In this day and age when everything has gone digital, having a great-looking website can be very helpful in a number of ways. Or in other words, every business now relies on websites and digital presence. You might hesitate to go for the website option as you don’t know much about web designing and management, but the best way to set up a website for small businesses is not difficult at all.
Adhering to the tailored requirements of your business and access to the web builders are the two chief requisites that you need in the first place for developing a great website that expand your business and bring in more customers in an easy and low-cost way.
Here you will get to know about simple steps for creating a successful website for your business.
Regardless of the size of the business, online presence plays a vital role to influence people. If you have a big store present physically, only the customers from that specific area know about your products or services. Many owners don’t realize that people will choose to visit the website before actually going to the store to buy something. From finding the location to search for operating hours and viewing the products, potential prospects first seek everything online.
A live website raises your chance of generating more leads. When people search on Goggle to find you, they get information about your business or gain your contact, help you to entice them to become customers.
It is one of the most interesting reasons for building a website. So using the best way to start a website, you can develop an SEO optimized one that shows up when someone is browsing for your products or services, rendering you an opportunity to increase sales and more ROI.
Want to make use of digital marketing to increase leads and nurture your business? You should then develop a website or design an impressive landing page to direct your target audience to.
Whether it’s paid ads on social media platforms and other sources, you could only get the most qualified customers when you have a website, developed on the best web builder that provides them with all the information they are willing to gain. Or else all the money you spent on ads possibly will be of no use.
If a customer has a query or simply wants to know your business hours, calling you is probably not a very good option. You may not be able to answer calls from everyone. It will leave your customer unhappy. To avoid this sort of situation, having a website will reduce the burden off your shoulder and allow you to get more time focusing on other important aspects of your business.
Moreover, posting updates and discount announcements for special events on your website elevates the likelihood of upselling your products.
Using a great web builder, you can also develop a website, even without any tech knowledge. It is not the domain of tech-savvies anymore, but if you have minimum knowledge of it, you can easily do it on your own.
It might seem a hard task, but in fact, with just a few steps and tools you can have an amazing-looking business website in a matter of few months!
So here is a complete guide to web building for tech novices. Let’s start.
1. What Is Your Website All About?
It’s the step where you determine the type of website you want to build, general or typical E-commerce website. The purpose of the first one is to provide information relevant to your service, products, and company while the latter one requires a different web design as it has a number of products readily shown to the visitors when they open an E-Commerce site.
Even for the general website, there is no one-size fits all situations. The best way to start a website development is by stressing the needs that are perfectly aligned with your business demands and target audience. Remember that a visitor just spares a few seconds on your website, and if it doesn’t look credible or make them confused, they will leave instantly and start browsing for your competitors.
The utmost important thing to consider is user experience and the user journey when they roam around your website. Design in a way that the prime purpose of your website can be easily accomplished by the visitor. A website that developed in an intuitive manner enables the visitor to navigate through it without any hassle is the best one.
Doesn’t need to include a payment method on your website? Then it will be quite effortless for you to set it up. And if you plan to accept payments, it entails an external service provider.
2 . Think of a Domain Name
It is a part of your URL that identifies a web page. It is used to search for your website, should be added in the blogs, and social media platforms for the promotion. People tend to think about the website as authentic that has a customized domain name, not a default one. Another reason is the ease of remembering. Having a custom domain name increases your chances of being searched easily as it includes your web name with a specific name of the page in it. So avoid using numbers, abbreviations, or acronyms and keep it unique, simple, clear, and relevant. It is not a daunting task but one of the easy ways to create a website that works great for you.
TLP or top-level level domain is the suffix at the end of the domain name. Traditionally, you can use the TLP based on the type of websites such as educational websites has.edu while.org for non-profit organizations and communities. But a new trend has introduced the top level domain based on a location like .ae or a type of business such as .Law or. agency.
There are thousands of websites in the realm of the internet, choosing the domain name exclusive for your website is mandatory. Therefore, you are required to check its availability and then pay for it.
