Do you want a website for your business and don’t know how to start? Here are a few website design tips and tricks that will help you on your way.
Step 1: Prepare for your website
What is its main objective? Do you know what you want your website to do? Who is your primary audience or visitor to your site? Do you want to share information or will you be selling products or services online? How will you target your audience, keep them on your site, and have them returning to your site? If you are a business owner, how will your website enhance your company’s goals? Perhaps your website will answer frequently asked questions your customers have about your services so you can save time on customer support. Maybe you want to market your products and generate more income. Moving to the next step is as easy as gathering your thoughts and putting them down on paper.
Step 2: Have a website that works for you
You now have some valuable assets you gathered in step one, your written thoughts and plans, the content for your site. This will help you get organized and ready to execute your site. Brainstorm domain names(ex. www.yourcompany.com) for your website. Think of a domain name that includes your company name or one that focuses on what your website is about. Have fun with this and be creative, a name that will stay in people’s minds.
Next, you need to rent web hosting, the place where your content for your web pages will be published onto the Internet. It’s important to find a reliable web hosting company which runs at least 99.9% of the time. If the hosting company’s server goes down often, your website will also go down regularly as well. In addition, web hosting plans allow you to purchase your domain name and web hosting at the same place. You are given a control panel where you can set up the email address for your company yourself.
Hiring a website designer or company to help you is another option. They can help you with the set up of your domain name, web hosting, email account, and create your website for you. Your hosting solutions may include a tutorial which shows you how to set your email accounts on your own. A website company can also walk you through how to make changes to your website so that the content is always fresh and changing.
Step 3: Market your website
Decide how your target market will find your website, through paid advertising, search engines, word of mouth, or a combination of all. If you are really serious about marketing your website on search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, have a search engine optimization company help you. They will know the best way to do this and help you to maximize your website.
The ideas you have written down will come in handy as you market your website. The text content for your website plays a huge role in marketing and having an online presence. If your webpage is built mainly with Flash or images, search engines will skip through your web page until they find text content. Keywords for your website is a critical component to marketing your website. Creating a list of keyword phrases that someone in your target audience might type into a search box will help them to find your company.
The more links you have going to your website, the higher your website will rank on search engines. Consider joining a web forum and using social media such as facebook twitter and linked-in. Follow these steps and you’ll be well on your way to getting a website that shows results.
