With the gradual decrease in popularity of brick and mortar retail, online presence has become a necessity for small, home-based businesses, and entrepreneurs selling services and products. Having a well-ranked website, with quality design and content, enables customers to find you via search engines, learn about your business, and purchase your products and services online. Also, even if you are not selling anything online, it can certainly provide more details and information about your background, experience, offers, and other credentials that are to give confidence to your potential customers. Creating a website is not that difficult, depending on your desires, and the complexity of your vision. These are key steps in one website building process.
Figure Out What You Want & Start Simple
To what extent do you want to rely on your online presence? Is the purpose of your website just to provide contact details and business info, or do you want your whole business to function through it? You have to know what you want to achieve, so ask yourself a few simple questions: Do you want to sell products and services online? Do your customers need to find your contact info online? Should your website provide brochures and prospectuses?
Keep it simple for start, and do not bite what you cannot chew, for building a website can be time consuming. Set up a one page website with contact details, and use Google’s free analytics services to track how visitors are finding your website.
Domain
Your website’s name should be easy to remember, so grab your domain name as soon as possible. The best time for that is in an early stage of business idea development, so you could check the availability of a domain when you are to name your business brand. Purchase it for a year and protect your brand. It gives you uniqueness, builds up your credibility and brand. Your domain is your cyberspace’s address.
Host
Bad hosting can have a negative impact on your income. You can experience loss of revenue, malware and security attacks, and it can have a negative impact on your SEO ranking. Website host gives you physical space for storing your website. Do your research, and understand all the different options of web hosting. Look for something that will enable you to manage email accounts, has good content management system, and predefined designs and layouts (which would make the site building job a lot easier.
Design
Make it plain and simple, but effective. Good design is what makes the initial impact, and visually communicates with your website visitors. Make sure it is mobile-friendly, for more and more people use their smartphones and tablets for searching and browsing online. If you skip doing this, you may miss many potential customers. You will not make a mistake if you decide to invest in a good web design by hiring a good digital agency that will perform the web development work for you.
Quality Content
Good content was, is, and always will be the heart of every website. Keep it fresh and up-to-date. It is not difficult to write interesting posts. Think about what your customers would like to read about, and give short insights of your business operations. You can also record and upload audio and (more popular) video material.
SEO & Promotion
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is a process of making sure that your website appears high in search engine results. Find the most relevant keywords, and ensure that your website includes page titles, introduction text, link within the copy, and on page keywords. Get other websites to place authentic and relevant links that lead to your website, and increase website traffic. Also, it is important to be active on social networks, because it is perhaps the best promotion and marketing channel nowadays.
Fast Loading Time
If your website is slow, visitors will lose patience in no time. It should be fast and responsive, with loading time measured in seconds, or else your customers will move on. Monitor your website’s speed, and if you notice that it is slow – contact your hosting provider to amend that.
Leave Yellow Pages in the past. Online presence is key to your business from the very start, and it is important for you to understand what a website can do for your business. Keep it updated, for it is quintessential for your brand and income increase.
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