3 . Choose a Web Builder
Let’s move to start building a website, and for this, you should have a web builder. In the market, you will find a lot of software but the best web builder is the one that develops and design a fascinating website according to your business requirements and budget.
Today you can easily develop a website without having technical knowledge and skill. These builders take care of all the technical stuff so that you can focus on the essential elements. But different web builders serve different needs so before starting you should have the answers of which is the best way for web development? Which is the most convenient way to build a website? Which builder should I use? The popular website builders considered as great service providers are:
With intuitive drag and drop features, Wix and Weebly are used to develop amazing websites. Squarespace is ideal for designers and creative minds while Site 123 has brilliant features for small businesses. Selecting the plans of these web builders is vital to get the website with all the requisite features and the one that comes within your budget. But it’s not the end, there are other incredible and the best web builders worth trying. WordPress is one of them. It is a free website builder, ideal for blogging.
After doing research, you have got the answers but still to be more certain, choose the free trials which most web developers offer. Simply sign up and get started!
To store the website data for public access you also need a host. Using paid plans have a plus point as hosting services are included in their plan but if you are using WordPress then select an external host. Bluehost, Oracle, Siteground, and Hostinger are a few hosting service providers that have a reputable name in the industry.
4 . Design the Website Using the Templates
A seamless process of website building doesn’t end here. After following the above-mentioned steps you are now required to finally starting building it. Templates make your work more easy, interesting, and nice-looking.
One of the easiest ways to build a website includes web page design. Think of templates as a painting canvas for which you need to use the necessary tools. Not one or two but you have a number of options to choose from. Beautiful templates with enticing colors and designs are readily available to use for varying types of businesses whether it's real estate, photography, home services, or others. It has made things more feasible and easy. Give a completely different look and feel, with templates you have a range to design your website.
The website has more than one page, designated for different business aspects such as product or service, about us, contact, and blog page. Update these pages with the content created. Make sure that each page represents what the company is about, clearly depicting the goal of your business, and encompasses a powerful call-to-action. Like other pages, the contact page also holds value. It is the most important connection between you and your customer that could end up in an increase in sales.
Logo identifies a company or brand. You can use it on your website, business cards, packaging (if any), or social media. It helps people recognize your brand and speaks to them. Design it by yourself or you can also hire a designer.
5 . Upload Content
Following designing, the next comes content, images, and videos.
Appealing content-rich pages of a website works efficiently to not only attracts prospects but also engages, and retains the customers for the business growth. Content on the website is a combination of well-written text, high-quality images, and enthralling videos.
A summarized and clear statement, address and description about your business are all you need to make the visitor stay and also persuade them to purchase from you. For this, you don’t have much time but just a few seconds to impress them. That is why an organized website with captivating content is vital, developed on the best web builder.
Call-to-action plays an essential role in conversion and it can only be achieved if place CTA strategically. For example, free trial on the page that offers services, download now button on the homepage having an e-book to download, contact us button on the contact page, and others.
As for the visual elements like images and videos, quality matters a lot. Stock images impart a bad effect on the visitors so always use original ones that reflect your service, product, or company. Adding a video will help the visitors engaged with you in a better way. Make it informative or fun but it should fulfill the chief objective that is convincing the visitors to take the desired action of clicking the CTA button.
6 . Install Plugins (If Using WordPress)
WordPress plugins are useful when you want features other than present in the default settings. WordPress provides an easy way to create a website in which you can build an incredible website without using any extra plugin but if you want to go an extra mile then plugins that align with your website are the best for you.
Deploying from thousands of plugins for everything, you can seamlessly design a website you want. For search engine optimization, security, analytics, and many others are available readily to attain what you have imagined. Unsure about the usage and installation of plugins? Well, you don’t need to, as you can find any information required related to a specific plugin on a page assigned for that plugin. Reviews, how to install, uses, and more can be searched in case of any problem. Access to these plugins through WordPress dashboard, here recommended and popular plugins are mentioned which you can install by clicking on the ‘install now’ button.
