Website what do i need

Keep your website up to date and optimized for mobile devices. Also ensure your site speed is adequate to improve your search engine rankings. This article is for small business owners looking to build a website or improve upon their existing website. Here's our step-by-step guide to creating a successful business website. Determine the primary purpose of your website. Decide your domain name.

These are some popular domain registrars: Domain. Choose a web host. These are some options for web hosting services: A2 Hosting: A2 Hosting offers both shared and dedicated hosting options. Build your pages. Justin Zalewski, director of product design at innovation consultancy Studio Science, offered a few basic tips to help you create efficient, content-rich pages for your website: Be clear about what your business does.

Distill what your business does into a clear, concise statement and lead with that. Visitors should be able to understand what you do within seconds of landing on your homepage. A few well-written pages are more effective than dozens of poorly written ones. Place strategic calls to action.

CTA buttons tend to perform best when they match the information on the page. For example, a "buy now" button makes sense on a product page, but a "contact us to learn more" button might be more appropriate on the "about us" page. Similarly, a page listing customer reviews might have a button that takes the reader to the available plans and pricing. Automate speed improvements.

Set up as many automated speed improvements as you can. If you use a content management system CMS , installing the right plugins will cache parts of your site so visitors don't need to download anything more than once.

Some of the more technical aspects of caching and compressing files may require a web development partner if you're not particularly tech savvy. Avoid stock photos. Tacky stock photography is the quickest way to turn a great site into a mediocre one. If you're looking for photos to use on your page, it's best to use a picture of your actual team or office.

Set up your payment system if applicable. Test and publish your website. Market your website on social media. Invest in search engine optimization SEO. Choose the right keywords. Select keywords that are relevant to your business and that your potential customers are searching for online. Visit our guide to SEO small business tools to find a solution that can help you identify, analyze and track these keywords. Publish fresh content. Regularly publishing on a blog, adding to your website and updating your content all signal to search engines that your site is relevant for the chosen keywords.

Choose topics that are relevant to your business and exciting for your industry to position yourself and your business as thought leaders in the space. Place internal and external links. Internal links are the links on your website pages that lead to other pages on your site, while external links are your links to other popular, high-authority websites. Place these links strategically throughout your website. Make sure that the links make sense, fit the context and provide value to the reader; otherwise, linking may count against you.

Optimize images. It offers a monthly, but not annual, subscription and includes similar features. Wix is also a drag-and-drop builder—you can freely drag and drop elements anywhere on the page; in comparison, Squarespace is more structured in where you can drag and drop on the page.

The learning curve to using Wix is even shorter than Squarespace, so if you need to publish a site quickly, this may be your best option. Wix has a lot more templates than Squarespace to choose from, but once you choose a template, you must stick with it or be forced to completely rebuild your site. With Squarespace, you can change your template anytime without having to rebuild the entire site.

If you do not currently sell anything, you may want to consider doing so since e-commerce could potentially increase your profits. If you decide to allow users to financially transact with you online, you will need to choose the right platform for your business model. Like WordPress, there are many plugins available, and it attaches to WordPress, which makes it extremely flexible.

There are many free and premium themes pre-built for WooCommerce. As a rule, it is better to use a premium theme from a reputable developer because it will offer better security and support. If you are not tech-savvy, you will most likely need a WordPress developer to help you set it up and use it. WooCommerce also offers a very high amount of capabilities and scalability that your small business might need.

Shopify: Shopify is a cloud based e-commerce platform that allows you to create and customize an online store, and to manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping.

It is not a WordPress extension like WooCommerce—it is a standalone platform that is hosted on the Shopify server—so if you have a main website, your e-commerce site would technically be separate from that. You can link to your Shopify account from your regular website built with WordPress, Drupal, Wix, etc. Features include unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, fraud analysis, discount codes, reports, and much more.

The key benefits of Shopify are that you do not need a developer to set up a store, and everything on the backend is already set up for you when you subscribe. The downside is you do not have as much control or flexibility over your store as you would with WooCommerce. Shopify Plus: Shopify Plus is Shopify, but with a higher level of customization, more staff accounts, and international e-commerce options.

It also has a higher level of support. However, all of this obviously comes with a higher subscription cost, and it still does not have all the flexibility and customization abilities as WooCommerce. Business Squarespace: Squarespace has an e-commerce subscription option, so if you chose Squarespace to build your site and have very simple e-commerce needs, you can choose this route.

Business Squarespace charges a transaction fee, but this can be bypassed by upgrading your subscription to a basic online store. I went just before lunchtime in the dead of winter on a weekday.

I figured business would be slow and I could chat briefly with the owner. The owner was gracious and allowed me to run through the basic benefits giving me her full attention — even taking a few notes. I figured I had a good chance of closing this deal. Then people wanted coffee so we provided that.

Then some asked for sandwiches, so we provided that. Later they wanted a few tables where they could sit and chat while they ate their sandwiches, so we got tables and chairs and began doing lunches. That led to dinners. People loved the porch so much that we winterized for the colder months. If a website is going to bring more people in here — no thanks! Oh, how wrong that business owner is. According to the National Restaurant Association, 83 percent of Americans look up dining locations, directions and hours of operation on their smartphones or tablets.

You can add a reservation widget, which again can save your hosts time and make operations more efficient. You can build an online community with recipes, blogs, and places to get local produce. You can become not only a local favorite, you can gain popularity nationwide and turn your brand into a product all its own.

There is SO MUCH a website can do to boost your bottom line without adding more customers, and while you may have enough customers now, you never know what the next decade will bring. Having a friend or family member make your website is like trusting a handyman to lay the foundation of a skyscraper. A LOT goes into having an optimized website—SEO optimization, file compression, responsive design, schema markup, etc. Even if you DO have a professional web designer as a friend, be careful—different industries have different website design standards.

For example, a website for health services will have completely different components and markup than a website for the HVAC industry. It also includes people browsing websites, social media, and apps on mobile devices. Not only do 89 percent of US adults use the internet, but 77 percent of them own a smartphone, and in , mobile web traffic outpaced desktop web traffic for the first time.

This is a HUGE misconception a lot of people have. Consumers—even B2B buyers—still need to find you, learn about you, and trust you because they buy from you. On the other end of the spectrum is a completely custom website from a professional website design company tailored for your business needs.

Do not let a price tag deter you from creating a website. It will guide you in the types of changes you should make to your website and marketing efforts over time to better achieve your overarching goal. Good luck! Kristen Hicks is an Austin-based freelance content writer and lifelong learner with an ongoing curiosity to learn new things. She uses that curiosity, combined with her experience as a freelance business owner, to write about subjects valuable to small business owners on the HostGator blog.

You can find her on Twitter at atxcopywriter. HostGator often offers promotions, coupons and special offers to customers during their initial term. Please note that special offers are limited-time promotional prices that are available to new customers and are valid for the Initial Term only, and not for successive or renewal periods.