In this day and age, a website is an essential communication tool and a must for all businesses. As more and more people turn to the Internet to carry out most of their activities, a website becomes indispensable for a business to reach its target audience and build a strong customer base. (Steps to creating a website for every business)
To stand out among your competitors, you need an interactive communication medium through which you can build long-term, quality relationships with your customers. Here are some easy steps to build a business website successfully.
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Obtain a good domain name
Your domain name, also known as your website address, is often the entry point to your site. It is important that it makes a good impression for usability purposes, as well as for search engine optimization (SEO).
Here are some tips for coming up with an optimal domain name:
- Make it easy to spell. Try not to use slang, made up, or extremely esoteric words.
- Keep it as short as possible. The shorter it is, the easier it is to remember and type correctly.
- Use the proper domain extension. Try to always make it a .com domain name (as opposed to .net, .co, etc.) unless it is more appropriate to use another extension, such as .gov, .edu, or .org.
- Avoid numbers and hyphens. They are hard to remember and less elegant and memorable than word-only domain names, and may be misunderstood when vocalizing the domain name.
- Make the address broad to facilitate future growth. For example, Amazon.com is a much broader website address than BooksOnline.com and allows Amazon to sell pretty much every type of consumer good instead of books only, as was its original purpose.
- Ensure it is memorable. With so many websites on the internet, it is important that your website name is catchy so people will remember how to access it in the future.
- Research the domain name. Google it to see if a similar website address already exists online, and search on USPTO.gov to make sure it does not contain any registered trademarks.
- Check if the price is right. Determine if you can purchase your desired website address at a reasonable price since most good domain names are taken and will need to be bought from the current owner.
- Avoid nonsensical names. Choose a name that conveys a meaning so that users will know immediately what your business is. Yahoo and Google are catchy names, but they were very expensive to brand, and your small business may not have the same budget.
- Create an SEO-friendly URL. When appropriate, try to come up with an SEO-friendly website address that includes keywords and geo-location;
Establish Goals and Objectives
The first step in building a business website is establishing specific goals and objectives. What do you exactly need a website for? Is it aimed at providing information to people and attracting potential customers? Or do you want to sell products via your website as well?
Once you have defined specific objectives for your site, it will be much easier to gauge which kind of site you need to create, for example, a brochure website or an e-commerce site.
Carry Out Research
Once the objectives are in place, you need to carry out research before creating your website. This involves keyword research, analysis of competitors, and finding out whether your website is worth creating, or if customers are actually buying what you are selling online. All of this comes under ‘market research, which is a step that is not to be missed if you don’t want to end up wasting your time and resources on something that will not generate money for your business.
Optimize Your Website
Optimizing your site means making it easier for existing and potential customers to find your website on the internet using a search engine. To make it more search engine friendly, you need to use relevant and popular keywords, distribute them effectively, come up with unique, fresh content, and take care of all the SEO elements to gain top search engine rankings and increase your site’s visibility on the web.
Test and Launch Your Site
After you create a business website, you need to thoroughly test each and every aspect before launching it. Review the entire site and check for any mistakes, be it spelling, grammar, page layout, color usage or images, etc. In the case of an e-commerce site, place a dummy order and check whether the entire process operates without a glitch.
If any problem occurs at any stage, get your developer/designer to correct it, or correct all the problems yourself using different tools such as link checkers, spell checkers, and various others. Once satisfied, you are ready to launch your site and promote it to attract as many customers as you possibly can! (Steps to creating a website for every business)