Tips For Building Your Small Business Website

Create Your First Business Website With These Easy To Follow Tips 

Creating your first website can be a scary task to take on. With so many different hosting providers, content management systems, page builders, themes and plugins the options are endless and it can be overwhelming. This article is dedicated to the people who are creating their first website and don’t know where to start. 

 

Choose The Right Hosting Provider

Choosing the right company to host your website with is important. Not all hosting companies are created equally. Here at Inspired Marketing Design we have spent years working with different hosting providers. The first thing you need to look at is obviously cost. Not just the short term cost but the long term cost as well. The next thing you will need to consider is if you want to be on whats called a shared hosting server or a private server. This will depend on your preference and if you think you will have large volumes of traffic. For most people on their first website a shared hosting plan is more than enough to accommodate your traffic load. 

 

We prefer BLUEHOST as our preferred hosting provider. If you have never been a customer of bluehost before you can get a special signup deal. If you sign up for 3 years your cost will be super low. They include a free SSL certificate (great for security and ranking your site) and a free domain! Who doesn’t love that? You can check them out HERE. In the interest of being fair and making sure you have all the information you need you can check out this article for a comparison on some other hosting providers and what they include. 

Build On WordPress

You will hear lots of people talking about something called a “CMS” or content management system. A Content management system is basically the platform that you interact with to create your website. When you are building your website choosing a reliable and secure CMS is very important. WordPress is the most widely used CMS across the world. You will find some services offering their “page builders” but often times these sites have trouble ranking on google and other search engines because they were not built with marketing in mind. Additionally, wordpress is a fairly easy to use CMS that is free. If you sign up with bluehost they have a one click install for wordpress making your life even easier. 

Design With A Purpose 

Before you start to build your website you should sit down and look at what you want your website to do. Do you want people to buy things of your site or is your site to drive engagement with your company, to keep your customers informed, or maybe all of the above. Designing your site with a clear goal in mind will help make your whole site look and feel cohesive and professional. We recommend to site down and draw out what each page of your website might have or look like. What do you want people to see first? If your looking for help with your layout you can check out this article here. 

Create Your Own Content

It is easy for people building their site for the first time to create it using other peoples content and images but often times this shows through to the end user. If you are creating a site for your company make sure to include as many of your own images as you can. Hiring a local photographer to take pictures of your products or location is a great way to take your website to the next level. 

Create Clear Calls To Action 

Calls to action (CTA) is what tells users what you want them to do on your site. People don’t like thinking about what they should do next. Creating clear CTA helps them navigate your site and convert them from a visitor to a customer. Without these on your website any traffic you do get will be a waste. Take some time and think about what it is you want people to do. Create an account? Sign up for your email campaigns? Send a contact form? 

Tell A Personal Story 

A lot of people building their first business website think that it has to be dry and impersonal but in today’s market people feel more comfortable engaging with brands or companies that have personality. Letting your personality show through in a professional way is another step to making your website feel professional and work for you. 

Make It Easy To Contact You

Don’t just put a contact us page on your site. Make sure your phone number and email is easily found no matter what page your user is on. You can even place whats called a short contact form with just an email and message box on your site on every page. This makes it easy for people to send you a message without having to search your contact us page and drives them to get in touch. 

Share Peoples Experiences

It’s hard to imagine allowing people to write testimonials for your website or even asking for them from customers but in today’s landscape showcasing who you have worked with and what their experiences were will help drive website visitors to become customers. Consider asking recent customers to place a review on google and copy and paste that review into a testimonial widget. 

Creating your first website can be a daunting task. If you keep these 8 tips in mind during your design and building process your website will look and feel professional. The biggest thing to remember is that your website should be an extension of who you are. It is ok to show personality on your website. By doing so you will attract the customers that will connect with you on more than a consumer level making your business successfull.