13 Steps Guide To Help You Create Small Business Website

Step 1: Know the purpose of your website

Before you start building the website, it is important that you research well and understand what is the primary purpose of the website. Now you are ready to answer any questions, such as what should be the themes, color, or platform used to develop or create a small business website.

Step 2: Create a structure of website pages

After knowing the purpose of your site, you can create a rough sketch of the pages you plan to include in your website. 

A typical business website page would generally consist of:

• Homepage: Your visitors first landing page from any link would be your home page. So, provide a brief about your services and other page navigation clearly and concisely.
• Portfolio page: You can display your work for other clients and explain the valuable offerings you have in store for your potential customers.
• About Us page: Your mission, vision, success stories, team members’ info can pop up on this page.
• Contact Us page: You can provide your address or an online contact that motivates users to send in their queries.
• Resources: You can create and publish blogs on topics related to your business.  

Step 3: Obtain an appropriate domain name

Your domain name, also known as your website address, is frequently the first thing visitors see when they visit your site. It is critical that it makes a good first impression for both usability and search engine optimization considerations (SEO).

Best tips to choose a domain name:

• Keep it simple, short, and easy to spell
• Pick catchy domain names that are easy to remember
• Go for the proper domain extension like - .com, gov, .edu, or .org that suits your business
• Don’t use hyphens and number
• Research before purchasing a domain name
• Check whether the domain name prices are reasonable
• Pick an SEO-friendly domain

Step 4: Purchase a Scalable, Secure Website Hosting Plan with Excellent Technical Support

A website host (also known as a website hosting provider) is a business that provides the technology and services required to view a website on the internet. You link your domain name to your hosting account so that when people type in your website address, they are taken to the website you have stored on your server.

Guidelines for choosing a hosting service for your small business:

• When you need to pick between a shared or dedicated server, the latter gives you an ideal site performance even though it is on the pricier side.
• Check whether your hosting provider offers phone, chat, or email support to solve any issues.
• Look upon the server security and maintenance features the hosting company provides you.

Step 5: Display a detailed description of your company prominently

It's critical to let people know who you are and what you do right away on your small company website so they don't get lost. Make sure your main homepage banner (also known as a "hero picture") and subsequent banners are visual representations of your services, as well as a text snippet towards the top of the page that conveys who you are and what you do.

Include the links in the main menu and footer section of your page. It enables quick access to the users to know about you.

Step 6: Implement the most effective content management system possible.

A content management system (CMS) is a piece of software that allows you to create and manage digital content. You don't need much technical knowledge to use a good CMS, and it will help you maintain your site. You should select a CMS that is tailored to your specific requirements; different systems are used for various reasons, including user-friendliness, extensibility, and cost.

Drupal and Joomla are other popular CMS that can serve as alternatives to WordPress but with few limited features. 

Step 7: Select a reputable e-commerce platform.

You'll need the correct technology if you want to sell items and/or services through your website. (If you don't currently sell anything, you should think about it because e-commerce could help you increase your profits.) If you want users to be able to make financial transactions with you online, you'll need to pick the right platform for your business.

WooCommerce, Shopify, and Shopify Plus are popular small business e-commerce platforms.

Step 8: Create a user interface for your website that is interesting, memorable, and engaging

Make sure the interface of your small business website creates a positive first impression that leads to conversions. Make use of eye-catching images and legible typefaces. Check to see if your graphics have been compressed and optimized for quick loading. Search engines, such as Google, will penalize your rating if your website is slow.

Step 9: Make your small company website search-engine friendly

SEO is a set of techniques you use on your website to guarantee that search engines properly index and rank it, and then display it to search engine users. When search engines "scan" your website, it competes with other websites with comparable information. The better the design and substance of your website, the higher it will rank in search engine results pages.

Best SEO practices:

• Building a mobile-responsive site
• Keyword research
• Acquiring SSL certificates for your website to ensure web-and-browser privacy
• Earning lots of positive feedbacks on platforms like Facebook and Google
• Having high-quality backlinks and the inclusion of thoughtful internal links on the entire site

Want to go for SEO Services?

• Cost-Effective, Custom SEO Services
• Drive Online Leads & Sales
• Perform Competition Research & Analysis

Let Us Give You Ideas!

Step 10: Create and publish quality material on a regular basis 

Both quantity and freshness of content are crucial to search engines, so make a plan to publish quality articles and/or blog entries on your site as well as on external sites that connect to your site. You must update your website with new and relevant material as regularly as possible if you want to rank well in search engine results and attract people to visit your site again and again.

Tip: Client testimonials help you produce novel content for your website. It is an add-on element to make your business look appealing. 

Step 11: Do Social Media Marketing

Want to reach your target audience and inform them about your recent events, contests, product launches, or anything happening at your place? Then social media marketing is the way to go.

These are genuine tools to promote your business in a non-promotional tone. Make sure to include social media links in the footer or other relevant areas.

Step 12: Set up Webmaster Tools

Install Google Analytics and Google Search Console (both preferably via Google Tag Manager) as well as Bing Webmaster Tools to assist you to analyze traffic and site performance.

The tools can also help you track down the following info:

• Bounce rate
• Crawl errors
• Find keywords that earned you leads
• The download time of pages

Step 13: Create a Website Upkeep Strategy

A website should not be built and then forgotten about. You must ensure that your website is properly maintained in order to have a successful website that ranks well in search engines and is not hacked.

The subsequent section on how to create a website for a small business provides some essential tips and tricks to do it.

1. Squarespace 

Best features:

• Elegant templates that are mobile-responsive
• Easy to use drag and drop editor
• Squarespace has impressive tools for email marketing, blogging, hosting a podcast

Rating: 5-star 

2. Wix

Best features:

• Wix has loads of customization options
• It includes more than 900 AI-powered templates
• Supports unrestricted movement of elements not found in other builders

Rating: 4-star

3. Shopify

Impressive features:

• The Huge online app store that provides for all online stores
• Enables to build a strong eCommerce website

Rating: 5-star

4. Weebly

Some of its features are:

• User-friendly builder
• Easy to use
• It has free plans
• An impressive set of small business tools 

Rating - 4-star

5. Webflow

Look-out for features are:

• You can design your site from the scratch
• Loads of customization options
• Designers prefer them for their white-label options and a powerful CMS tool
• It has a free plan

Rating: 4-star