If you run a small business, you should create an online presence for it. You may do it with your own hands or entrust this task to a professional agency.
In this article, we’ll provide step-by-step instructions for those who prefer to build sites without third-party assistance.
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Buy A Domain Name
A top-notch domain name ticks these boxes:
- Reveals the essence of your business
- Is short
- Doesn’t contain numbers and hyphens
- Is easy to spell, pronounce and memorize
- Is not taken by anyone else
If the name is already taken, you might be able to buy it from its previous owner.
Make sure the domain extension fits your niche. For instance, if your business belongs to the educational sector, consider opting for “.edu”.
Pick A Hosting Provider And Plan
The ideal hosting is secure and affordable and allows smooth scaling. Here are the three main options that providers offer:
It should cost you less than $10 per month. You’ll need to share your resources with many other websites. That can negatively impact your security. Your web resource might fail to cope with traffic spikes.
2.) Dedicated Server
Its price might vary from a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars per month. You won’t need to share your resources with anyone or compromise on security.
3.) Virtual Private Server
It’s the golden middle between the two previous options. It normally costs less than $100 per month. The security and performance of a VPS can be compared to those of a dedicated server.
Top hosting providers offer 24/7 support. Clients can contact them not only by email but also through live chat and by phone, which is much quicker.
Decide On The CMS
A content management system lets you create and manage content. You’ll probably want to choose the best website builder for small business — and it will be likely to have an in-build CMS. Here are the most popular brands:
- WordPress
- Drupal
- Joomla
- Squarespace
- Wix
- Appy Pie Website
It’s not necessary to have any technical knowledge to be able to use them.
Pick An Ecommerce Platform
You’ll need it to sell your products. Consider these options:
- WooCommerce
- Shopify
- Business Squarespace
- Wix ecommerce extension
- GoDaddy Online Store
All of them allow you to flexibly structure your catalog and guarantee exceptional safety of financial transactions.
Create An Aesthetically Appealing Interface
Make sure the fonts are easy to read, the navigation is intuitive and the overall style matches your niche.
Place your contact details so that people can discover them in one click or even without making a single click. Add convincing call-to-action buttons, such as “Buy Now!”.
Optimize For SEO
Every entrepreneur can afford SEO services on a low budget for small businesses. This type of activity ensures search engines display the link to your web resource on their first pages.
To make the most of SEO, it’s vital to:
- Insert keywords in your texts, categories, tags and URLs
- Accelerate load speed
- Improve the code
- Optimize the images
- Get an SSL certificate
- Make all the pages mobile-responsive
- Build a backlink portfolio
- Let social media link back to your site
- Plant internal links throughout your web pages
- Get a large number of positive reviews
SEO should be an ongoing process.
Regularly Upload Fresh Content
It’s a paramount factor for search engine rankings. Start a blog to establish yourself as an industry expert. Compose your posts according to the SEO rules. Ask clients to provide testimonials on your site — they qualify as fresh content.
Learn To Use Webmaster Tools
Google Analytics and Google Search Console can serve as good examples. Bing and other search engines offer similar alternatives. These tools will provide you with the answers to such questions:
- How many people visit your website per a fixed time period?
- How much time do they devote to it?
- Which pages do they spend the most time on?
- At which moment do they tend to leave?
- How many of them leave after checking just one page?
- Which keywords lead them to your site?
- How long do your web pages load?
Plus, webmaster tools will help you discover backlinks to your web resources, broken links on your own pages and crawl errors.
Plan Maintenance
Maintenance ensures that your web resource:
- Operates smoothly
- Doesn’t get hacked
- Is ranked high in search engines
At least once per 30 days, check webmaster tools. Fine-tune their settings so that they inform you about detected serious errors by email. Create site backups at least once per 24 hours and at least 10 days back.
Regularly update your software. Run security scans. Monitor the activities of your competitors and borrow their best practices.
Analyze your website statistics to identify areas for improvement. Run A/B tests to find out which versions of your site’s design and features your audience loves the most. Accept feedback from customers.
