8 steps to building a business website - How to create it guide

Building a business website is essential in this digital age if you want to market and get more leads for your business.

This in-depth guide will show you the best ways to build a business website for your offline or online small business easily and fast.

Whether you are making a new business website or want to improve an existing one, the steps and ideas in this post are what the doc prescribed.

Let's help you start creating your site today!

How to build a small business website in 8 easy steps with extra tips

Setting up your own small business website from scratch is not as hard as it used to be because of NoCode and CMS (content management system) platforms like WordPress that has page builders.

I'm not saying that developing one, especially, from scratch is super easy.

The below steps and tips, if followed will assist you to create a beautiful business web page with less hassle.

That's what I'm saying ;)

Let's get to the how-to already.

1. Get an awesome domain

One of the first steps to building a business website is getting a good domain name. A great domain doesn't only help with getting your website on the net live but also helps with SEO and click-through rate when you do online marketing.

Tips on how to do it effectively:

• Get a free domain with BlueHost or a low-cost one at NameCheap (most domains start at $6.99/year).
• Pick a short and memorable domain name that makes it easy for people to remember.
• Choose a domain name that describes your business.
• Avoid hyphens, numbers, underscore, trademarks, etc.
• When possible buy your domain with a .COM extension (if not try a .NET or .ORG)
• Create an SEO-friendly domain.

2. Invest in a reliable web host

When you create a website, you want o make sure that it is fast, secure, and always online for your existing and potential customers to access at all times. Investing in a great hosting plan and company will do it for you.

Tips on how to accomplish this:

• BlueHost - If you are on a budget go with BlueHost.
• WPengine - If you have $20/month and developing your website with WordPress, sign up with WPengine(fully managed WP hosting with premium cloud servers). You won't regret it. A lot of well-known bloggers and businesses like National Geographic, Under Armour, Dropbox, Thomson Reuters, AMD, Texas A & M University, Hello Fresh, SoundCloud, etc, use them.
• Cheap - If you decide to go with low-cost hosting, you need to learn how to speed up your website, secure it better, or hire someone with great authority in those. This is because most website hosts provide decent security, speed, and ok customer support for their cheaper plans.
• For beginners or those with a tight budget just START with BlueHost and upgrade to WPengine later as your business and website traffic grow.
• Learn how to choose a good web host.

3. Start with a great site builder

Using the best website builder will make setting up your website easier and faster, especially when you don't have the technical knowledge.

Tips:

• For e-commerce stores go with WordPress Woocommerce or Shopify.
• WordPress.org - We always recommend the self-hosted WordPress(WordPress.org) as a website builder for businesses just because of how great it is for SEO, community support, adoption, etc.

4. Install software & theme

WordPress

If you are making your business site with WordPress.org you need to:

• Install the software, most web hosting providers do this automatically or you can do it from your hosting account dashboard when you sign up with them.
• Download a lightweight and super fast theme like Neve or GeneratePresss or WordPress Twenty Twenty default themes.

Shopify

For those who will develop with Shopify for an online store, this is a quick overview of what you do:

• Sign up with Shopify.
• Log into your dashboard to start creating your store.
• Choose a theme that fits the type of product you will be selling.

Wix

To develop your business website with Wix follow these simple steps (quick overview):

• Register on Wix.com for a premium account (recommend this because it is more brandable and suitable for businesses than a free account).

5. Developing and designing it

WordPress.org

• Use fast themes & page builders - Construct your website using fast page builders (Neve and GeneratePress have free easy-to-use page builders for businesses).
• YouTube is your best friend - Go to YouTube and search for how to build a website on Neve or GeneratePress theme, how to design WordPress with page builders, etc.
• Caching - Use a browser caching plugin like WP Super Cache if your web host doesn't offer robust server-level and browser caching.
• Hire a pro - If you don't feel comfortable developing a site yourself, hire someone on Upwork, Fiver, 99designs, or Freelance.com.

