22/09/2022
Taking your small business online mainly requires planning and insight into what you want your website to do for your business; a monetary investment (although you can build a website on just about any budget), and some time and energy.
1. Plan your website
Having some preliminary ideas about your website’s design and functionality before you get started will help you make foundational decisions about your website, and avoid headaches down the road.
Does your website need ecommerce functionality, or will it mainly be informational?
What information do you seek when you visit a business’ website?
What type of customer engagement tools do you need?
What level of control do you want to have?
What is your budget for this website, both in time and money?
2. Pick a web host
Once you have a general sense of what you want your website to do, you can decide how to actually build your website, and look for a web host.
Web hosting is the service that allows an individual or company to publish a website on the Internet. If you use WordPress or another CMS to build your website, you will need to set up web hosting separately, as websites built with a CMS exist independently of their web host. The pro of this is you can easily move your website to another host. The con is that choosing a web hosting service provider is another step in the website creation process.
3. Choose and register a domain name
Every website has a domain name, which is the word or phrase users type into their browser to find your website. It’s commonly referred to as the web address.
Here are some things to keep in mind when brainstorming domain names:
Length: Too long, and it may be hard for people to remember your website. Too short, and it might be confusing or misleading
Spelling: Special characters, unusual spellings, and numbers can trip up potential visitors
Keywords: Using words people will search when looking for your type of business will increase the odds that your site will show up in searches.
Location: If you have a localized business, using the city, state, or region in your domain name can help customers in your area find you.
4. Create relevant content
Once you register your domain name and decide whether you’re going to use WordPress or a website builder to create your website, the next step is to create your website.
Home page:
This is the first page visitors will see when they arrive at your site. Make sure this page is engaging, so visitors want to dig deeper, but also includes the most relevant information, in case they have limited time.
Products/Services:
What are you selling? Whether it’s merchandise people can order online, or services people can schedule, all the information must be clear and concise. If you’re selling products through your website, make sure it has e-commerce functions like inventory pages, a shopping cart, and payment processing.
Contact information:
Many people visit your website to find out how to contact you. The easier this information is to find, the more likely customers will get in touch with you. This is also where you can give customers the option to share their contact information, which you can use for further engagement.
About:
This is where you get to tell your business’ story. Introduce yourself by sharing your company’s mission, values, and history, and providing information about yourself and your team.
Testimonials: Let past customers help you sell your company to potential customers by including reviews and testimonials.
Blog:
While not essential, a blog can be an easy way to keep your audience engaged, and drive website traffic by providing regular updates on what’s new at your business.
5. Optimize your website for search engines
Now that you have a functional, published website, the next step is to make it as easy as possible for people to find it. Enter search engine optimization, or SEO.
Search engine optimization is the process of refining your website’s content to get higher search engine rankings and therefore drive visitors to your website, without paying for search engine placement. This is important because it will help your website appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), thereby increasing the likelihood that new visitors will find your site.
Relevant page content: Make sure your website has content that answers your customers’ most popular queries.
Keywords: Do some basic research to find the words and phrases people most commonly use when searching online for your type of business or service, and include these keywords in the text on your site.
Meta tags: This element helps search engines find your website’s metadata, or information embedded in your site’s HTML code. Metadata helps search engine’s understand what your website is offering, and therefore how to include it in SERPs.
Website navigation and sitemap: Search engine bots need to navigate your website to find relevant information, so easier navigation can equal better search result rankings. Bots will also scan your sitemap, which is essentially a directory of all the pages on your website, for relevant content.
Link building: Linking to other pages within your website (internal links) as well as getting reputable, external websites to link your content (backlinks) also boosts your search rankings.
In addition to keeping website visitors engaged, images can also help with your SEO. It takes a few extra steps to optimize your images, but it can be worth it to increase your place on SERPs.
6. Drive traffic to your site
The most successful businesses use a multi-pronged approach to get as many eyes on their site as possible, including the following methods:
Use social media:
Whether you already had social media accounts for your business before building your website, or are launching them both simultaneously, you should connect everything for maximum visibility. Linking to your website from your social media pages enables users to easily access your site, while letting your website visitors follow you on social media directly from your site increases your engagement and raises your social media profile.
Offer promotions:
Give people an extra incentive to visit your website, whether it’s with a coupon that can only be redeemed online or a product that is exclusively sold on your site.
7. Convert website visitors to customers
Getting people to visit your website is great, but what’s even better is turning those visitors into paying customers who support your small business.
Your website can help with this conversion passively simply by presenting your small business as a trusted authority for the products or services you provide.
For a more proactive approach, encourage website visitors to share their email address, which you can then use for email marketing campaigns. These email campaigns should include calls-to-action that drive traffic to your website, as well as to your brick-and-mortar location, if you have one.
8. Maintain and improve your website
Even after the initial work of getting your small business online is done, you shouldn’t shut off your computer and forget about your website. Regular refreshes and updates will ensure that customers stay engaged, and that your site will rank higher on SERPs, which in turns means you will attract more potential customers.
Tracking your website’s performance with tools like Google Analytics will help you understand what your website is doing well, and where there is room for improvement. As you identify new uses for your website, you can add new pages and features, so your website continues to grow along with your business.
CREDIT: https://digital.com/how-to-take-your-small-business-online/
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