There has never been a better time to build a small business website. As most of today’s consumers are online, a website is essential to your success—serving as your digital storefront and a tool to raise awareness, establish credibility, and boost sales.
With the wealth of beginner-friendly website builders available, creating a small business website should be easy. These options enable you to create a functional site with little to no experience, and the best part? Many of them are budget-friendly.
In this Guide:
What to Do Before Your Build a Website
First things first: there are a few key elements you have to decide on before building your site. Ask yourself the following:
- What is the purpose of your site?
- Who is your target audience?
- What will your content be?
Answering these questions is the best way to set clear goals and avoid confusion in the process. Whether you want to use your site to add value to your audience through relatable, engaging content, or as a platform to sell goods, understanding this in advance will make it easier to build a site that works for you and your target audience.
10 Key Steps to Build a Small Business Website
Building a website is not as complex as it may sound. To start, all you have to do is choose the right content management system (CMS), sign-up, and register your domain name. Now, for the fun part, select a theme and customize it. After that, you should be all set to launch your site. Let’s break down these steps further.
- Register your domain name
Your domain name is your website address. It’s the entry point to your site and is often the first thing visitors will see. It must be optimized for both the users and search engines. It’s also a good idea to align your domain name with your company name. For example, our domain name is publicadagency.com. Check out the following tips when thinking of a great domain name.
- Keep it short and easy to spell
- Avoid abbreviations and unnecessary hyphens
- Check for similar ones on the web
- Choose your website building platform
As a small business trying to go the DIY route, you should opt for an easy-to-use website-building platform. WordPress ranks at the top in this category—it’s built for non-technical people with its intuitive and user-friendly interface. It provides access to many features that give you more control over your website. But, do note that with WordPress, you’ll have to arrange web hosting separately.
- Find a web host
A website host (also called a website hosting provider) offers the technology and services to put your website on the Internet. You will have to connect your domain name to your web host, so when users visit your address, they can view your site that is stored on your hosting account.
Whereas WordPress requires a separate web host, there are also hosted website builders that provide all-in-one solutions—a hosting service and a completely customizable website design. Some of them are Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and Weebly. As a digital marketing agency in California, Public Ad offers complete web design and development solutions. We support our clients with our web design, maintenance, and hosting services.
- Implement Your CMS
A content management system (CMS) is the software or application used to create and manage your web content. You can skip this step if you prefer using an all-in-one site builder. But, if you prefer using WordPress and outsourcing your hosting, you’ll have to install the software to use the CMS.
A good CMS should be designed according to your specific needs. As a small business, you should choose based on user-friendliness and budget, among others.
- Build your pages
As you build your site, you’ll want to add your pages almost immediately, with each specific to the different aspects of your business. In its most basic form, your site should include the following:
- Home Page
- About Us Page
- Product/Service Pages
- Blog
- Contact Us Page
You can draw inspiration from other websites for your design. Look at your direct competitors, what sites your audience visit and other websites you admire. You can also take a look at DesignRush’s Best Website Design page for the latest award winning sites.
- Optimize for search engines
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of practices used to improve your site’s visibility and ranking when people search for keywords and/or phrases relevant to your business online. In no particular order, some of Google’s SEO ranking factors include high-quality content, mobile-friendliness, page experience, page load speed, on-page optimization, internal and external links, etc.
SEO is an ongoing process. It takes continuous and consistent effort to improve your website and its content to increase your chances of appearing at the top of search results.
- Create and publish quality content
Part of your SEO strategy should be publishing high-quality, relevant, and engaging blog posts to provide value-added information for your visitors. It will help you rank higher in search engines and attract people to return to your site.
In addition to your blog posts, quality content can also be in the form of short videos, testimonials, infographics, slideshows, and downloadable files (e.g. PDFs and Ebooks).
- Install webmaster tools
Google Analytics and Google Search Console are powerful tools that allow you to analyze traffic or keep track of your site’s performance. With these tools, you can get real-time updates of the following insights:
- Number of visitors to your site
- Number of page views
- Average time spent
- Technical errors
- Backlinks to your site
- Page load time
- Other insights that can support your SEO efforts
- Implement a website maintenance plan
Like your car, your site requires regular maintenance to ensure it’s running at full capacity. It also keeps your site security updated and optimized to better cater to your new and returning visitors alike.
Some steps you can take include running security scans to detect malware and threats, using performance data to fix warnings and errors, and using split-testing to see if certain versions of your site perform better.
- Outsource your web design and development
A professionally-designed and developed website is paramount to your digital success. You may have access to resources, but that doesn’t equate to the level of expertise you can get when you hire a professional web development service.
At Public Advertising Agency, we help design and develop your website so that when users visit it, they’ll know who you are and what you sell in just a few clicks. We work to ensure that it’s easy to navigate, fast-loading and optimized for mobile devices.
The availability of high-quality, user-friendly tools has made it easier to build a small business website than ever before. But, we make it loads easier with our comprehensive web design and development solutions. Get in touch with our experts today!
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