Other important tips:

• Navigation menus - Create easy top navigation menus with about 7 menus.
• Primary color - The best way to do this is to pick a primary color that represents your small business brand. For example, if you go to the Mercedes-Benz website their color is black and white backgrounds. Facebook's color is blue and white. Got the idea?
• Important pages - Create amazing About Us, Service, & Product pages and add to your navigation menu.
• Font size - Make sure that your website font size is not small (go with 14 to 16 px for paragraphs and 20 px plus for Header tags).
• Font colors - Make your font colors white on dark backgrounds and dark colors on white backgrounds.
• Call to Action buttons - Add Call to Action buttons and use emotional color for the buttons that are known to convert well.
• Footer and Sidebar - Add a footer and/or sidebar.
• Search bar - Add a Search bar above or on the Header area to help people find information easily. Consider adding to Sidebar or footer too.
• Image - Use images or graphics on the Header, blog posts, product, and service pages. Google and people love images.
• Compliance pages - Setup Privacy Policy and Service Term pages to legally protect your small business and customers. Having them will help you meet the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements. Check for other state requirements too. Search on Google for privacy policies or terms of service generators to get free ones for your website.
• Optimize images - Compress and resize before uploading.
• Business phone - Put on the website Header, Footer, body of content when appropriate.
• Mobile - Make your business website mobile responsive as most people use their phone to search online and browse sites.
• Sitemap - Add both HTML (for humans) and XML (for search engines) sitemaps on your site footer. This will help search engines crawl your websites and humans lookup some pages faster. NOTE, WordPress has a built-in XML sitemap and you can find fast plugins for the HTML one.
• Speed - Keep speed in mind by optimizing CSS, JavaScript, and using Gzip compression (most good and modern web hosting providers like WPengine do this automatically for you on the server level).

Shopify

• Customize your theme.
• Select and add the products you will be selling.
• Remember to fill the information for shipping & payment methods, locations, tax rates, customize checkout page, etc.
• Use some of the tips for WordPress when developing your online store with Shopify.

Important

When you build your small business website with Shopify, buy a custom brandable domain not the default Shopify one (storename.myshopify.com)

Wix

• Answer setup questions. Before starting your Wox website design, you need to answer some setup questions which will be at the dashboard after registration.
• Wix's drag and drop functionality will make your life super easy.

For more information on other things to do when you're setting up a website see, Guides to creating mobile-friendly websites.

6. Launch your small business website

So you like how your website looks and it is time to launch it?

This step requires you to check some things to make sure everything is running smoothly before and after the launch.

Some before and after launch checklist:

• Test speed - Use GTMatrix and Pingdom to test your newly launched website TTFB and Load Time speed for mobile and desktop.
• Mobile responsiveness - Check to make sure texts, font, images, links, menu, color, and other design elements are displaying properly on different mobile phones and sizes. You can use ResponsiveDesignChecker.com, Screenfly.org, and Google Chrome to test.
• Available to search engines - Check to ensure that your website is not being blocked from being assessed by search engines. Look at your Robots.txt and Htaccess files making sure that nothing there will block search engine bots from accessing your website content (You can ask your business web hosting company to help).
• Check links to make sure they are working
• Check the contact form, phone click buttons on mobile, 404 pages, etc.

7. Promote your website

One step you don't want to forget when you are done making your business website is doing marketing to start bringing in new clients to your small business.

This is a must-do after launching your site if you want to grow and bring in customers, especially for a new business.

Tips:

• Content - Write great content for your product and services pages
• Blog - Publish awesome blog posts focused on topics with enough search volume and intent that will drive targeted customers to your business.
• SEO - Drive traffic to your small business website product, service, and blog content using creative search engine optimization tactics.
• PPC - If you have the fund, another way to get new customers is through pay-per-click. You will pay Google or Bing each time someone clicks on your Ad at the top of search engines. It is a good way to drive traffic quickly while you wait for your SEO to take off.
• Social media - Build business profiles on social media websites like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tiktok, Pinterest and link back to your site. You can promote your business on these platforms by posting and buying display ads.

8. Use these tools (list of tools)

Creating a great small business website is easier when you use tools that make the whole process easier.

Here's a list of some of the website creation and related tools you need to be using. Some of the tools are for SEO, website building, checkout and shopping cart creation, email marketing, e-commerce, landing pages, making funnels, etc.

Start building your own site

As mentioned earlier, whether you're running an offline or online small business, you need to make a great website to build your brand reputation and do marketing to get customers.

Some of the tips and steps in this guide - like picking a good domain name, using a quality host web host, designing with WordPress, how to design with the right color, etc, will help you in creating a business website that people will love and make you money.

Now go ahead and start building that amazing website!

If you have a comment or question about how to create a website for your small business contact us.