Today, most businesses need to have an online presence. Whether you run a brick and mortar store or want to start a new online venture, creating a website is a vital aspect of your business. But how do you go about it? What’s involved in the website building and what kind of website would be good for you? Here’s a brief guide to building a website for your business.
Determine a Domain Name
If you already have a business and you’ve chosen a name for it, your domain name search would be easy enough. All you need to do is use your company’s name as your domain name. However, sometimes the domain names based on your company names aren’t available. You then need to use a different form of your company name.
You need to consider this step very carefully as your domain name would become your online identity. Industry experts advise that you choose a name that isn’t too long, or a random string of alphabets that form your company name. Choose one that would represent your company well.
Why Do You Need a Website?
Ask this question to yourself when you’re looking to build a website for your business. Do you want an online presence to attract more customers or are you actually going to sell your products online?
In the case of the former, you don’t need much. A basic 4 to 6 page website would be sufficient. You need to think about the blog and digital marketing, but you don’t need a large website. You might need a scalable website that’ll grow as your business, or your online presence grows.
Now, if you want to sell a product or a service online, you need to add a shopping cart to your website. You might also need to create individual product or service pages and find ways to manage inventory.
Find a Website Designer
Once you have all the information needed, you can contact a professional who would build a website for you. There are several platforms to build a website on, and the most popular one is WordPress. You can discuss with your customer about which platform would be most ideal for you. You should also think about logo design and branding, search engine optimization, and the website structure, etc.
The website design process is the most important part of the whole process. You need to ensure that your website is a good representation of your business. You also need to ensure that you get online traffic.
Hosting
While your website is being designed, you need to look into hosting services. You can use shared hosting, which is more affordable, or VPS hosting, which is much more expensive. If you have too many web pages and your website is heavy, it would be a good idea to choose VPS. If you website is light, shared hosting would be sufficient.
Bear in mind that VPS will give your website room to grow. Shared hosting might slow-down the website if it grows too much. After you’ve chosen the hosting service, all you need to do is move your new website to the hosting server.
