create websites

A business website is a digital platform that serves as an online representative of the business. A website ensures that your business is always represented digitally. Whether they’re one-page sites or multi-page sites, websites play a significant role in taking a business to the next level. In this article we will look at the importance of, and how to create a business website.

Benefits of Having a Business Website

A business website has several benefits, including the following:

increase sales

1. Increased sales

A website establishes your online presence leading to increased sales. Because your website is always accessible to potential customers, they can easily access it, as opposed to a physical store. If someone wants to purchase a product or service, they can wake up late at night and do so just at the touch of a button, rather than driving or walking to a store that may be closed. This makes the process smooth and this leads to an increase in sales because purchases can happen at any time of the day or night.

2. Makes your business look more professional

A website makes your business look more professional, which in turn can make people take your business seriously. People are more likely to take your business seriously when there is a website they can go to check out your products or services. With professionalism also comes trust. When a business has a website people are more likely to trust that business than one without a website.

3. Helps take your business global

A website is not limited to the area where your physical store is. With a website your business can expand its horizon, reaching people who are thousands of miles away in other countries and even other continents. With a website, you can begin to do business on the international stage.

4. Ensures constant access to your business

A website has no closing hours, as opposed to a physical store. As a result of this, your business can always be accessible to people even while you sleep. It has no limitations of time or distance like physical stores do.

5. Provides information about your business

People who hear about your business but are unsure what it’s about can head to your website to know more. Your website can contain details like contact information, “About Us”, your products and services and even testimonials. This way, when people visit your website they can leave feeling like they know a thing or two about your business.

6. Great avenue for advertising

Your website helps promote your brand 24/7. With a website, your advertising options are broadened. Rather than being limited to advertising on third-party platforms, you can advertise your business on your website by showing your products, happy customers and testimonials.

7. Eases up the sales process

A website takes some burden off physical stores by automating the sales process. You can include an online store as part of your website so that people who want to shop online can do so.

Steps to Help You Set Up Your Website

steps

1. Decide on your website’s purpose

Decide on what purpose you want your business to serve. Do you want it to be mainly for shopping, to pass information about the business or an educational place where you pass some sort of knowledge? Or perhaps you want it to be a combination of these? Deciding on this will help guide you in creating your website.

2. Determine who your target market is

To set up a website that will be user-focused, you must first know your target market. Ask yourself “who am I trying to sell to”? When you know who your target market is, you can know what you want your website to contain and how you want it to function.You should know who your target market is and what marketing goals you intend to achieve.

3. Register your business

Before setting up a website, you need to buy a domain name and get your business registered and trademarked. Registering your business gives legitimacy to your website and can make potential customers know that you can be trusted.

4. Create or build your website

When creating the website itself you have two options:

Hire a professional

Build a website yourself

You can hire a professional web developer to build your website. The web developer designs and builds the structure of the website making sure that it functions properly and that users can have a seamless experience while using it. The web developer also maintains the technical aspects of the website like capacity and performance.

Before hiring a web developer, look out for the following:

✓ Technical skills like front and back-end development and CMS expertise.

✓ Design sense: should be able to create a website with responsive design, visual appeal and accessibility features.

✓ Project management: should be transparent and accurate in project estimates and pricing and should be able to meet deadlines.

✓ Should communicate clearly and actively listen to your input and should be willing to work closely with you for the duration of the project.

✓ Should have an impressive portfolio of previous projects.

✓ Should be able to protect user data by being security conscious.

✓ Should have a good knowledge of SEO techniques to improve visibility and help the website rank in search.

✓ Should be available for support and maintenance even after the website is live.

If you do not want to hire a professional for business website creation, then you can build one yourself with a third-party website builder. Some third-party website builders aid you in creating a website for your business for free. To build a website yourself, you can follow these steps:

✓ Determine what type of website you want to build: Figure out what goals you want your website to achieve- will it be informational, transactional or educational?

