To create a business website, you must follow these key steps:
Secure your domain name
Choose a website design
Develop your website content
Integrate your payment system
Optimize for search engines
Establish a content strategy
Market your website
Enable website security features
By creating a good business website, you’ll promote your brand and boost your turnover.
According to Gualtieri, Mike 2009 study, ‘Leaving user experience to chance hurts companies’, businesses with well-designed websites experience a 400% increase in conversion rates compared to those without.
The cost of developing a business website ranges from £1,500 to £15,000 and varies based on several factors including features required, complexity of the website, and the platform chosen.
A domain name refers to the company website address that you enter into the web browser to search for a specific website.
A domain name provides a business with a professional image, enhances its credibility, and drives potential customers to buy goods and services.
Domain name gives you control over your content and provides a professional image. While you can pick any name, it's important to choose a name that reflects your business.
To guide you in choosing a domain name, consider these tips: Choose a name that reflects your business, brand, or services and include relevant keywords.
Think about your audience and use what resonates with them. Ensure the name is easy to spell, short, and simple for visitors to remember.
Avoid using special characters or numbers like acronyms or hyphens. Pick a name that can be used long-term, and make sure it is unique and not already in use by someone else.
You can choose a domain name from websites such as DreamHost, GoDaddy, Bluehost, and InMotion among others.
Registering a domain name for a business involves three main steps.
First, choose a reliable domain name registrar by analyzing their policies to ensure they meet your needs.
Next, purchase and register the domain name by providing necessary information such as email, phone, and billing details to ICANN while ensuring privacy protection. Be mindful of the registration duration and associated fees.
Lastly, familiarize yourself with the domain name contract to avoid any unexpected surprises down the road.
Website design is the visual layout and aesthetics of a website. It encompasses elements such as user experience, graphics, and overall look that work together to create an appealing and functional website.
To create an effective website design, keep the homepage minimalistic by spacing out content, adding imagery, and including a clear call to action.
Provide a great user experience with intuitive navigation, allowing users to easily find what they need. Use visual hierarchy to guide visitors to important elements in order of priority and create compelling calls to action that clearly communicate what users should do.
Lastly, apply SEO best practices by incorporating relevant keywords, keyword-rich titles, and keeping URLs short for better search engine visibility.
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Website content refers to any written, audio or visual content on a website such as blog posts, photos, videos or podcasts.
The key web pages that require content include the homepage, about page, product page, contact page, blog page, privacy policy page and terms of Service. The essential content requirements for each page are:
To create effective corporate website content, begin by identifying relevant keywords that resonate with your audience. Then, create a content outline with specific topics and ideas for each webpage.
Focus on writing an engaging headline and writing high-quality content, incorporating videos and infographics to boost engagement.
Ensure you use keywords naturally in both the title and the content body. Afterward, proofread and edit to ensure the content flows logically.
Consistent formatting with uniform fonts, sizes, and styles is important for a professional appearance. Lastly, monitor the content using tools like Google Analytics and make regular updates to keep it relevant.
A payment system for a company website is a software solution that assists businesses in accepting and processing online transactions. The main components of a payment system include payment gateway, merchant account and payment processor.
For a payment system to work securely, the following key requirements must be in place: an SSL certificate for data encryption, a robust authentication process to verify user identity, a secure payment gateway with strong fraud detection, strong encryption protocols for data transmission and storage, user education and awareness to prevent errors, and an address verification service to ensure accurate payment details.
An effective checkout process should include key features such as simple and clear navigation, a guest checkout option, secure payment processing, and multiple payment options.
It’s important to have a clear display of shipping options and fees, an email confirmation of the order, a save cart feature, easy access to customer support during checkout, and mobile optimization to enhance the user experience across devices.
Testing a payment system on your business website ensures that transactions are secure. To effectively test your payment system, you need to;
Search engine optimization is the process of enhancing a business website in search engine results so that users can find it. It entails implementing keyword research, on-page SEO, content marketing, and local SEO.
The most essential on-page SEO to implement include title tags, meta description, headers, visual content, internal linking, keyword optimization, image optimization, site speed, and mobile responsiveness among others.
Alongside on-page SEO, there are technical SEO requirements like site speed optimization, mobile friendliness, XML site map, secure sockets layer, structured data markup, mobile usability, and crawl error monitoring.
To assess the effectiveness of your SEO strategies you need to track performance metrics such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, user engagement, mobile usability, conversion rate, backlink profile, click-through rate, bounce rate, domain authority and page authority.
A content strategy is a plan that outlines the techniques, tactics, and outcomes that a business uses to create and distribute content effectively.
The core components of an effective content strategy include having clear goals and objectives, such as increasing traffic by 20% in the next 3 months.
It's important to determine the type of content, whether it's blog posts, videos, or infographics, and to understand your audience's needs and preferences.
You should develop topics and themes that align with your business goals and create a content calendar for consistent production and publishing.
Ensure you create and optimize content for both user experience and search engines, outline a promotion and distribution plan, and track the effectiveness of your content to make adjustments as needed.
Effective content planning involves defining content topics for the target audience, creating consistent content guidelines, and establishing a distribution plan.
It should incorporate SEO considerations and align with marketing objectives, while focusing on the needs of the customer persona.
Website marketing for business is the strategic promotion of a brand website to boost online visibility, drive relevant traffic and attract potential customers who are interested in a company's products or services.
The essential marketing channels to leverage include social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, affiliate marketing, referrals and word-of-mouth marketing, and PPC/paid search.
These channels provide a comprehensive approach to reaching and engaging your target audience.
Key metrics to monitor during website marketing include traffic sources, website traffic, pages per session, and average session duration.
Additionally, tracking return on investment (ROI), click-through rate (CTR), social media engagement, click and email open rates, and mobile performance metrics is great for assessing performance and optimizing strategies.
