How to Build a Small Business Website

Got stuck in the loss of ideas for your first business website. Trust me, you are not alone; there are millions of Small Business Owners out there, struggling hard and yet find no clue where to start.

Your Small Business Owners online presence begins and ends with your first Small Business website. Seeking assistance from a professional web developer to dress it up– an expensive effort regardless of the cost involved in the further domain and hosting service. Fortunately, there are numerous Do-It-Yourself options available all over the web. Why falling further and behind when you can build your first business website at ease.

A business website is a necessity for entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, home-based businesses, and anybody selling products or services. Small Business Owners build either custom websites from scratch or template-based do-it-yourself sites. The options for building a Small Business website following DIY or taking the help of small business professionals are numerous.

Even if you don’t sell anything directly online, your small business website can serve as an extension of your business card, with information about you, your professional business services offered. It helps gain visibility and customers.

Decide The Purpose for Your First Small Business Website

Step 1: Choose And Register Your Small Business Website’s Domain Name
Registering a Domain Name
STEP #2: Choose a Web Host for Your Small Business Website
STEP #3: Choose Your Web Content Management Software Platform
Step #4: Decide on a Logo
Step # 6 Choosing A Theme For Your First Small Business Website
Step #7 How To Upload Content and Navigation Menu
Step #8 Setting Up a Static Front Page and Working with Widgets, Sidebar, Settings
Step # 9 Installing Plugins To Get More Out Of Wordpress
Step # 10 Populate and Maintain Your Business Website

Wrap It Up…

Decide The Purpose for Your First Small Business Website

Be Clear about what is the result that you’re opting for from your first business website depending on the nature of your Small Business Owners. Your business website caves in your business history, years of experience as your credentials to boosts your credibility.

A small Business website should incur your personal accomplishment. If you’re planning to build your first business all by yourself, the resources available to you is enormous. Just keep getting better.

STEP #1: Choose And Register Your Small Business Website’s Domain Name

A domain name is the address of your business website. A domain name is used in Domain Name System (DNS) to link the text address to server information, such as an Internet protocol or IP address.

Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name > System (DNS). Any name registers in the DNS is a domain name. Domain > names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific > naming and addressing purposes. – Wikipedia

Choosing the domain name is similar to choosing your online business name. Your domain name is your identity on the web.

Registering a Domain Name

·        Domain Names are Important for Search Engines, like Google. Include the keywords that describe your online business and the services you offer.

·        Use the appropriate domain name extension. .com is the most popular domain extension around the world.

·        Domain names should be easy to pronounce and remember.

·        Avoid using numbers and hyphens.

·        Use Location To Find a Unique URL.

To name the topmost domain service providers like GoDaddy, Bluehost, HostGator, NameCheap, etc, you should consider their pricing, domain and hosting service, server security, disk space, and bandwidth.

STEP #2: Choose a Web Host for Your Small Business Website

Web server, the remote location where your site and related software will be retained and made available to visitors. With some companies, you can go off with less expensive but more powerful shared hosting services ensuring faster and dedicated hosting. Examine your site or ask your site-hosting service to provide you tools for response-time measurements. They ought to take charge of all the security upgrades for the servers. Lastly, your hosting service provider should ensure that your website is always up and persisting, and doesn’t get hacked.

STEP #3: Choose Your Web Content Management Software Platform

CMS or Content Management System refers to an application that that works as an interface between a publisher, a database, and a visitor. Actually, a content management system like WordPress allows you to create a dynamic view of your site rather than building static pages for each piece of your business website content. That precisely means, in a content management system you can create, edit, reorganize, re-associate, and delete any website content at any time making sure other pieces of content are not being affected.

E-Commerce

If your primary purpose is e-commerce, particularly for products, you should select software that is specifically designed for e-commerce. For examples of free e-commerce applications, visit the following solutions: Magento, CS-Cart, OpenCart, or Shopify.

Joomla

Also similar to WordPress, Joomla has more or less the same features and functionalities. It’s best suited for E-commerce and Social Networking sites, though it requires some pro technical skills to operate it. Joomla can be positioned as ‘middle ground’ in comparison to the ease of managing a WordPress site and the interactivity of Drupal.

Joomla also provides an active Support Forum or Helping community where anyone facing a technical problems can post and get support. It also enables very easy changes and updates going forward, something even you could do yourself.

WordPress

At its core, WordPress is still a simple web publishing application. You download it, install it on a server, connect it to a database, and begin publishing content on the network. It also uses templates to give it different looks and add-ins to cater to you with additional functionality. A key difference with WordPress is that its core design is as a blog. It is flexible, advanced, and can almost be programmed to do almost anything you want as a website.

A blog, a portfolio, a magazine, an e-commerce storefront, a community website, a job website, a forum, a societal network, the possibilities are almost endless.

Step #4: Decide on a Logo

Creating a logo is by far the most important phase for your business website creation process as this logo depicts your brand identity sealed on your business website all over the web for your clients and visitors.

