If you are a small business owner you need to stay in touch with your potential customers. Following advancements in technology, there is no better way to do this than to create a website and be available to them 24/7. As with everything else, at first it was only done by professionals but now it is simplified and doable by amateurs. Follow the 5 steps and get an idea of what the process entails.
Why do you Need a Website?
Think of an answer to this question and it will help you determine the purpose of your online existence. Have an outline of information you would like to include. Will this be an informative pamphlet or an online store? You can have a mere presentation of your business with details of products or services you provide as well as the means of contacting you. Improve it by adding a catalog with prices, manuals, testimonials… Max it up by enabling an online shopping feature and live tech support.
Find a Good Host
You need to locate a server which will host your website and choose a hosting plan. Your hosting plan will depend on the purpose of your website, its content and the number of visitors you expect to have. When it comes to hosts, you have numerous reviews and explanations available online so shop around, get informed before you make the decision.
Get a Domain
Think of your domain name and after you do, check whether the name is available or it has previously been claimed by someone else. When coming up with a name, you should include your trading name and potentially what you do (this is something you probably want to use if the original idea is taken). Whatever you do, keep it related to your business, do not choose something personal and dear to you just because you think it could bring you good luck or it sounds cool. Once you find an available domain name, Hostgator advises you should look for variations of the name and get those as well. Redirect the variations to your actual website, thus be easier to find and keep people from not being able to get to you due to a mistake.
Choose a Platform
You can hire a professional to do this for you, build your website and I am sure that you would be happy. However, there are building platforms available nowadays that would allow you to do this yourself. They are quite simple, pretty much self-explanatory and with a good support base online so you can find an answer to any question you may have. According to Open Source CMS just over a half of websites available are made in Word Press which may be just the platform for you. Once your site is ready, follow the instructions and test it to see how well it actually works. If you find it is good to go, one last thing you need to pay attention to, in this sector, is that your website is always up-to-date, sometimes it is better not to have info than to have wrong info.
Advertise
Make your website known. Use social networks to create accounts for your business and link them to your web page. Use this cheap possibility to make it available to a vast number of people. You can try optimizing your page further, but due to damage it may induce, I suggest you get one of the professional SEO services to do your optimization for you. They will help your website get to the top of the ‘charts’ and you won’t lose another view.
Choose to build your own website and have professionals help you fight the competition online. This may be the best compromise between reducing costs and getting a quality website.
These are really basic tips to build a business website, although these are basic but found them necessary to build a website. Thanks for these tips quite helpful to beginners.