To design a business website, you will need to purchase a domain name, choose a robust hosting provider, do your keyword research and write an awesome copy to convey a clear message to your audience. Once you have done this you can start working on the customer journey on your website as well as the user interface, or the visual design.
Domain Name Lookup
A domain name should not be too long and should be easy to remember. A few years ago, having your services/product name in your domain name gave an edge in terms of SEO. Not anymore.
Domain name lenght
Keep your domain name short as this will make it easier for people to remember and to type correctly.
Using the right TLD
A TLD is a top-level domain and it gives an indication of your location, geographical area of operation, or even the nature of your services. For example, a “.com” TLD indicates that this is a global address and probably this business also offers its services on an international scale.
However, a company having “.ca” would be identified as a Canadian company doing business locally. There are some other less popular TLD’s such as “.training” or “.online” which characterize the nature of the business of these entities.
We recommend sticking with either a “.com” or your country’s TLD when you design a business website if you only operate locally.
Plan ahead
Do not restrict yourself by choosing a domain name that is too specific. Keeping it broad allows you to add on services and grow without making your domain name irrelevant. For example, if you offer home cleaning services, you would not want to choose a domain name like homecleaning.com but rather something like cleaningcompany.com as this will allow you to grow and start offering your services to businesses and commercial buildings without making your domain name irrelevant.
Choosing your hosting
Usually, you would buy your hosting with the same provider with which you bought your domain name if this is possible. That would make it easier as a business to manage everything from one dashboard. That would also avoid you having to point your domain name towards a website that is on a third party’s server.
Most businesses in the beginning stages of their website would choose a shared hosting package that is much cheaper than a dedicated server.
Shared server
A shared server is what is most commonly used by small businesses wanting to design a business website around the world. It means that you are purchasing space on a server and that other people are also purchasing space on the same server. This means that you and those other users will share its resources.
The risk of using a shared server is that if one site gets infected by a virus or is hacked, all the sites on the server will be vulnerable to the same threat.
Dedicated server
Buying a dedicated server means that you would have the whole machine and all its resources for your own use. However, this solution usually has a hefty price tag. If your business is still in the early stages, we would recommend a shared server.
Server security
Good hosting companies offer a lot of security options to avoid having a website hosted by them being hacked into. They also offer easy ways of installing SSL certificates on your websites.
One hosting company which we have observed to regularly upgrade its infrastructure and security measures as well as offer affordable plans is Siteground.
Choosing your Content Management System
Depending on your needs while you design a business website, you might have to choose a different CMS. The most popular ones are:
- WordPress
- Shopify
- Wix
- Squarespace
WordPress is by far the most popular CMS used worldwide as it is open source and free. WordPress can be modified to any extent to reach your desired goal and it can also be visually customized and optimized to reach the best SEO scores.
There is a huge repository of plugins and themes for WordPress which makes it very easy to design a website and add functionality without or with limited coding skills.
Being on WordPress also allows you to build your online shop using WooCommerce. WooCommerce is also the most popular e-commerce platform online.
How to Design A BUSINESS Website
Before you design a business website, you need to consider the user interface, the user experience, the customer journey as well as the content writing and copywriting for your search engine optimization and to convey a clear message to your audience to maximize your conversion rate.
Written content
Choose your H1 carefully when you design a business website. This is the “heading 1” which appears at the top of your landing page. Having a clear heading will not only tell people what you do and/or offer, but it will also allow your website visitors to identify with your brand as people needing your service or not.
Underneath your H1, use a tagline that will say clearly what you do and for whom. This will attract your ideal customers and repel those you don’t serve. everyone has a niche; Use your tagline to make clear what your niche is.
We recently published a step-by-step guide on how to build your own WordPress website for free.
Layout
Make your website easy to navigate, not too text-heavy, insert pictures to illustrate what you want to say. There are plenty of website templates available. These will have common pages such as Homepage, about page, services/products page, a contact page, and a blog page. It is important to have call-to-action buttons or sections in strategic places across your website to encourage your visitors to take action. For example, a consultancy business would want their website visitors to get in touch or drop their contact details so that they can be called back; so their call to action could say “Get in touch” or “Get a free consultation”.
Search engine optimization
After you have designed your website, it is now time to market it. There are multiple ways of generating traffic to a website. The most popular ways are:
- Organic Search engine Optimisation
- Paid Ads
- Social Media Marketing
- Pinterest Marketing
- Press Releases
We wrote an article recently to help entrepreneurs understand everything about search engine optimization and how they can use it to grow traffic to their website.
Conclusion
To design a business website is not a difficult task. However, the importance is in the things you do not see such as the layout decisions for your customer journey, the backend setup to make your website faster, the numerous meta descriptions and Alt-Text inserted to enhance the search engine optimization, etc.
A website is a long-term investment and to make sure that they get it right from the start and avoid losing precious time, business owners should focus on their strengths and build their business while they hire a website designer to build their website.
Let us know if you would like someone from our team to tell you how we can help you to design a business website and do your search engine optimization.
