By Allison Bowlus
Whether you’re a freelance photographer, a hardware store owner, or another type of small business, a great website is essential to the success of your business. your company. As a webmaster who has worked on building or marketing over 100 small business websites, I know what it takes to build great, engaging business websites.
If you’re looking to build a new website for your startups or make your existing website more effective, here are 10 key steps to get started and help your small business website compete effectively in the online marketplace.
1. Get a good domain name
Your domain name, also known as your website address, is often the entry point to your site. It is important that you make a good impression for usability reasons as well as for search engine optimization (SEO).
Here are some tips for finding the optimal domain name:
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2. Buy secure and scalable website hosting with good technical support
A website host (or sometimes called a website hosting provider) is a company that provides the technology and services necessary for a website to run. web is seen on the Internet. . You connect your domain name to your hosting provider so that when users visit your website address, they are shown the website you store in your hosting account.
Hosting services may cost between $2 and $100 per month, depending on the type of technology and support you choose. You can usually get a discount if you buy an annual plan instead of a monthly plan.
Here are some guidelines for choosing a good website hosting plan:
- Although you can get a “shared server” hosting plan for as little as $2 per month, I would generally advise against this. Shared hosting means that you are sharing a server and its resources with other customers, which can affect the performance of your site. Also, if one of the other websites on your shared server gets hacked, your website may also get infected.
- A “dedicated server” The hosting plan is the most expensive option (cost can range from $100 to $2,000 per month), but it would make your website perform optimally. Having a dedicated server plan means that the physical server machine is completely dedicated to your site; therefore, all the resources are yours and it is more secure than a shared hosting plan, as long as the technology is optimal. However, it is much more expensive than most small businesses are usually willing to pay. Once you have a very high-performing site, this may be what you need, but it’s overkill for most small and early-stage businesses.
- The commitment you What I usually recommend is a “virtual private server” (VPS) hosting plan that offers the best of both worlds. The cost ranges from $20 to $50 per month, which is affordable for the hosting services you will receive.A VPS is a machine that is partitioned to act like multiple machines, giving you similar affordability to shared hosting, with similar security and performance potential to a dedicated server hosting plan.
- Make sure your hosting company has phone and/or chat support so you can get help quickly if you have a problem. Email support can often take too long and become frustrating when an issue needs to be resolved immediately. Phone support is better, but chat works fine too.
- There should be a user-friendly server interface like cPanel to access your server . You don’t want to have to use terminal commands to view the contents of your server and make changes, unless you can hire a professional server administrator to help you.
- Check to see what type of server security exists on the server you are considering. You’ll want to be able to access your server through Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). Daily backup copies of the contents of your server should be made. There should also be an easy, one or two click method to install Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. Make sure the hosting company performs regular security maintenance. Ideally, your hosting company has a published security protocol that you can review so you know how they keep their servers secure.
Some popular website hosting companies include:
- GoDaddy
- DreamHost
- Bluehost
- InMotion
- SiteGround
3 . Prominently display a clear description of your business
It’s important that people know who you are and what you do right away so they won’t be confused when they visit your small business website. Make sure that your main home page banner (aka “main image”) and subsequent banners are visual representations of your services, and also have introductory text near the top of the page describing who are you and what do you do. .
Also, make sure both your main navigation and footer menus have easily accessible “About Us” page links so people can click on them and read more about your business in depth.
4 . Implement the best content management system
A content management system (CMS) is a software program or application used to create and manage digital content. A good CMS will help you maintain your site and you don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to use it. You should choose a CMS that is designed for your unique needs; Different systems are used for different reasons, such as ease of use, extensibility, and budget.
The following are some popular systems with descriptions of their strengths and weaknesses.
WordPress: WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world. It has a large and active support community and many useful plugins to extend the functionality of your site. (And if you can’t find a plugin that does what you want, it’s easy to find a WordPress developer who can build one for you!) WordPress is also free and relatively easy to install. Most website developers are familiar with it, so it’s not hard to find a person or agency that can work on your site. I usually recommend that small businesses use WordPress to build their websites, due to its flexibility and extensibility.
It should be noted, however, that WordPress’s biggest weakness is security, as it is so popular that hackers attack it. Most Your WordPress site should be regularly maintained and secured from being hacked. Also, it’s hard to secure all third-party plugins, so keeping your WordPress site secure should be an ongoing commitment through several best practices (check if your plugins have been updated in the last few months, make sure it’s a plugin provided in the official WordPress repository, immediately removing unused plugins, etc.).
Drupal: Drupal is another popular CMS. It offers many of the same benefits as WordPress, including flexibility, ease of use, and a large support community. It should be noted that it is a more secure CMS than WordPress (more secure against malicious activities); however, it doesn’t have as many plugin or theme options, which makes it less extensible. For many years, the White House website (Whitehouse.gov) ran on Drupal, but has since switched to WordPress, which is still in use today.