Website performance monitoring refers to tracking and analyzing various metrics of the website to assess how well a website is functioning. This process ensures that users enjoy a smooth experience with websites and web services.
The essential performance metrics to track include website traffic, conversion rate, top pages, average time spent on site, cost per conversion, returning visitors, exit rate, new visitor sessions, and average session duration.
These metrics provide insight into user behavior and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
The common tools for effectively tracking website performance are Google PageSpeed, Insights (PSI), WebPageTest, New Relic, Semrush, Ahrefs, Lighthouse, Sentry, Cloudflare, GTmetrix, and Pingdom.
Implementing website monitoring effectively involves knowing your objective, picking the right tools, configuring the tools, configuring alerts, analyzing data, optimizing data, documenting your findings, and regularly reviewing and updating your monitoring strategy.
Mobile responsiveness is the ability of a website to adapt its layout to the screen size and orientation of the device being used, especially smartphones and tablets.
The most essential mobile responsiveness elements include flexible grids, flexible images, minimalist design, viewpoint meta tag, media queries, and accessible content.
The main technical requirements for implementing mobile responsiveness include using CSS styles with percentage-based widths to create a flexible layout, and ensuring a proper HTML structure with semantic elements and a viewport meta tag for accessibility and SEO.
Apply JavaScript enhancements to support mobile-friendly navigation and accessibility considerations to ensure interactive elements are keyboard-accessible.
On the back-end, consider adaptive serving for older browsers without negatively impacting SEO.
Focus on performance optimization by minimizing HTTP requests, and use debugging and testing tools like responsive design mode and services like BrowserStack to test responsiveness across various devices and screen sizes.
Testing and validating mobile responsiveness is crucial to ensure that the website delivers a seamless experience across various devices.
First, it's best to identify the key devices and browsers to test. Next, you need to use online testing tools such as BrowserStack or Screenfly to test performance, page speed, accessibility, and user experience among others. You can then create a test report by documenting issues, and observations for future reference.
Social media integration refers to linking social media accounts with a business's website to create a cohesive brand experience for users.
The essential integration components of social media include social media feeds, social media sharing buttons, follow buttons, social media analytics, hashtag integration, social media advertising links, call to action integration, and mobile responsiveness.
These components ensure a seamless connection between your website and social media platforms.
To implement social media integration, you need to define what you intend to achieve and select the right platforms. It's also important to choose a sharing button that matches the website design and embeds the feeds.
To track traffic, use UTM parameters shared on social media. It's best to ensure that each social media platform complies with the policies regarding API.
The key performance tracking elements to consider include followers growth, engagement metrics, conversion metrics, click-through rates, and content performance.
Website security features are the elements used to safeguard data and protect the website against any malicious attacks.
The most essential commercial website security features include user authentication, SSL certificate, backup system, firewall, malware scanner, and DDoS protection.
To implement website security features, it's important to keep your software updated by regularly updating your content management system, plugins, and themes to close security gaps. Implement strong passwords for all accounts to guard against brute-force attacks. Regularly scan the website for vulnerabilities to detect threats in real-time.
Enable a web application firewall to block malicious traffic, SQL injections, and other web-based threats.
Perform regular backups to restore your website if a security breach occurs. Lastly, encrypt your data to secure information transmitted between your site and users' browsers.
It's important to regularly make security updates to address any vulnerabilities on the websites that hackers exploit.
By implementing the latest updates, you are protecting your business website from any potential threats.
Updates also help close any security gaps and minimize chances of cyber attacks. More so, regular updates patch up any vulnerabilities, making it more difficult for attackers to penetrate your website.
Live chat is a real-time messaging tool that allows businesses to communicate with visitors on their websites in real time.
Live chat enhances customer satisfaction by leading to better overall experiences. It also makes it easier to offer customers real conversational experiences.
According to NICE’s 2022 Digital-First Customer Experience Report, 53% of customers prefer engaging with companies using chat compared to other digital methods.
The main components of an effective live chat system include real-time communication, user-friendly interface, transcripts and chat history, and integration with other tools. Others are analytics and reporting, feedback mechanisms, and security features.
The best practices for implementing live chat include strategically placing the live chat option at the bottom right corner, ensuring responsive service with quick and accurate replies, and using automation to reduce wait times and personalize interactions.
It's important to take the first step by proactively asking visitors if they need help, and to ask for feedback after closing conversations.
Avoid multitasking by not handling too many chats at once, and always communicate effectively by reading messages carefully and responding clearly.
Website accessibility is the practice of creating websites for all users regardless of their impairment or disability. The key website accessibility guidelines to follow include:
To implement specific accessibility features, you need to:
A website development cost in the UK ranges from £1,500 for a basic site to over £15,000 for a custom, enterprise-level platform.
The cost varies widely depending on several factors including the complexity of the website being built, the complexity of the project, and the expertise of the developers.
The cost breakdown of web development in the UK is given in the table below:
Website Type | Cost Range |
---|---|
Basic Website | £1,000 to £5,000 |
Small Business Websites | £5,000 to £15,000 |
Ecommerce Websites | £10,000 to £50,000+ |
Custom Web Applications | £6,000 to £12,000+ |
To choose the right web developer for business website development, you need to consider the following factors;
To create a business website with wordpress, you need to;
To create a website with Wix you need to follow the following steps;
To build a business directory website you need to follow these steps;
To create a B2B business website, you need to;
Yes, you can create a business website for free using both Wix and WordPress which are free website builders. According to an article published on business.org, you can create a free business website on platforms such as Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and WordPress.com.
However, to build a small business website, you'll need to buy the domain name and web hosting to make your website professional. A domain name costs around £13.90 per year and web hosting around £8.34 per month.
The main steps in web development process include;