Need A Good Website For Your Business? Here's How To Get Started

There are various ways you can help out your business nowadays. Social media, for example, has been a major catalyst for growth for many businesses. However, if you have better opportunities, you should consider launching a website for your business as well.

A business website can be used for many things. For the most part, it is used to tell your customers about what your business is about and what it aims to achieve. Others use the business as a platform through which they make transactions with their customers. Others incorporate both functions on their website.

Running your own website is a good idea, but creating one is not as easy as you think. While platforms like WordPress and other website builders make the process a bit easier, you’ll need to do a lot more if you want a platform that’s effective in getting engagements. There are a lot of things you need to consider to have a good website.

If you’ve yet to launch a website for your business, then you’re in the right place. From this point forward is a guide on how you can get started on building your own website from scratch. This isn’t just any website, it’s one that will help your business achieve its goals.

Visualize Your Website

Before anything else, it’s important that you have an idea of what your website should look like and what it should do. This will help you carefully plan for the creation of it. It’s not really a good idea to wing it and then build your website as you go. It would be more practical to focus on thinking about what you want to achieve first.

With so many websites out there, it can be tough thinking about what it is exactly that you want for your website. A good way to narrow down the choices a bit is by checking out a few website examples, particularly, those of your competitors. Check out each of their websites and see what they’re doing wrong and what they’re doing right.

Part of visualizing includes thinking about what your website should look like and what the domain name should be. For the latter, make sure to pick one that’s very easy to remember. Of course, it should also be a unique name as well.

Pick A Good Host

The very first thing you should think about is the host of your website. To put it simply, the host will act as the server on which your website will run. The better your host is, the fewer downtimes your website will have. It can also load faster as well. There are several types of hosting services and each comes with its pros and cons.

1. Shared Hosting - In terms of pricing, this is the cheapest web hosting service money can buy. It’s also the entry-level type of shared hosting. As the name suggests, your website will share the same server as other websites. This also means it will share resources such as RAM and CPU. If you’re not running a website that’s too high-end, shared hosting is perfect because of its accessible pricing.

The downside to it, though, is that once your website begins generating more traffic, you’ll probably need to shift to something else.

2. Dedicated Hosting - It is the complete opposite of shared hosting. With it, you’ll have an entire server up to yourself. Other than that, you’ll have privileges such as full root and admin access. You’ll have more control over the website with dedicated hosting.

Perhaps more importantly, your website will not share any resources with others. This is best for websites that already generate huge traffic. On the other hand, dedicated hosting is usually the most expensive type of web hosting you can find, so be prepared to pay quite the sum.

3. VPS Hosting - VPS stands for virtual private server. It’s sort of like a mix between dedicated hosting and shared hosting. How does it happen, you ask? VPS holds admin access similar to dedicated hosting. On the other hand, it doesn’t share the same dedicated server features as dedicated hosting.

This type of hosting is perfect if you want more control over your website, but you don’t necessarily need a big server to go along with it for now. It’s cheaper than dedicated hosting but is more expensive than shared hosting as well.

4. Cloud Hosting - You’ve probably heard of cloud before, as it is still the buzzword in the tech industry. It’s a hosting solution that works via a network of computers working together. This allows you to consume CPU and RAM as if they were a utility resource.

An upside to cloud hosting is that it’s a scalable form of hosting. This means that you can adjust the resources you consume depending on what you currently need. If your website begins to gain more traction, then you can have a lot more resources. Then, if the engagement dwindles, reduce the load so that you can save on hosting costs.

5. Managed Hosting - If you don’t have the know-how and the skills to run the backend of your website, then managed to host it for you. With it, the company you work with will do tasks such as software setup, configuration, hardware replacement, technical support, and updating.

This is a good choice for those with very little knowledge when it comes to running a website. Once you get a grasp of web management, then you can take on the task and switch to a hosting service that’s more efficient for your website.

There are many other types of hosting services out there, and they can benefit you depending on what you need for your website. However, these five options are the most common ones you’ll find being offered.

When you pick a web hosting service, you’ll need to consider what you need and what your budget is. It would be overkill and not practical if you get dedicated hosting for a startup website. It’s best to start with shared hosting and then work your way up from there.

Begin Building

The very first page you should work on for your website should be the home page. This will be the hub on which all of your visitors will most likely land on. Making a good first impression is important if you want an effective website for your business. Be upfront about what you offer and what your business is.

From here, you add the appropriate pages. The common ones you need include an About Us, a Contact Us, and Blog pages. The pages you add really depend on what your website is about. If it’s for entertainment and information pages only, then these might be enough.

Set Up Payments (If Needed)

Since this is a business website we are talking about, you might need to set up payment options. If you’re selling products or services online, then having multiple secure payment channels can make your business website more effective and practical as well.

Include payment options such as card payments, online bank transfers, and even crypto. The payment system of your website should be very secure. The last thing you want is ruining your reputation over security flaws that caused your customers to lose their money upon transaction.

Secure The Website

People value their privacy and safety when it comes to browsing the web. As the owner of the website, the responsibility of keeping them safe falls on you. If you want to make your website as secure as possible, hire the right people and use the right solutions for the job.

As for privacy concerns, you are legally obligated by the law to disclose how you plan on using the data given by your customers should there be any. It is also your duty to ensure that the data they share doesn’t go outside your website through leaks and breaches.

Optimize Performance

The speed and the manner in which your website loads are very important matters. People not only want good-looking websites, but they also want ones that load fast and that loads properly as well. People don’t linger at a website that takes more than a couple of seconds to load.

Website performance is affected by various factors. This includes the type of hosting you have, as well as the amount of content on your page as well. With a good enough host and web layout, your websites will be able to load as properly as possible.

You should also create a mobile and desktop version of your website. This way, people are going to be able to browse through your platforms easily regardless of what device they view it on.

A good website for a business should be secure, functional, and beautiful. Launching and creating a website is a huge undertaking. However, once you finish with those baby steps, it will be a lot easier to manage your website. It’s a dynamic process, so make sure that you get all of the professional help that you need for it.