Using Software

There are a lot of free and customized “Logo Creator” software that will ease your burden and gets you on the roll to create your own logo.

Professional Service

It's wise to seek the help of skilled web developers or freelancers at Fiverr or 99designs. Sites that are savvy with individuals that master in logo creation and you can get the job done at minimal pricing.

Step #5 Getting Started with WordPress to Build Your First Small Business Website

WordPress is well-known for its ease of installation. Under most conditions, installing WordPress is a really uncomplicated procedure and involves less than five minutes to fill out. Tools that you’d be needed before setting up WordPress. These are:

• ·        Access to your web server (via FTP or shell)
• ·        A text editor
• ·        An FTP Client
• ·        Your web browser of choice

Now we can dive in a little deeper and look at how this all fits together in more detail.

Installing WordPress Using FTP Server

We are going to use the 1 Click WordPress Install to get you up and running with your brand new first business website. Your Hosting provider will send a mail that consists the login details to your Control Panel, the username, and password. Once you log in, search for the Wordpress.org icon and click it. It might take some 2-3 minutes to complete the setup process and once there’s a pop-up notification arrives: *image* It means, first you’ve just managed to set up your first WordPress site.

Installing WordPress Using Local Server

As a beginner, we’ll go for a local developing environment to install WordPress. This means we’ll start with WAMP, XAMPP, LAMP, or MAMP. The following steps get you through the installation process with the most popular server for Windows named WAMP. Here you go :

To install WordPress, you’ll be needed to manually download updated WordPress copy from Wordpress.org.

Extract the WordPress.zip. Create a folder under C:\wamp\www name it as WordPress copy all the files and folders under WordPress folder in C:\wamp\www

Go to www.wampserver.com/en/ , download, and extract the zip file. Click on setup.exe to start WAMP and start all the services by left-clicking on it in the taskbar.

Open https://localhost/ and click on PHPMyAdmin and it leads you to your https://localhost/phpmyadmin portal that allows you to create a database to install WordPress. Because WordPress is an application that works alongside a database on the server.

Open https://localhost/wordpress and click on create a configuration file. 

Now enter the details as mentioned. 

Database name : Database name you just created (WordPress) 

Username : root (recommended) 

Password : n/a (leave blank for the first time) 

database host : Localhost

Click on Submit. On the next screen click on Run setup.

On the next screen add the Blog title and email address that’ll be used for login purposes.

Select a username and password for your WordPress site. Before you discover the charm, you’ve already set up your first WordPress site manually in your local environment.

Just type in your blog name at Google search and the newly created WordPress site will welcome you with a big “Hello World!”

Step # 6 Choosing A Theme For Your First Small Business Website

Themes control the appearance of your CMS site on the front-end, so what people see when they visit your site. The theme is a series of templates, style sheets, and script files contained within a dedicated folder. In simple terms, a theme works like this: A browser is told to visit a URL that points at a specific database entry. Here, we have a standard human-readable URL that the computer will interpret as a database entry. We then go to the database and find the entry that matches, and recognize that this is a post.

Create Own Theme

As for now, we won’t dive into creating your own theme (required technical knowledge on web design). We’ll skip this phase and move to Free built-in themes that sufficient enough to meet up our design requirement and the appearance we’re opting for.

Install Free Built-In Themes

You can pick from hundreds or even thousands of different templates that give your first small business website the look and feel you want. Some templates are fairly generic while others are either themed to a particular type of product or service (with background graphics and other visual elements that reflect the product or service) or have built-in features that may make it attractive for you.

Installing Themes On Your Site

If you’re not sure how to type in: https://yoursite.com/wp-admin (replace “your site” with your blog title or your site name). Once you reached your WordPress dashboard, you’ve got access to over 1500 free themes! Just look along the sidebar for “Appearance”, then click “Themes”.

By default you’ll come across the core categories such as: blog, E-commerce, Education, Entertainment, Food & Drink, Holiday, News, Photography or even you can create your own personal portfolio site.

Step #7 How To Upload Content and Navigation Menu

Before we begin working with WordPress itself, it’s important to understand how the application works. This will make it easier to grasp what happens when we set up WordPress for the first time. Thanks to LinkedIn Learning

Adding And Editing Pages

The Webpage editor’s toolbar includes options such as Save, Edit, Design, and Admin. To truly understand the post, we have to look at it in comparison to its counterpart: the page. Putting posts and pages side-by-side, we get a clear picture of their differences.

Posts are published in a stream, they’re organized by categories and tags, by publishing date and time, and by the author. Pages, on the other hand, are published as standalone objects.

Adding Pages To The Menu

If you want your new page to be linked-to in your navigation bar,

1.     Save any changes you’ve made to the page by clicking “Update”

2.     Click “Appearance” -> “Menus” in the sidebar of your WordPress Dashboard

3.     Find the page you created and add it to the list by clicking the checkbox next to it and then “Add to Menu”.

Adding and Editing Posts

Creating a new post in WordPress can be done either from the WordPress toolbar or from the admin panel. You can access from either clicking the “Posts” pop down menu “New posts” or Simply go to the “Posts” for WordPress menu toolbar and Press “Add New.” WordPress will automatically save this post as a draft. Preview panel is the last option. From here, you can Publish, Schedule, and Update your post, as well as move it to Trash.