Joomla!: Another popular CMS is Joomla! Out of the box, it has better SEO, security, and multilingual capabilities than WordPress; however, with the help of some plugins, WordPress surpasses the capabilities of Joomla!.
Squarespace: Squarespace is a service you subscribe to on a monthly or annual basis that makes it easy to create websites and blogs. an easy “drag and drop” experience.It includes website design, development, software maintenance, metrics, domain name with annual purchase, SSL security, 24/7 support, and unlimited bandwidth and storage hosting, all in one package. It is especially suitable for creatives and provides you with top-notch design templates. If you’re on a tight budget, need a simple and beautiful site, but can’t afford a website designer, this is a great service for you.
There’s a much smaller learning curve with Squarespace than with WordPress, Drupal and Joomla!, but it doesn’t have as many extensibility options. However, if you have little or no technical knowledge and are looking for a quick and easy way to set up a website, Squarespace is a great option for you.
Wix: Wix is very Similar to Squarespace, but a bit easier to use. It offers a monthly subscription, but not a yearly one, and includes similar features. Wix is also a drag and drop builder: you can freely drag and drop elements anywhere on the page; by comparison, Squarespace is more structured in terms of where you can drag and drop on the page. The learning curve for using Wix is even shorter than Squarespace, so if you need to get a site up and running quickly, this may be your best option.
Wix has many more templates than Squarespace to choose from, but one Once you choose a template, you have to stick with it or be forced to completely rebuild your site. With Squarespace, you can change your template at any time without having to rebuild the entire site.
5. Choose a good eCommerce platform
If you plan to sell goods and/or services through your website, you’ll need the right technology to do it. (If you’re not currently selling anything, you might want to consider doing so, as e-commerce could increase your profits.) If you decide to allow users to conduct financial transactions with you online, you’ll need to choose the right platform for your business model.
Here are some popular e-commerce platforms for small businesses:
WooCommerce: WooCommerce is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world – you can turn your WordPress website into an online store. Like WordPress, there are many plugins available and it is attached to WordPress, making it extremely flexible. There are many pre-built free and premium themes for WooCommerce. (As a rule of thumb, it’s better to use a premium theme from a reputable developer because it will offer better security and support.) If you’re not tech-savvy, you’ll most likely need a WordPress developer to help you set it up and use it. WooCommerce also offers a lot of capabilities and scalability that your small business might need.
Shopify: Shopify is a cloud-based e-commerce platform that lets you create and customize an online store and manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping. It’s not a WordPress extension like WooCommerce, it’s a standalone platform hosted on the Shopify server, so if you have a main website, your eCommerce site would technically be separate from that. You can link your Shopify account from your regular website built with WordPress, Drupal, Wix, etc., unless your main website has a Shopify integration plugin.
Features include unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, fraud analysis, discount codes, reports and much more. The key benefits of Shopify are that you don’t need a developer to set up a store, and everything on the backend is already set up for you when you sign up. The downside is that you don’t have as much control or flexibility over your store as you would with WooCommerce.
Shopify Plus: Shopify Plus is Shopify, but with a higher level of customization, more staff accounts and international e-commerce options. It also has a higher level of support. However, all of this obviously comes with a higher subscription cost, and still doesn’t have all the flexibility and customization capabilities that WooCommerce has.
Business Squarespace: Squarespace has a e-commerce subscription option, so if you chose Squarespace to build your site and have very simple e-commerce needs, you may choose this route. Business Squarespace charges a transaction fee, but this can be avoided by upgrading your subscription to a basic online store. It includes a free domain, SSL security, SEO, abandoned cart recovery, discounts, real-time carrier shipping, and more. However, it has been noted that it is not as user friendly as Shopify. And just like Shopify, it’s just not as flexible as WooCommerce.
Wix: Wix actually has a Shopify extension that is very easy to use. You will need to upgrade your Wix account and sign up for Shopify to use it.
GoDaddy Online Store: GoDaddy has a relatively new standalone eCommerce subscription platform that is relatively easy to set up and use.Very little technical knowledge is required to launch your store with GoDaddy’s online store. The templates are simple and clean, and somewhat customizable. Features include SEO and marketing tools, social media integration, appointment booking, SSL security, fast page loading, and more.
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- 25 Frequently Asked Questions on Starting a Business
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- 17 Key Lessons for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business
6. Create an interesting, memorable, and engaging website user interface
Make sure your small business website interface leaves a positive impression that drives results. You can do this by implementing the following tips:
- Use beautiful graphics and easy-to-read fonts.
- Make sure your graphics are compressed and optimized for fast loading. If your website is slow, search engines like Google will penalize your rankings.
- Research the competition to see how they have designed and optimized their websites; implement similar components that work for your small business website.
