7 Key Steps To Building A Great Business Website

Whether you are a freelance photographer, own a hardware store, or own any type of business, a great website is essential for your company’s success.

Are you attempting to build a new startup website or make your current site more visible on search engines? Here are seven key steps to building and helping your business website operate effectively in the online marketplace.

1. Purchase a great domain name

Your domain name, also perceived as your website address, is usually the entry point to your site. It needs to make a good impression for usability purposes, as well as for search engine optimization.

Here are some suggestions for developing a powerful domain name:

• Make it simple to spell.
• Keep it as short as you can.
• Use the conventional domain extension.
• Refrain from using numbers and hyphens.
• Make the address broad enough to promote future growth.
• Assure it is memorable.
• Do your research on the domain name.
• Verify the price.
• Avoid absurd names.
• Build an SEO-friendly URL.

2. Obtain a reliable, scalable website hosting with great tech support

A website hosting provider is a company that administers the required technology and services for a website to be viewed on the internet.

Hosting services can cost anywhere between $2 to $100+ per month, depending on the kind of technology and support you prefer. You can usually obtain a discount if you buy a yearly plan instead of a monthly plan.

Shared hosting implies you sharing a server and its resources with other customers, which can hurt the performance of your business website.

A “dedicated server” hosting plan is the most costly option, but it would help your website perform the most optimally.

A “virtual private server” (VPS) hosting plan offers the best of both worlds, being an affordable compromise. A VPS is one machine that is divided to function like multiple machines. It provides similar affordability to shared hosting, with comparable security and performance potential as a dedicated server hosting plan.

Here are some guidelines for determining a great website hosting plan:

• Make sure your hosting company has a phone and/or chat support so you can be quickly assisted if you have a technical problem.
• Opt for an easy to use server interface like cPanel to access your server.
• Check to see what kind of server security is in place on the server you are considering.
• Ask to access your server via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).
• Make sure the hosting company performs regular security maintenance.

Some of the most known website hosting companies are:

• GoDaddy
• DreamHost
• Bluehost
• InMotion
• SiteGround

3. Install the best content management system

Content management systems (CMS) are software programs or applications designed to create and control digital content. A reliable CMS will help you maintain your site, without needing much technical knowledge to use it. You should opt for a CMS designed for your unique needs. Various systems are employed for various reasons, such as user-friendliness, extensibility, and budget.

The following are some of the most utilized systems:

• WordPress
• Drupal
• Joomla!
• Squarespace
• Wix

4. Choose a reliable e-commerce platform

If you intend to sell goods and/or services through your website, you will want the right technology to do so. If you do not already sell anything, you may want to reconsider this, since e-commerce could increase your profits. You will need to determine the right e-commerce platform for your business model to enable users to transact with you online.

Here are some of the most used business e-commerce platforms:

• WooCommerce
• Shopify
• Shopify Plus
• Wix
• Business Squarespace
• GoDaddy Online Store
• Magento

5. Create an attractive, memorable, and engaging website user interface

Ensure your business website interface leads to a positive impression that drives results.

You can make sure of that by implementing the following suggestions:

• Use beautiful graphics and easy-to-read fonts.
• Make sure your graphics are optimized for fast loading. Slow websites will get their rankings penalized by search engines like Google
• Examine the competition to see how they have designed and optimized their websites; install similar components that will work for your small business website.
• Study your target audience to see what they want from your site and make it effortless for them to accomplish it.
• Be constant and on-brand throughout your website design.
• Create an intuitive navigation system that enables users to get to the desired goal as quickly as possible.
• Show accessible contact information.
• Include obvious call-to-actions (especially “buy now” buttons).
• Design standard pages for business websites.

6. Install webmaster tools

Employ vital data to help you examine traffic and site performance. Implement tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console (both through Google Tag Manager) and Bing Webmaster Tools.

These tools are used to track various types of information:

• Daily, weekly, and monthly guests to your site
• Number of views on each page of your site
• Bounce rate
• Average time spent on site by visitors
• Crawl errors on your site
• 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 enhance your SEO

7. Follow a website maintenance plan

A business website shouldn’t be designed and then left to grow stale. To have a great website that ranks favorably in search engines and doesn’t get hacked, you need to make sure it is suitably maintained.

Here are some tips to design a well-functioning business website maintenance plan:

• Verify webmaster tools data at least once a month and install notifications so any vital errors are emailed to you in real-time.
• Manage traffic data to discover more about your audience so you can better provide to them.
• Apply performance data to optimize and adjust warnings and errors.
• Ensure all software is always up to date.
• Perform security scans to check if your website is clean of malware and hasn’t been hacked.
• Apply “split testing” to notice if certain variations of your website improve performance
• Find updated and effective methods to market your business online.
• Enable users to provide you with feedback about your site.
• Continue examining your competition regularly to see how they are handling their online presence, and if you can apply it for your business website as well.
• Ensure your website is backed up in several ways at least once a day and at least ten days back.
  Conclusion

As you can notice after reading this article, building a great business website may not be as easy as you first thought. But if you follow the steps outlined in this article, your business will have an excellent chance of succeeding in the online marketplace. We are here to help you build the next great business website and make it more visible on search engines. Contact us today! We’d love to hear from you.