Whether you are a freelancer or have a local business, it is essential to have a well-designed website. But how to design a website? It could be the missing piece towards the success of your business. But making excellent and engaging business websites is never easy. So, let us share with you some fundamental steps to get started.
If you want to build a website and make a statement for your customers, now is the perfect time to do it. Leverage the power of web design and digital marketing to your advantage. Attract your target audience and start offering value.
How To Design A Website? 10 Steps for a Small Business
Designing a website can be overwhelming. If you want to know how to design a website, we’ve put everything that you need to know. It is not enough to put words, graphics, and a nice theme. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for the website is also crucial. It will help you rank in various search engines like Google and Internet Explorer. But how can you do these things on one website? Here are some basic steps that you need to know.
1.Choose a Good Domain Name
The entry point for your website is always your domain name which is the address where your files will be displayed. Here are some tips to keep in mind for the SEO of your website.
- Make spelling simple. Try not to use words that are slang, made-up, or highly esoteric.
- Make sure that it is unforgettable. For search engine purposes and so it is memorable to your customer or clients you can consider using the service or product within your domain. It just makes it easier for people and google to read the site.
- Avoid inappropriate names. Choose a name that conveys a meaning such that customers know what the organization is instant. Avoid curse words or words that are trademarks.
- Keep this as brief as possible. Shorter domains are easier to recall and type on search engines.
- Using an extension of the proper domain. Aim to make it a “.com” domain name (as opposed to .net, .co, etc.) unless another suffix, such as .gov, .edu, or .org, is more suitable to use. (.gov = government .org= Organization .edu= Education)
- Avoid hyphens and numbers. They are more challenging to recall and forgettable than domain names that have words only. The searcher can feel confused when searching the domain name.
- Check if it’s the correct price. Determine if you can buy the preferred website address at a fair price. You may be surprised that your ideal name you have in mind is already taken.
- Build an SEO-friendly URL. Attempt to create an SEO-friendly website address that contains keywords and geo-location.
2. What Is Hosting And Do I Need It?
Before you learn how to design a website, you need to be aware of hosting companies first. Hosting is like the rent, utilities and electricity to your house. Without hosting your domain name it is not displayed on the internet.
So who provides hosting? A hosting company is an organization that provides servers for your files to be hosted on. You connect your domain name to your hosting company. Once the connection is done, the files being hosted on your hosting company will be displayed online.
Depending on the type of hardware and resources you want, hosting services can cost anything from $2 to $100+ a month. If you buy an annual package instead of a monthly plan, you will usually get a discount.
To get help and fix issues that might arise, make sure your hosting provider provides phone and chat support. When a question has to get addressed quickly, email help may also take too long to become irritating. Support for the phone is best, but messaging still works well.
As a business that works with many different types of hosting company providers we would recommend the following for beginners.
3.Display Clear Descriptions
Be sure the visual representations of your offerings are on the homepage. When people visit your website for the first time, they should know that they are in the right place. Your first titles and paragraph should be targeting your desired audience.
4.Implement Content Management System
A software program or framework used for producing and managing digital content is a content management system (CMS). A decent CMS will help you manage the web. The good news is that you don’t need a lot of technical expertise. But choose CMS that will cater to your business needs. Check the user-friendliness, extensibility, and budget. The CMS that we personally use and recommend would be WordPress.
5.A Good E-Commerce Platform Make A Difference
Are you planning on selling products and services through your website? There are various platforms that you can choose from, Shopify, Wix, Woocommerce. We prefer using Shopify for most ecommerce stores, if you need something more custom then Woocommerce would be the right fit.
6.Create An Engaging Website User Interface
Be sure the interface of your small business website leaves a good image that drives outcomes. Beautiful graphics and easy-to-read fonts can be used. Use compressed pictures so that the website loads fast. Search engines such as Google will penalize your ranking if your website is slow.
Do a competitiveness analysis to see how their websites have been developed and optimized. Incorporate standard components that would work on your platform for small businesses. Don’t forget to search on your platform what your target customer needs to see and make it easy for them to do it.
Throughout your website design, stay on-brand consistently. Build an intuitive navigation system that helps users to quickly get to the sites they need. Publish readily available contact details. Prominent call-to-actions (especially “buy now” buttons) will also help to be implemented. Build pages that are normal, like the samples below, for small business websites.
- Home
- About us
- Products or Services (with descriptions and visually appealing images)
- Sitemap (for SEO purposes)
- Management team
- Contact us
- Terms of use (the online contract governing how users can use your site)
- Privacy policy
- Additional pages relevant to your specific small business
7.Optimize Your Website To Rank On Search Engines
SEO is a series of practices that you add to your website. It ensures that your website is indexed and ranked correctly by search engines and then shown to search engine users. When search engines “crawl” the website, it competes with websites that have equivalent content.
The better your website’s functionality and quality, the more the search engine traffic links will turn up on your blog. SEO can make the difference between showing up on the 1st page of google or not at all.
8.Create and Publish Quality Content
For search engines, both the amount of content and freshness is crucial. So you must develop a schedule to publish quality articles and/or blog posts on your website and on external pages connected to your website. Add fresh and exciting material as often as possible. The goal is to rank in the first 10 positions in the search engine results. The first 10 positions are on the 1st page of google or other search engines, most people do not go to the second page.
A significant category of material to post on your website is testimonials, besides static page content and posts. Asking your clients for testimonials and then adding them on your website is a perfect way to post new, high-quality material to your blog. It makes the website more appealing to your small company. Ensure that the content uses fitting on-brand sound users can enjoy reading.
9.Install Webmaster Tools
Making use of critical data will help you monitor traffic and site results. Here is some essential information that you need to know and keep track.
- The number of visitors on your website on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
- The number of views on each page of your site
- The “Bounce rate” or the percentage of users who come to your site and leave after viewing only one page.
- The average time spent of the visitors browsing your website.
- Any crawl errors on your site
- Any broken links on your site
- The keywords that the users used to search for and reach your site.
- Backlinks to your site
- Web page download time
10.Implement a Website Maintenance Plan
Maintenance is the best way to keep your website up to date and displaying images and content correctly. Maintenance is also a way to keep your website secure from hackers.
Conclusion
Learning how to design a website for a small business is never easy. It is true, especially if it’s your first time doing it. But the steps that we provided will guide you. Give it some time and effort to make a website. Your small business will strive more, especially in the online marketplace.
If you need help in building and maintaining a website, contact us and we are ready to help you. Send us a message, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
SBZD Marketing and Web Design
3165 Olin Ave Suite #11, San Jose, CA 95117
(408) 882-1307
