How to Create a Business Website in 7 Simple Steps

At the end of 2019, you’d think that every business has a website. Even though 90% of the population is online, that’s not true.

About 40% of small businesses don’t have a website. They believe that everyone knows them or that a website is too expensive.

You can learn how to create a business website yourself, even though you have no idea how to write code. You no longer need to be a programmer, and a very small investment will get your website up and running.

How can you reach customers when they’re looking for you? Read on to learn how to build a website that attracts the right customers.

1. Buy a Domain Name

A domain name is the name of your website. In geek-speak, it kind of functions like a phone number. It’s what people type when they want to visit your site. Our chamber’s domain name is allenfairviewchamber.com.

You can purchase a domain name for about $12 a year from a number of sources, such as Namecheap or through a local hosting company.

A domain name also gives you a professional email address. You’ll be able to have email addresses like contact@yourdomain.com or info@yourdomain.com. This is much better and more trustworthy than using an email address that ends with gmail.com or hotmail.com.

Your domain name should be relevant to your business, but not too long. You want something that’s easy to remember.

2. Plan Your Website

Once your domain name is secured, you want to plan out your site. This is called creating a wireframe. It’s a basic map of your website, what the navigation will be like, and the initial design structure of each page.

This will save you a lot of time in the development process because you’re not redoing things over and over.

At this stage, you want to think about how your website aligns with your brand. Think about the colors and fonts you want to use that are consistent with the brand.

3. Choose a Hosting Company & Website Platform

Now it’s time to figure out how to host your website. When people type in your website’s domain name, they are requesting the files and images that make up your website.

These files need a home that can serve these files regularly. That home is called a server. Servers are large computers that are hooked up to the internet that are expensive to own and operate. Hosting companies let you rent space on their servers.

There are two main types of hosts, called hosted and self-hosted. Examples of hosted companies are Squarespace, Shopify, and WordPress.com. Self-hosted companies lease space on their own servers, and you’re fully responsible for building your website.

Hosted sites offer hosting and development tools to help you build your website. They’re often more expensive to use for that convenience.

Self-hosted companies give you more control over your website. If you want to use WordPress, Drupal, or another content management system, this is the way to go.

4. Pick a Theme or Template

Whether you decided on a hosted or self-hosted plan, there are a lot of templates and themes available. These themes are the basic design of the site filled in with content.

You can customize these themes by changing the colors, adding your logo, or changing the font and font size.

Refer back to your wireframe and research themes and templates that look similar to your wireframe. That will require less customization work on the site.

5. Add Content and Images

Once you have your theme installed, you can add your own content and images to the pages. You want to do a little homework on SEO to understand how to optimize your content for search engines.

Images are often the largest files of a website. They take the longest to load, which can slow down your website. You don’t want that to happen because people aren’t willing to wait for your site to load. You will lose traffic and potential business.

You can use an image editing tool or install a plugin that compresses images before you upload them to your site. These tools make the file size smaller and keep the quality of the image.

6. Install Analytics

An important part of measuring the success of your website is to know how much traffic you have. You have to install Google Analytics on your site. This measures the amount of traffic you have, where they come from (social media, organic search, etc.), and how long they stay on your site.

This is invaluable data as you market your business. This tool will tell you what’s working and what’s not.

7. Test Your Site

Your website is almost ready for primetime. You need to test it first to make sure that it looks great.

Test your website from the perspective of visitors. Ask yourself how easy it is to find information. Also check the site on tablets, phones, and desktop computers to ensure that the site looks great across all devices.

People tend to scan content when they visit your site. Make sure that important information is in bold or highlighted to make it much easier for people to get what they need.

How to Create a Business Website Easily

Your business needs to be found online. Even if you have a basic business listing, people are more likely to use your business if they can know more about it.

They may want to know your menu, services, or prices before they show up. If they can’t find your website because you don’t have one, you’re losing business.

It’s easy to learn how to create a business website when you break the process down into simple steps. With the tools available today, you just need to know how to click your mouse and enter keystrokes.

Now that your website is up and running, you’re going to want traffic. Read this article about the top social media best practices to help you build awareness and drive web traffic.