✓ Choose a website builder platform: There are many options available. Some popular free options include: WordPress.com, Shopify, Wix, Weebly and Google Sites. With mobile-friendly platforms like Wix, Weebly and Google sites you can even build a website on your phone using the same process.

✓ Select a template from the available list.

✓ Add your content and images to customize the design: create and add great content to your website.

✓ Add the necessary pages to the template: add pages like “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “Services”, etc.

5. Choose a web hosting service

You will need to choose a web hosting provider. A web hosting provider stores all the files and information regarding a website in the cloud and makes it accessible on the internet. A good number of business website hosting providers are available to choose from. When choosing a web host, look out for the following:

⚬ Customer support quality

What level of expertise does the company possess in handling issues regarding the website? How well can they answer questions or render assistance when needed? Storage spaceHow much digital space is available to store your website data and files like videos, images, text, etc?

⚬ Storage space

How much digital space is available to store your website data and files like videos, images, text, etc?

⚬ Website speed

Can the website load fast and become fully functional in a matter of seconds? How well optimized is it?

⚬ Security features

These are the various technologies and tools like two-factor authentication, SSL, web application firewalls, etc that are put in place when building a website to protect it from cyberattacks, ensuring the safety of sensitive user data and preventing unauthorized access to the website and the data contained in it. Are the security features to your standard?

⚬ Uptime reliability

Will the site be available to users consistently? What is the percentage of the time the site will be fully functional online and available to users?

⚬ Scalability

Can the website adapt to growth in traffic and user demands without crashing or malfunctioning? The website should be able to accommodate growth- whether rapid or gradual.

⚬ Control panel interface

This is an online user-friendly interface that allows users to control aspects of their website. When choosing a web host, you should determine what their control panel interface is like. Is it scalable? Are its controls easily accessible? Is the color coding consistent? Are the security measures great? Will it be compatible with other devices connected to it? These are some questions you should find answers to when choosing a web host.

⚬ Pricing

What is the price to rent the server space? Is it within your budget and do you think it is a fair price? Knowing this can help you make up your mind.

⚬ Technologies used

What software and hardware systems will be used to host your website? Learn about the programming languages, web server software and the database technologies that will be used.

⚬ Location

This is the physical place where the data of your website is stored. You should choose a web host with a server that is closer to your target audience because a web server that is closer to your audience will allow users access information from it faster.

⚬ Shared or dedicated hosting?

You need to figure out whether you want to opt for shared hosting- here you share the same server with other websites and the bill for hosting is shared among all the websites that use the server together. You can also opt for dedicated hosting- here your website has an entire server all to itself, giving you full control over the server and everything related to it.

6. Churn out good content

Make sure to fill your website with great content- articles, images, testimonials. Have “About Us” and “Contact Us” pages, “Product” page, Web Shop/Donation page. You can write and post articles and other good content on your web pages. A company like iBCSCorp can help you write content that sells and ranks in search.

7. Optimize your website

Make sure your website works optimally on all kinds of devices. Focus on user experience. Ascertain that the switch from one device to another will be seamless. This article is a great guide to determining how mobile-friendly your website is.

Also, optimize your website for SEO to enable search engines to find your pages and to help them rank. Optimizing your website for SEO is how to make your website show up on Google. A website optimisation company can help you optimise your website.

8. Pick a Point of Sale

When creating a website, you may need to choose a point of sale to facilitate transactions on your website. This will help your business with processing transactions online. You can choose from the following:

Mobile POS: This type of point of sale makes it possible for users to carry out transactions on mobile devices.
Cloud-based POS: This type stores users’ data on a remote server. Because of this, the information is accessible from any device with internet connection.
Self-service Kiosk POS: This type allows users to independently make purchases through a digital platform.
Integrated POS: This type connects the online store with the physical store seamlessly. In this case, there is unified customer data and inventory management.

Conclusion

A lot of effort and expertise is involved in creating a website that will stand the test of time. Deciding on, building and finally hosting a website involves a lot of thought and consideration. In the end it’s worth the effort!