How To Create a Website for My Business

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Creating a website for your business can be bit challenging if you are on a budget. Especially if you are a small business owner, this process will be so hard. Because you might want to hire web developers or web designers to create your website.

But that’s not the only way. If you are a big company, then yes you should hire few web developers and build a professional website for your business. But if you are just starting out, or you are a small business owner, you do not need to worry about hiring people.

Today you can design a professionally looking website just by yourself within a 24-hour time.

Creating a website is not a complicated process as you think. There are website building software which will help you to design your website perfectly without any prior experience.

So, in this article I will show you how to create a website for your business with just easy steps.

Things to consider before creating a website

Before you jump right into creating a website for your business, you need to think about your goals. Such as, why are you starting this website, what type of information should I include in the website, what are the services provided by my business etc…

For an example, say you are a fitness coach that needs a website. So, you will need a page that describes who you are, what are your qualifications to provide fitness guide to people. And an option for customers to book appointments to attend your fitness sessions. Also, if you are selling supplements, you’re going to have payment gateways and other fancy stuff connected to your website.

As you can understand, the above requirements are based on the business type that you are doing. Meaning the website of one person will be totally different than a person who is doing a whole other business type.

So, as a summary you must consider your options before anything else.;

• The information you wish to share with the website visitors.
• What type of actions to include in your website? (Buy products online, online appointment booking)
• Past work online portfolio to validate your expertise.

Choose a website building platform

In order to begin your website building process, you must choose a website building platform. It’s basically a software that allows you to customize and design the website as you prefer.

Well, there are many options if you are considering about a website building platform. There are free ones and also paid ones. Generally, paid platforms are supposed to provide many features, right? But, in this case I am going to introduce a FREE platform that gives the freedom and many options to design your website anyway you like.

This awesome software is called WordPress. WordPress is used by 43.2% of websites around the internet. And the best part is, it’s a FREE software. There are two versions of WordPress known as WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The free platform is WordPress.org. It is an open-source software that gives the user to customize the websites very easily. So, when you are choosing the platform be very aware of this matter.

Pick a domain name

Now you have to think and select a domain name for your website. A domain name is simply the address of the website you are creating. Take google.com or youtube.com for example. You probably type these addresses in the search bar of your web browser. Just like that, your website should also have a nice catchy domain name.

But don’t go crazy on selecting a domain name. You need to consider few things before buying a domain name.

• It must refer to your business – If your business is about selling fruits, there is no point in selecting domain names such as tastyvegetables.com. You need to select a domain name which go along with your business type.

• It should be short and memorable – You need to select a domain which contains two or maximum three-word domain name. Because people won’t remember if it is like HowYouLikeMyDomainName.com type of domains.

• Domain extension – Most of the popular websites are consisted of .com extension domain names. Because it is very common and became more standard domain extension. There are other domain extensions such as .net, .org, .biz . But people intend to trust .com extensions often. So, remember to buy a domain name consisting a .com extension.

You can buy a domain name from domain name providers. But there are web hosting providers which will give you a chance to purchase a hosting plan along with a FREE domain name. That is a huge benefit. I will explain more about web hosting below and you can buy your domain name with the hosting plan.

Finding a hosting provider

Web hosting is where your website is stored. Think of it as a rented house. You pay a hosting company to rent out a space in the internet to hold your website. It is the simplest explanation of web hosting.

Now, there are many web hosting providers which will have different features. But in this article I will tell you the best one to go with.

Bluehost web hosting is the most famous of them all. It’s so reliable that even the website building platform we discussed earlier named WordPress recommends. Below are the top reasons why you should pick Bluehost as your web hosting provider.

You will be given a FREE domain name for the first year with any web hosting plan you purchase from Bluehost.

• Free SSL certificate also be given for the safety of your website.
• Advanced security features
• Optimization features regarding the WordPress
• Easy navigational dashboard

• 24/7 support and customer service

You can purchase any web hosting plan you like. The Basic plan is only $2.95/month. And you can upgrade your plan any time you want as your business needs increase.

VISIT BLUEHOST TODAY

Install the WordPress software

Because of the fact that WordPress recommends Bluehost as the best web hosting platform for websites, Bluehost has an option to install WordPress with a one click. So, follow the below steps to install WordPress;

Go to Bluehost dashboard and select “My sites” from left hand menu. After that select “Add site -> Create New Site.

Now you will see an option to Install WordPress or Continue with Bluehost website builder. Since you are going to use WordPress, Click on the “Get Started” button inside the WordPress box.

