information about your organization or as a direct platform for online sales. The most crucial thing you must do is state what your firm does — on the homepage in clear terms — regardless of whether you construct a simple website that informs a bit about your company or a more complex e-commerce site. Erin Pheil of website design firm Followbright admonished businesses against making clients dig around to see whether they could get what they needed.

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Gabriel Shaoolian, CEO of website design and digital marketing firm Blue Fountain Media, continued, “Think about your specific user experience and the journey the user will take as they visit your site. Users should be able to easily accomplish whatever the core objective of your website is or whatever the focus may be, and the objective itself should be reinforced as users browse through your site.

You won’t have to put in as much effort setting up your website if you don’t intend to collect payments (like Apple Pay) through it. You must use an outside service to take payments if you are a retailer or service provider who wants to give customers the option to pay online. We’ll go through these services in more detail later in this article.

2. Decide your domain name.

One of your website’s most crucial elements is its domain name. It is the URL that you will advertise on social media and share with your present and new clients. As a result, you want it to be descriptive, simple to remember, and straightforward to type. To prevent consumer misunderstanding, try to keep it brief and avoid using acronyms, abbreviations, and numbers.

Additionally, you must choose your top-level domain, or TLD. This is the ending of your domain name, which might be, .net, on .biz However, non-conventional TLD names have becoming more popular recently. These TLDs might be based on geography, like.nyc, or on the nature of the business, like.marketing,.agency, or.law. Even though they may be descriptive,.com is still the preferred option. For further details, see our article on selecting a non-traditional TLD.

Once you’ve decided on a domain name, you must check to see if it is still available and then buy it from a domain registrar. Here are a few well-known domain registrars:

Website Domain Names, Online Stores & Hosting

Wix

GoDaddy

sSquarespace

Check copyrights as you choose your new domain name to make sure you are not using someone else’s registered name without permission. If your desired URL is already in use, you can either call the business that is using it and request to purchase it from them, or you can use a domain buying service from a firm like GoDaddy, who will contact the domain name’s owners on your behalf. Each domain for this service costs about $70.00.

3. Choose a web host.

Every website needs a host — a server where all of its data is kept and is always accessible to the public. For your small business, hosting your own website would likely be an unaffordable investment, therefore you’ll need to choose an outside host.

There are two options for you to select from, depending on your budget. You will share a server with other websites if you choose a shared web host, which is the least expensive choice. Dedicated hosting is substantially more expensive, but it gives you access to your own private server and spares you from having to compete with other websites that can slow you down. Web hosting is included in certain web builder systems’ monthly plans, like Squarespace and Wix.

Web hosting choices include the following:

Cloud hosting is a specialty of 1&1 Ionos, which also provides other cloud-based services including servers and site backup. Plans and features vary, but monthly prices normally start at $15.

A2 Hosting: A2 Hosting gives customers the choice between shared and dedicated hosting. A Lite hosting package, which is enough for some small enterprises, is available to new clients for as little as $3.91 per month for the first year.

DreamHost: DreamHost offers three hosting packages — DreamPress, DreamPress Plus, and DreamPress Pro — designed specifically for managed WordPress websites. Generally, prices begin at $16.95 per month.

The hosting of a website is by no means free for the hosting provider, so if you’re looking for free website hosting solutions, keep that in mind. To make up for the free hosting, they could use additional strategies like inserting banner advertising on your website.

According to Jim Cowie, a former chief scientist of cloud-based internet performance provider Dyn, when selecting a host, take into account how well that host can respond to inquiries concerning the locations and dependability of its servers.

“Can you show me how close you are to the major markets my clients will be in?” is a fair question. said Cowie. Any reputable host ought to have the resources to demonstrate to you how well they function.

You could need to switch to a different web host as your company expands, or you might even need to cooperate with many service providers to manage the operations and traffic on your website. In order to ascertain your hosting requirements, Cowie advocated keeping a careful check on the functionality of your website and the user experience your visitors have.

4. Build your pages.

A great website has more to offer than a dull homepage. You should make several pages for various parts of your business, such as a thorough list of your goods and services or a blog area for business updates. When it comes to your website as a whole, make sure each page supports the site’s main objective, has a distinct function, and contains a call to action (such as “learn more,” “sign up,” “contact us,” or “buy this”).

One of the most crucial aspects of a website is the contact page, which serves as your customers’ primary point of contact. Include as much information as you can there, including your business’s phone number, email address, and physical address, if one exists. In order for customers to associate your company with actual people, it’s also a good idea to add information about the founding team or personnel on a “about” page.

Hire a graphic designer or make your own logo if your company doesn’t already have one to use on your website, business cards, and social media profiles. Your customers will be able to immediately and readily recognize your business online thanks to this.

Creating effective, content-rich pages for your website can be facilitated by following a few simple guidelines, according to Justin Zalewski, head of product design at innovation consultant Studio Science:

Be specific about what your company does. Put the essence of what your company performs into a single, succinct sentence and start with that. Within seconds of arriving on your webpage, visitors should know what you do. A few well-written pages have a greater impact than many pages with errors.

