When I was younger, I remember being dropped off at our local shopping mall and spending hours walking through the building and looking at the window displays the stores had set up. Over the years, those stores have become more and more virtual and nearly ever retail outlet has a website to lean on. This became infinitely important in 2020 when the world had to roll back its natural behaviors in favor of public health. No matter what business you are in, a website is your virtual shopping space to attract customers and clients. If you are just getting started or have a well-established business, here are five tips to help you get your website off the ground.
This is a tip that is good to think about when you are starting any number of endeavors. If you start by thinking about what you want your end product to be, then you will be able to see a clear path on how to get there. This is especially true of websites. What do you want your site to be? Who is your audience? How are they going to find you? When are they going to visit you? These are all essential questions to ask yourself as you form your website plan. It's especially important when it comes to drafting your messaging and initial website content.
This is all about your branding. If you have a business, you want to make sure your website's domain name matches that as closely as possible and that it's easy to remember. For example, if your business is named Patty's Pet Food Store, you don't want your domain name to be something like ppfs.com. It's short, but it doesn't say anything about the business name. pattyspetfood.com would be a good option because it's not too long and it literally says the name of the company. Given that there are millions of domain names registered online, you will want to come up with a few variations that you would be willing to work with. Domain name searches will usually provide some suggestions, but they are automated and aren't something that you have hand-picked. Try searching your planned domain names on networksolutions.com and see what you come up with.
There are many web hosting companies available. Some of them only provide the bare basics while others strive to be a good partner to their clients. I've used both types in the past and can tell you that it's best to find a solid hosting company that provides scalable services and active tech support. The type of support you need for your hosting will also depend on what platform you are using to build your site on. For example, if you are using WordPress as your platform, you will likely want to go with a hosting provider that specializes in WordPress installations. The website builder companies like Wix and Squarespace offer hosting as a part of their package. Just keep your specific needs in mind and make sure that your hosting services can grow with you.
A content management system is a platform that is designed to help users build, create, and modify digital content. When you see a blog on a website, it's probably managed with a CMS in the background. There are many different brands of CMS available with WordPress being the most popular. According to whatcms.org, nearly 5 million domains are built on WordPress with WooCommerce being the second most popular CMS (1,006,305 million domains). While WordPress is a solid CMS to use as you are starting out, it is possible to out grow it. This goes back to your planning stages and tip #1 in this article: begin with the end in mind. Do you know how you want to see your site grow? If so, it might make sense to build it with a different CMS. It really just depends on your goals.
SEO stands for 'search engine optimization' and it's the set of practices you want to employ to ensure that your website is crawled properly by search engines. This is what will get you noticed when people search for keywords that relate to your business. It is easy to overlook this set up process as "something to put on the back burner," but you should have this implemented before you launch. You want to make sure your site is being found by Google and other search engines from day one. SEO includes the following practices and should be periodically evaluated for effectiveness.
These five tips are just the place to get started. As you develop your website you want to ensure that you are creating quality content and providing a pleasing interface that will keep your audience coming back.
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