Then you’ll get a window to enter “Site title” and “Site tagline”. Don’t overthink it. Just enter something to identify your website and proceed.

After that you will need to enter your email address and password for your WordPress site. Then, the installer begins installation of WordPress software.

When the installation has finished, go to My sites again, select Manage site and click on Log in to WordPress and that’s it. You have completely finished installing the WordPress.

Select a theme or template

Your theme controls the entire design of your website. You can go with the default theme WordPress gives you when log in to the dashboard. But if you need more space to design your website, you should either get a FREE theme or purchase a premium theme.

Another way to design your website easily is to get a template. A template is somewhat similar to theme but all the pages are prebuilt for you. For an example, if you want to create a ecommerce site, search for ecommerce related template and install it in your website.

Then you can see that all the pages are that needs to function for a ecommerce website are included and designed for you. All you have to do is change products, change descriptions and you are good to go.

To select themes, you need to log in to the WordPress and go to Appearance > Themes from the dashboard.

After installing the theme, you can customize it anyway you prefer.

Install plugins

Plugins are simply add-ons or extensions that can be used to add new functionality to your website. You can’t design your website properly without these plugins. So, in order to install plugins,

Go to WordPress dashboard > Plugins and select Add new

There are two ways to install plugins.

First way is searching the plugins within the library and installing. There is 60,000+ plugins available in the library.

Second way is uploading a plugin which is in compressed file type to your site using the “Upload Plugin” option. If you downloaded a plugin from WordPress.org you can upload the plugin using this method.

Here is the most important list of plugins that you need to be installed in your website,

• LiteSpeed Cache – High performing page cache and optimize site speed
• Social Warfare – Add the facility to share your pages or posts to social media.
• Yoast SEO – To optimize your site for SEO, especially for on-page SEO.
• WooCommerce – Helps to manage ecommerce tools/digital product stores.

Add content

Now that you designed your website layout, next thing is adding relevant content to it.

• Homepage – This is the first page that a visitor to your website sees. So, the homepage content should consist of brief explanation about what your website provides. And don’t forget to include a call to action so that website visitors can clearly understand what to do.

• About Us page – This is the perfect page to tell about your business, its origin and your team members. Also you can use this to show your website visitors how good is your business doing. Maybe include your previous projects as a portfolio if you are doing a service based business.

• Contact page – If you want to get in touch with your customers, you can include a contact page in your website. So that customers can send messages to you. To do this you must install a contact form and include that in the contact page.

• Blog page – You can write about your latest accomplishments or anything that will be helpful to the visitors in the blog page. Blog page has a heavy effect on the SEO. Because normally you can’t rank higher in search engines with just your website. You need to write content about what the potential customers are searching.

Publish your website

When you are using WordPress to create your website, it will be visible to anyone on the internet as soon as you install WordPress. But without any content your site won’t rank on search engines.

Before publishing your website you need to check whether if your website functions well.

Preview your website with Desktop, Tablet and a mobile device. If there are any glitches fix them so your website is optimized and responsible for any device.

If you are selling products/services and you integrated payment gateways to receive payments, check all are working with a sandbox or testing payment option.

Check you are receiving emails via your contact page, if not customers can’t contact you with their issues.

Read the whole content on your website and fix any issues.

After that you can share your website link on social media and inform your followers and friends about your website.

How much does it cost for a company to create a website?

Cost of creating a website for your business totally depends on the nature of the business. If it’s a large-scale business, you might want to hire a web developer to create your business. If you follow that path, you will have to spend around $5000 – $8000 or even higher. The more features you need for your business more it costs you.

But when your business is not that complicated, you can create your website within few bucks and by following the steps I explained in this article.

I will state the cost of creating a website below, so you can understand how much you need to create a website for your business.

• Website hosting Fee – $ 35.4/yr. (2.95/month)
• Domain Name – 12.99/yr.

As you can see you can build your own website without spending thousands. The website hosting fee is taken from the fee of shared hosting plan in Bluehost. And the fee for the domain name is FREE for the first year if you purchase any web hosting plan from Bluehost. So, you will save few dollars from it.

Can you make a website for free?

Yes, you can make a website for free using WordPress. But you still need to get a web hosting plan and domain name for your website. For that you should spend few dollars.

If you are planning to do the whole thing for FREE, yeah you still can. There are platforms that allows you to create a website within their platform. So that you do not need to purchase hosting plans or domain names. Because those platforms give default domain name based on your website name and store your website in their servers.

But there are few drawbacks in these kinds of services,

The domain names they provide are ugly and anyone who see those domain names won’t bother to click and proceed to your website.