- Research your target audience to see what it is they want from your site and make it easy for them to achieve it.
- Stay consistent with Brand throughout your website design.
- Design an intuitive navigation system that allows users to quickly get to the pages they need.
- Post easily accessible contact information access.
- Incorporate obvious calls-to-action (especially “buy now” buttons).
- Create pages that are standard for small business websites, such as:
- Home
- About Us
- Products/Services (with visually appealing images and descriptions)
- Sitemap (for SEO purposes)
- Admin Team
- Contact Us
- Terms of Use (the online contract that governs how users can use your site)
- Privacy Policy
- Pa additional pages relevant to your specific small business
7. Optimize Your Small Business Website for Search Engines
SEO is a set of practices that you apply to your website to ensure that search engines index and rank your website appropriately and then show it to search engine users. Once your website is “crawled” by search engines, it competes with websites that have similar content. The better your website design and content, the better your site will appear on search engine result pages.
SEO mainly includes the following practices:
- Keyword research and implementation
- Optimal website code
- Fast loading speed
- Be secure and have an SSL certificate installed; SSL is the standard security technology that guarantees the privacy of data transmitted between web servers and browsers
- Have a site optimized for mobile devices
- Existence of high-quality backlinks ( links on external websites with content) leading to your site
- Have many positive online reviews (Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc.)
- Use internal links throughout your site to keep people clicking and reading
- Use social media to link to your site (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.)
SEO it’s an extremely important ongoing process that can mean the difference between being listed on the first page of search engine results pages (resulting in a lot of free traffic to your website) or page 300 (resulting in a lot of free traffic to your website). which results in no traffic).
8. Create and regularly publish quality content
Both quantity and freshness of content are important to search engines, so it is important that you create a plan for publishing quality articles and/or blog posts on your site and on external sites that link to your site If you want to rank high in search engine results and encourage people to come back to your site again and again, you’ll need to update your website with fresh content and relevant as often as possible.
In addition to static page content and articles, a great form of content to post on your website is testimonials. Soliciting testimonials from your customers and then posting them on your website is a great way to post new, high-quality content to your site that makes your small business more engaging.
Make sure your content uses a , brand tone that people will enjoy reading.
9. Install Webmaster Tools
Leverage vital data to help you analyze traffic and site performance by installing Google Analytics and Google Search Console (both preferably via Google Tag Manager) and Bing Webmaster Tools.These tools can be used to track the following types of information:
- Daily, weekly, and monthly visitors to your site
- Number of visits to each page of your site
- “Bounce Rate” – The percentage of users who enter your site and leave after viewing just one page (Google’s algorithms give higher rankings to websites that have a low bounce rate , on the theory that visitors spend more time on the site and find it valuable.)
- Average time visitors spend on the site
- Crawl errors on your site ( errors that search engines found on your site when crawling your content)
- Broken links on the site
- Keywords that lead users to your site
- Backlinks to your site
- Web page download time
- Other information that can help you improve your SEO
10. Implement a Website Maintenance Plan
You shouldn’t create a website and then allow it to become obsolete. In order to have a successful website that ranks well in search engines and doesn’t get hacked, you need to make sure it is properly maintained.
Here are some tips for creating a website maintenance plan for small businesses. businesses:
- Check Google Webmaster Tools data at least once a month and get important bugs emailed to you in real time.
- Use the data to learn more about your audience so you can serve them better.
- Use performance data to optimize and fix warnings and errors.
- Make sure all software is always up-to-date .
- Run security scans so you know your website is free of malware and hasn’t been hacked.
- Use “split tests” to see if certain variations of your website improve performance; For example, if you’re selling a product, you might have two versions of a particular landing page with different images and copy – split testing lets you see which version has a higher conversion rate.
- Follow my SEO tips (see #7) and continually post quality content (see #8).
- Find modern and effective ways to market your business online.
- Allow website users to provide you with feedback on your site.
- Continue to check on your competition from time to time to see what they are doing with their online presence and see if what they have done it may work for you. too.
- Make sure your website is backed up in multiple ways at least once a day and at least 10 days back.
Conclusion
As you can see after reading this article, creating a great small business website may not be as simple as you first thought. However, by following the steps outlined in this article, your small business will have an excellent chance of succeeding in the online marketplace.
About the author
I am a webmaster specializing in WordPress, Graphic Design, Mobile Friendly Website Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising, Front End, E-Commerce, and Blogging/ social media marketing. I am originally from Ohio and received my Bachelor of Science degree from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh with a concentration in Web Design and Interactive Media. I have been involved in creating or marketing over 100 business websites. To find out how to drive visitors to your website, check out my article, Internet Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses: Pay Per Click Advertising and Search Engine Optimization. Visit my website www.allisonbowlus.com and connect with me on LinkedIn.
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This article was originally published on AllBusiness.com.
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