Customization of Media: Images, Videos, Frames

When we talk about media elements in WordPress or anywhere else on the web, we can group them into two main categories: Local Content that is uploaded to and lives on the site and Embedded Content that lives somewhere else. Most text and graphics are added using a built-in WYSIWYG (which stands for “what you see is what you get”) webpage editor that is easy to use and does not require advanced web programming. It also gives you full control over text size, color, font, and other features as well as the sizing and placement of images.

Add Valuable Images

A picture’s worth a thousand words only if it appears before the user while visiting the page. Save images at a low resolution of 72 dpi and in GIF or PNG format and use compression software to speed up your business websites loading time. Visuals can include stock art graphics, images of your products, headshots of yourself and other staff members, or other graphics that might illustrate your process or approach to delivering the service you’re selling. And Yes, avoid using cheap stock images. It will make your site dull and lose appeal.

Changing Your Title And Tagline

Style By Element with most e-commerce sites, you’ll have choices within the software itself to set up your storefront with different formats and styles.

Change Fonts And Colors

Its always recommended customizing your theme before taking it live to take advantage of the customization options available and to personalize your site as much as possible. All the major built-in themes are enriched with fully-customizable features and you can change fonts, tagline, site icon, meta-tags, colors, styling… and what not! There’s also a functional preview option to help you check the looks of your site meanwhile you change the styling.

Step #8 Setting Up a Static Front Page and Working with Widgets, Sidebar, Settings

Managing Settings for Your Readers

Now that you know how to create content and manage the appearance, functionality, and users of your site, it’s time to take a closer look at the more advanced settings that control your site as a whole.

The Settings button on the Admin menu gives you direct access to all the different types of settings you may need to work with; General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, and Permalinks.

Customizing Widgets, Sidebar and Footer Area

Widgets are little packaged programs that you can add to any widgetized area within your site. And depending on the theme you’re using you’ll find that you usually have wigetized areas either in the sidebar or in the footer of your site but they can be placed in other places too.

Set Response Parameters

Hire someone who really knows computers to test your site, confirming that it works well with all the major web browsers and that all links get users where you want them to go.

Step # 9 Installing Plugins To Get More Out Of WordPress

Plugins are extensions such as themes or templates that gives a WordPress business new features and new functionality. Plugins can be used to built any complex website designing ranging from a complete e-commerce site eBay or any social news site or a simple landscape photographic site with 1000 or more images at gallery archives. WordPress Plugin Directory incorporates numerous official plugins though you must be choosy in installing what suits your business website the best.

Finding plugins is not a matter of following a list of recommendations. It’s about figuring out what your site needs, and finding the best solution. All plugins are listed with their name, logo, author, and metadata. In the metadata, you will find how many active installations exist of this plugin, what the average rating is, and how many people have rated it. And even a link to the plugin reviews.

Step # 10 Populate and Maintain Your Business Website

Set Up Easy Contact

You can add a Contact page to your site with content like your contact information, a user responsive form, a map, and hours of operation. Contact pages and forms is an effective way to get to interact with your customers. To “force” customer to provide specific details which otherwise most likely be omitted by customer (like, order/invoice number, contact telephone number). Again, Small Business Owners recognize the importance of “customers review” and this is used as an ingredient for their next marketing strategy and portfolio their customer database.

Set Up Your Payment System (If Applicable)

Adding payment methods for your customers is essential for increasing conversion and sales. Your checkout page is the critical final stage where the customers will make the purchase. The more options you offer them with like credit-debit cards, bank or wire transfers, PayPal, and also don’t forget to place an invoice and provide them with an automated pdf copy of money receipt to establish your businesses authenticity.

Utilize Call To Action

Provoke your customers or audiences by utilizing the “Call To Action” method. You can add a “Call Now”, “Book Now” or “Find Out More” button along with your “Add-to-Cart” option. This is imperative to acquire an immediate response from your interested customers driving them into the sales funnel.

Include Customer Testimonials

Customers Testimonials are strong impression of your trusted customers who actually candidly submits their appraisal for getting served or using your products. Your potential customers will be more persuasive once capitalize this option.

Test and Then Publish Your First Small Business Website

We kept our focus in some basic customization and awesome features like “Drag and Drop” tools to dress-up your first business website appear in a good shape and sufficient enough to start with. It take years to master in web developing skills. At your freshman phase of website creation, numerous revision and adjustments will incur, and its a common regulation. Here’s our recommendation for you, “keep the status of your business website "Unpublish" or Private through the development process. Once you are confident enough, its time to make it Live; “Publish” it to get public exposure”

Wraping it up...

You’ll end up with your first Small Business website that conveys your unique brand image, with a viewing and navigation system precisely tailored to your Small Business Owners offering, all built on a platform that can grow with your business.