Publish clever calls to action. When they correspond with the content on the website, CTA buttons frequently work at their best. A “purchase now” button, for instance, makes sense on a product page, while a “about us” page might benefit more from a “contact us to learn more” button. Similar to this, a page that lists customer evaluations might contain a button that directs readers to the plans and prices offered.

Automate the enhancement of speed. Create as many automated performance enhancements as you can. The proper plugins can cache specific pages on your website if you use a content management system (CMS), saving visitors from having to download your content more than once. Zalewski suggested WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache for WordPress users because they compress files and speed up website browsing. If you’re not extremely tech aware, some of the more complex parts of caching and compressing data can require a web development partner.

Don’t use stock images. The simplest way to lower the quality of a fantastic website is to use tacky stock photography. It’s better to utilize a photo of yourself if you’re seeking for images to use on your page.

Pheil said that investing in high-quality photographs of the goods or services you provide will enhance sales.

5. Set up your payment system (if applicable).

While not all business websites will need to follow this step, those that want to give clients the option of making payments online must incorporate electronic payment systems with their websites. The simplest method to do this is by using one of the best credit card processing solutions or e-commerce software.

An internal shopping cart or interface with e-commerce software is something that many web servers provide. Make sure you do your homework to find a solution that is simple to use and adaptable enough to fit your demands both today and in the future.

6. Test and publish your website.

Make sure your website functions properly on all popular browsers, including Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, before declaring it live on the internet. Verify that images appear, links are functional, and the format appears seamless by clicking through each page and feature on each browser. Although it will take some time, your current efforts will prevent future complaints from customers who are unable to use specific functions.

Additionally, check to see that your website functions properly on tablets and smartphones. This stage shouldn’t be skipped because mobile-first indexing, which Google and other search engines have adopted, gives the performance of your website’s mobile version priority when it comes to search engine results.

An analytics program should also be incorporated from the beginning as a key component. You can work out any kinks and plan a suitable arrangement by setting this up before the website goes live, Shaoolian said. After the website goes live, you may track page performance and use your analytics to ascertain why a certain page is successful or unsuccessful.

To get a better understanding of how your audience is interacting with your website, you may look at which of your marketing efforts are generating the greatest conversions and analyze any analytics like city, browser, etc., said Shaoolian. “If you… add this [after] the site launches, you’ll miss out on valuable data and have no ability to know whether aspects of your site are successful or unsuccessful right from the start.

7. Market your website on social media.

The best way to broaden your audience and inform customers about your company’s happenings is through social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Pinterest. Post about any website updates you make on your social media channels, but keep a healthy balance with sincere, nonpromotional involvement.

On your website, add connections to your social media accounts as well. The footer or the auxiliary bar are the most frequent locations for doing this (the extra menu in the top right that often holds login or contact links). Our marketer’s guide contains more information on using social media for business.

8. Invest in search engine optimization (SEO).

Along with implementing an effective SEO strategy throughout your site, submitting your website to popular search engines will aid in directing potential customers to your page. According to Shaoolian, creating title tags, meta descriptions, and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) specific to your business and elements of your industry might improve your position in search engine results for the goods and services you’re attempting to advertise.

“You may start generating traffic right away by incorporating relevant keywords into your content from the very beginning of your website, and having a strong focus on SEO from website launch,” he advised.

These crucial on-site SEO strategies can help you increase your ability to climb the ranks as you create your company website. (You can also use off-site SEO strategies.)

Select appropriate terms. Choose search terms that are pertinent to your industry and that potential clients are using to find you online. To find a service that can assist you in locating, analyzing, and tracking these keywords, visit our guide to SEO small company tools.

Put forth new content. Regular blog posting, website additions, and content updates all inform search engines that your website is pertinent to the targeted keywords.

Link both internal and external resources. Internal links are those that point to other pages on your website, and external links are those that point to other well-known, reliable websites. Strategically place these links on your website. Verify that the links make sense, suit the context, and benefit the reader before using them; failing to do so could result in a penalty.

enhance the images. Reduce the size of your photographs to prevent loading delays on your website. Apply the same strategy when using video, making sure that all clips load quickly and don’t affect how quickly your website loads in general. You can also use metadata, such tags and captions, to describe the photographs to search engines and include your keywords in them.

Boost the speed of your website. A few seconds is the ideal amount of time for pages to load. To determine whether your website is operating at its peak performance, you can utilize free site speed analyzers like Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

9. Maintain your site.

Maintaining relevance is crucial, so to keep users coming back to the site, update your website frequently with blog posts on recent developments in your industry, fresh goods and services, and business news.

Additionally, you should make sure your software and all add-ons are updated at least once a month. Even though the security of your website host is high-quality, according to Pheil, if your software is out-of-date, it is vulnerable to hacking. If you don’t have the time to administer the website yourself, assign the job to a dependable team member or a freelance website manager.

A low-cost investment, creating a website for your company can help you create trust and reach more customers than you could through conventional marketing strategies. You won’t ever have to worry about “not existing” to your present and potential customers as long as you maintain your website updated with new, relevant information and respond to technical issues promptly.

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