Since you are a one in a million website owners in their platform, your site’s performance and speed will heavily affect from it.

Free plans are limited by platforms. Meaning you will be granted few features to use and customize your website.

Does a small business need a website?

Yes, if you are a small business owner, you must have a website to tell your customers about your business and bring more awareness to your small business.

Most people are used to search on google if they need to buy something or service. If they search “restaurants near me” and you have restaurant which has a website ready to accept customers, then your website will pop up in the customer’s search results and if your website is good and have what they expect, they will buy from you.

So, small businesses are needed to have a website to get more sales and let people know about the business. Many websites get traffic when local people searching for services and products. Don’t lose the chance by not having a website designed for your small business.

Does a small business need a website?

Normally it takes about two or three weeks to create a small-scale business website. But when you aiming for a large website, it takes around three to eight month period to create a business website. These two cases are not related if you create your own website for a small business by yourself. Then it can be done in a 24-hour time range.

Large websites take longer time to create even if you are doing it yourself. But if you just need a website with basic features such as to accept customer payments, integrating appointment booking, business location integration and setting up other little business-related things, then the time will be so less.

Most startup businesses do not really need big websites to carry on their business needs. So, you can save ton of money without hiring web designers and web developers to create your website. You can create your website as you like and customize anytime you want if you follow the process I taught you above.

What should you include in your website?

Aside from the fact that every website is not alike, you need to have some common things in your website.

Headline

This is the most important thing in your website. Every time a user comes through your website link, they land on your homepage or otherwise known as the landing page. And the first thing they see is your headline that gives them a brief understanding about your business. And your headline helps your website visitors to decide either to leave your site or stay on it.

So, remember to write a headline that grabs the attention of a website visitor.

Purpose of your website

You must show the website visitors what is that you offer via your website. You can either describe this on a separate “About Us” page or by using the homepage. Aside from rare incidents most common businesses has a same approach. For an example if you are running a restaurant business, it’s a pretty common business idea that many people follow. There are so many restaurant owners in the world. Major percentage of them has a website to conduct activities in the business.

But you need to show your customers how is your business is different than the others. You need to let the customers know what you are offering and the benefits of being a customer of your business.

This can be done by providing coupons if you are doing a product selling website, and if you have a service-based website you can offer a special membership which has more resources than regular membership plans.

That kind of little tweaks adds up and become more powerful things in your website.

Call to action

Call to action means directing a potential customer to take action on your website. It can be a product or a service purchase. Most common call to actions included in websites are Buying a product, buying a service, Booking an appointment.

You must clearly tell the user to what to do by using the call to action. It can be showed by buttons, texts or an image. But make sure that the website visitors can understand and follow the path or else they will be lost in the process and leave your website immediately.

Social proof

There is no survival to a business without the customer’s trust. That’s why businesses heavily rely on customer feedback. Same thing applies to your website. Let’s say people who are searching about a service or a product that you sell landed on your website. And your product/service seems fine and worth for what’s paying. But they can’t find a proof of someone using the same product/service on your website because you didn’t include social proof on your website.

The final result is your customers will leave your website without purchasing and that’s bad for your business.

You need to include social proof as much as you can on your website. It can be anything,

A person leaving a comment to saying how they solved their problem with your product/service.

A video clip where a customer of yours using and experiencing the product/service.

You must mention and include all the important customer feedback and social proof on your website so that your new website visitors can trust your product/service and decide to buy from you right away.

Legal pages

As does the social proof and customer feedbacks, the legal pages are also important in a website. You must include them in your website to protect yourself from any legal troubles may occur in the future. And it also helps website visitors to trust the website as a legal business.

Here are the legal pages you might want in your website,

• Privacy policy
• Terms and Conditions
• Shipping terms
• Return/Refund policy

Some of these pages are not required to every website. For an example, if your website is not doing any ecommerce business, you don’t need to include Shipping terms and Return/Refund policy pages. But in some cases, like selling digital products, you should mention about refund and returns clearly. Because unlike physical products, digital products cannot be refunded usually.

Final Thoughts

Having a business of your own is a good financial step. But you need to scale your business in order to acquire more customers. You can’t do that with old fashioned word-of-mouth and newspaper ads. This is where the websites come in. If you can create a website for your business the people who are looking the services or products you offer will find your business through your website. So, having a website is a must for any business owner.

There are many ways to create websites. Hiring web designers is a one way. But you can create a website by yourself nowadays. And it is very cost effective if you are a small business owner or do not want to spend huge money on a website.