How to Create a Website for Your Small Business

This is a business post by Marina.

“So, how’s your small business going?” 

We’ve all heard this question from those acquaintances who can’t wait for the answer to be “mmm, I don’t really know…”

And the sad truth is that sometimes we really don’t know how our small business is going. But before you get too upset that your homemade cookies aren’t getting sold enough, why not hire developers and create a small website for your cookie store. We assure you, improving your digital presence will make your small business bloom, making all of your friends jealous. 

But if you’re not tech-savvy enough, a logical question will arise: 

How can you create a website for your small business? 

And that’s precisely why we’re here. We’ll help you figure out how to create a fun and quality website for your business step by step. 

5 Steps to Create a Website for Your Small Business 

 

1) Figure out the platform for building your website 

First of all, you need to understand which platform you prefer for building your website. Is it going to be WordPress , Wix, or GoDaddy? 

If you have already been engaged in website building before, you might have your preferred platform, and this step will be pretty easy for you. However, if WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace are merely words for you, it will take you a while until you find the perfect solution. 

In general, the most common decision is to use WordPress, as it is by far the most popular CMS out there. No, really: it shares 60% of the CMS market, and 40% of all the websites on the Internet are created with WordPress. 

In short, if so many websites have trusted WordPress, you can be sure that you can trust it too. 

However, it depends on what type of website you’re building and the criteria you look for in the website building platform. So, before you make the final decision, it would be best to discuss it with your developer or someone aware of the industry details. 

2) Pick the domain name 

The domain name is as essential as your business name. This is how your digital customers will remember you. So, in general, you don’t want your brand name and domain name to be different because it will create obvious confusion among your customers. 

However, if it is entirely impossible to pick your brand name as your domain name, at least try to make them sound similar. You want both your business and domain to have a concise, memorable, and very catchy name. 

3) Choose your hosting service 

Another critical step is to figure out where you want to host your website.

Again, it will broadly differ depending on what the purpose of your website is. There are mainly four types of hosting services: shared, managed, VPS, and dedicated server hosting.

As a small business, we assume that you wouldn’t want to spend too much money on the hosting, so we automatically remove the last two options as they are way too costly. 

So your decision is between the shared and the managed hosting services.

You need to understand whether you want to spend less but risk your website security and speed or spend a little more but build a safer page for your visitors. 

If you choose the first option, then you should go with the shared hosting. However, if you care more about the quality of the hosting service than the cost, then managed hosting service is what you need. 

4) Select the perfect theme 

Finally, when you’ve chosen the hosting provider, it’s time to get into the more fun parts. How do you want your website to look and feel? 

There are endless free and paid theme and template options on the Internet, so you can find exactly what you need. 

The kingdom of themes for WordPress is Themeisle, where you can find hundreds of unique themes and templates for your WP website. Don’t forget that you can also customize the theme according to your needs after choosing your preferred one. 

5) Fill your pages with content 

This is the most obvious step: after properly building your website, the only thing left to do is stuff it with relevant content. For this, you might want to outsource content writers and managers or hire an in-house team. In fact, if you’re enthusiastic about writing, you could even do it yourself!  Use a Search Engine Optimization Tool. Our preferred SEO Tool is Semrush.

These were the five main steps for creating a good website for your small business. So hire the developer, and get the work flowing.