Building a website is an excellent decision if you own a small business. You can use it to promote your products or services, showcase your expertise, or inform your customers about your business location and operating hours.
So, what should you do to create an excellent small business website? Let’s find out more below.
1. Make a Plan
Before we get into the steps of creating the site, it’s helpful to plan it out beforehand.
First of all, you should know the primary purpose of the website. Is it to showcase your brand value? Promote and sell your products? These sorts of questions will help you identify the tools needed to build the perfect website.
Furthermore, it’s also essential to plan your homepage layout. Make sure the visitors can navigate through your site and easily find what they need. For this task, you need to analyze your customer journey.
2. Choose the Right Hosting and Domain Name
A host is where your website data will be stored, while a domain name is your site’s address.
For starters, it’s vital to choose the exemplary hosting service as it’ll affect your business expenditures. A cheap web hosting like 000webhost, for instance, would be an excellent choice if you’re on a tight budget.
After settling down with a web hosting provider, you need to choose the right type of hosting. For example, shared hosting is well-suited for low-traffic websites since it offers essential resources at an affordable price.
On the other hand, VPS and dedicated hosting provide more server resources, resulting in better site performance. However, they’re more costly than shared hosting.
What’s remarkable, most hosting providers include free domain name registration in their plans. To make the best of this benefit, make sure to brainstorm domain name ideas using some helping tools like Nameboy.
When choosing a domain name, make sure it’s short, reflects your brand value, and has the correct extension (.com, .org, net, and more).
3. Install Themes and Plugins
Your website’s design and functionality will affect your visitor’s impression. As such, it’s crucial to choose a suitable theme and plugins for your website. If you’re using WordPress, you can check out the official themes and plugins directory.
One of the best plugins for a small business site is WooCommerce, which helps you set up a store without hassle. You can add products, set up the payment system, and organize the shipment system with a few clicks.
Besides adding eCommerce functions, make sure to install some speed optimization and security plugins to ensure the best performance and security.
Now, to have a perfect look for your website, you can use a theme whose design and features match your industry. For instance, the South is ideal for real estate websites as you can display featured properties, client testimonials, the realtor, and much more!
4. Create Engaging Content
Providing helpful and engaging content will give you lots of benefits, such as increased sales and recurring traffic. And to reap those advantages, you need to create content that solves your audience’s problems.
Each content should focus on specific intent. For instance, do you want to teach your audience how to create an online store? Or do you want to review some products through a listicle?
Whatever the intent, be consistent and consistently deliver high-quality content. Over time, the audience will depend on you and stick with your brand.
Don’t forget that plenty of brands also write content for their target audience — which might be the same as yours. For that reason, use your brand voice to make your content stand out from the competition. Identify your brand character, and apply it to the content.
5. Promote Your Website
Want to get even more traffic? You can promote your site by sharing content on social media platforms and applying SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices.
First, every time you upload new content, post it to your social networks. However, keep in mind that you should post the content on the right channel.
For instance, if you want to post visual-based content (like images), it’ll be better to post it on Instagram instead of Twitter since Instagram is the better place for visual storytelling.
Now, to get more organic traffic, make sure to apply SEO practices so you’ll rank well on SERP (Search Engine Results Page). For this task, you should perform on-site SEO on your content, improve your site’s speed, make it mobile-friendly, and get more positive reviews.
6. Perform Maintenance Tasks
By maintaining your website, you can keep your site fresh and well-secured.
Consider using webmaster tools like Google Search Console to monitor your website performance. The device will send alerts to your email whenever indexing or spam issues occur.
Alternatively, you can use speed test tools like GTMetrix to fix your site’s performance issues with methods like leveraging browser cache and optimizing images.
Also, don’t forget to keep your themes and plugins updated. Otherwise, they will make your site vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Last but not least, always backup your website in case something goes wrong.
Conclusion
In this article, you’ve discovered all the basics you need to build an excellent small business website. Here’s a quick recap:
You should plan your website by determining its purpose and then choosing the right hosting and domain name.
Once your website is up and running, it’s time to have the right design and functionality through themes and plugins.
Please fill up your website with quality content and promote them via various channels. Last but not least, don’t forget to maintain your website’s performance and security regularly.