The installed one can be easily deactivated, so to check what works best for you, don’t hesitate to test different plugins.
7 . Preview, Test, and Publish
The best way to set up a website for a small business includes a final review of a website and testing it for its performance as it can predict and save you about any future complaints which may arise. Remember to test on all the browsers for its features, navigation, image quality, and overall every aspect that a user will experience when visit your website. In this day and age, to lead in the competitive market, procuring the attention of the visitors instantly, keeping them engaged with your website can only be done with strong search engine optimization and the best user experience. This can only be done with an attractive and responsive website.
Also, make that your website also runs smoothly on portable devices. Not just the one but check on different screen sizes to confirm that a user can see and easily read everything you want them to. Making your website seamlessly running on these devices can facilitate you in two ways. Firstly, the exposure of your website will increase as today most of the searches are done through these smart devices and less through the desktop.
Secondly, Google is now giving more emphasis on mobile-first indexing, tend the developers to put extra effort into making mobile-friendly websites. As a result, your chances of getting ranked on the Google first page will get increased.
Before going live, incorporate the analytics program so that you can get useful insights about how well the pages of websites are working, what increases the conversion rate, and which aspect slows down the traffic to your website. It is considered mandatory to determine the success of your website.
7 . Go for Search Engine Optimization
This digital marketing strategy works by focusing on the website ranking on the pages of browsers. Your visibility on Google and other browsers strongly depends on how well you optimize your website for search engines. These are several easiest and accessible ways to make a website get higher chances of driving traffic. SEO is one of these.
A successful website needs to be updated constantly to keep you stay ahead of your competitors. Web building is not a one-time thing rather it demands continuous upgrading and improvement to take it to the stage of success where you will finally be able to expand your business, surge your sales, and get a better return on investment.
On-site and off-site SEO combines to give a perfect search engine optimized website, increasing the chances of turning more visitors to your website. Keywords are the making or breaking factor so these need to be relevant to your business and what your potential target audience is searching online. There are several tools and software available to help you accomplish SEO goals whether it’s on-site or off-site.
Regularly publishing new blogs on your website add value to it and send signals to the search engines that the website is updated and has relevant content, therefore, results in better ranking. The best way to start a website is to check and set it for all the aspects required to make your site tangible. Internal and external links play a great role in ranking as well as promoting your business. So placing this strategically can help you a lot so make sure that links are relevant, as per the context, and render value to the visitors.
Compressing images and videos increase the site speed and also remember that the video should not take much time to load or affect the overall speed of the website.
8 . Maintain and Follow Up
A website with the same old content has fewer views and visits while the one that is frequently updated with relevant blogs, industry news, promotion, discount updates, and company news works better in both the short and long term.
The best web builder not only helps you to develop a great website but also lessens your burden by assisting you in maintaining it. It provides strong security to your site to prevent it from being hacked but there is some responsibility on your shoulder too regarding the website security. Old and obsolete site software and add-ons higher the risk of being a cyber-attack victim. So check these at least once a month to ensure that there are up to date and protected.
Do it by yourself or undertake your trusted employee so that everything can run smoothly.
9 . Promote Your Website
A large number of people are using social media platforms, which makes them a perfect platform for promoting websites. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin are a few names where you can find many customers only with the right strategies and techniques.
Web builders offer easy ways to create a website but the task of promoting it is on you. But do not worry as using social media to make the most of is not that hard. You just need to think about your.
target audience, publish the content that entices them, and place ads which capture their attention. You can also add links to your website on social media sites. With billions of people using social media, there is no better chance of fostering your business and boosting sales. Creating pages for your business and keeping these updates is another tactic of being found on these platforms, enhancing your business credibility and bring more traffic to your website.
The best way to set up a website for a small business is by deploying web builders that help you in achieving your goals of more customers and more sales. Building a website is an investment that does not require high cost but facilitates you in creating a brand’s authority, credibility, and trustworthiness. By taking care of a few aspects such as updated content, and addressing the issues, you will never be stressed about getting fewer customers in the future.
