Tips for Building a New Business Website

Give your website purpose, building a new business website should be done with clear goals in mind, learn how here.

Tips for Building a New Business Website

Photo by Stephen Phillips – Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash

Business websites are a must in today’s digital world, especially if you want to increase leads or make sales. While the abundance of tools and tutorials on the world wide web makes it easy for anyone to set up a website, there are a few key things to bear in mind.

Below are some tips to help you get started building your new business website. 

Establish Your Purpose

This might sound like an obvious point, but good websites have a clear purpose. While in some cases this is obvious, in others, it can be difficult to define. To establish the purpose of your website, you’ll need to refer to your business plan and clearly lay out your branding vision and products and services.

For example, will the website primarily be for sales? Or will you be using it as a lead generation tool? Either way, establishing the function and purpose of your website is an important first step. 

If you’re finding it difficult to establish your purpose, it can be helpful to review a few of the most popular website types and what their main functions are:

  • E-Commerce sites: to sell products
  • Publishing sites: to publish news or stories
  • Lead Generation sites: to capture leads 
  • Branding sites: to promote the brand and its services
  • Support sites: to support other services such as tech

Select a Good Domain Name

Once you’ve established your purpose, you’ll need to select a good domain name. This is an important step because the domain constitutes the URL of your web address. The last thing you want is an overly complicated URL that is difficult to remember. When choosing a domain name, create something that clearly describes your business in a simple way. Keep it short and sweet and avoid confusing elements like numbers and symbols. 

Importantly, you’ll also want to check that the domain you’re choosing is unique and isn’t already in use. 

Choose the Best Host

While WordPress is the popular go-to choice for web hosting, it’s worth exploring other options. Since web hosting is important for storage, accessibility, and web speed, it’s crucial that you take your time to find the best one for your needs. 

Depending on your tech needs and business budget, hosting can cost anywhere from $2 to $100+ per month. When making your choice, remember that there are different types of hosting. You can select shared hosting, which means you’ll share a server with other sites, or dedicated hosting, which gives you a private server. Some popular companies to consider are:

  • InMotion
  • SiteGround
  • Bluehost
  • HostGator
  • GreenGeeks

Implement CMS

If you’re unfamiliar with a content management system (CMS), it’s essentially a platform that allows you to create digital content for your website. Good CMS systems will allow you to maintain your site without much technical experience or know-how. Again, WordPress tends to be the popular go-to when it comes to CMS because it is notoriously easy to use. However, there are a few pros and cons to the top platforms that should be explored.

WordPress – This is by far the most popular CMS platform around. 

  • Pros: It is easy to use and set up, and it has an active community. 
  • Cons: Security can be weak because WordPress’s popularity means it is often targeted by hackers.

Squarespace – This is another popular option and works by monthly or annual subscription. 

  • Pros: It’s an all-in-one package that’s great for creatives and has beautiful design templates.
  • Cons: Squarespace has less extensibility options compared with its competitors.

Wix – This provides a similar platform as Squarespace but only allows a monthly subscription. 

  • Pros: It has a short learning curve and is more user-friendly. 
  • Cons: Your site template is fixed, which means if you change your mind later on, you need to completely rebuild your site.

Make Sure Your Description is Clear

Now you can start the fun job of designing and building your site! As part of this process, it’s important that you ensure your site’s description (or About page) is clear and concise. If users don’t understand the purpose of your site, or if the information is unclear, you are likely to lose potential customers. 

Set Up Efficient E-Commerce Systems

If your business is primarily for sales or selling products online, you’ll need to set up a decent e-commerce system. If you’re new to this, you could set this up yourself or enlist the help of experts. Either way, the sophistication of the site will depend on the scale of payments you intend to take. In general, though, the easiest systems to implement are e-commerce software or third-party payment processors.

Get Cybersecure

While your web hosting service will provide cybersecurity, it’s important that you review this regularly and ensure that it’s up to scratch. This includes your email systems, plugins, and SSL certificates on the site. While installing anti-virus and anti-spam plugins are a good idea, sites can still be easily hacked. To ensure that your business is completely fool proof, it’s wise to seek professional help. Not only can a security company protect your site and email systems from hackers, but they can also prevent other cybersecurity issues such as ransomware and other malware.

Make It Mobile Responsive

It’s no secret that many people access digital services via their mobile phones. In fact, it’s estimated that mobiles account for around 50% of web traffic worldwide. It is for this reason that you need to ensure your website is optimized for mobile use. Most decent website templates will already have built this into their themes, but you’ll need to test it first to make sure that the pages load and display correctly on a phone before you launch. 

Test and Optimize for Speed/Navigation

Before you’re ready to launch, test all the pages and links to make sure they’re working properly. It’s also a good idea to run a few speed tests to check that your site isn’t sluggish and that it’s easy to navigate. While you may be excited to make your site live, ensuring that it is as optimized as possible will go a long way to ensuring that you’ll attract visitors and keep them coming back for more. 

 

Conclusion

Building a new business website isn’t just about creating a space online; It’s about creating an experience for your customers and a functional tool for your company.

In this post we covered the essentials for building a new business website, but there are definitely more insights you can gain on this blog that will help you optimize your websites’ performance, so check them out.