Steps to building your very first website

Having a website is a necessity for every business – big or small. Not only that, home based businesses, start-ups and first generation entrepreneurs can get the best exposure via a website. In fact, it is considered that whether you are selling something or want to promote an idea, what you first need is a website that will help you reach out to the others. Without one, your venture will have a retarded growth and the result will be something that you wouldn’t surely like. After all, who likes to face failure!

So, it is of utmost importance that you get your website ready as soon as you are ready to promulgate your idea or sell your products/services. The early launch of your website will help gain the attention of the potential customers even before you start selling, online or offline. If you are fairly new in this field, yet want to work on building your website yourself, then here is a helpful guide that can help you complete this task successfully.

Determine your purpose

Before you start developing a website, you need to ascertain your requirements. Do you just want to share with your audience things that you like and prefer? Will you be selling some products? If so, will you be selling online or you just want to display your products? How extensively do you want to use your website? And other such questions. Finding an answer to these questions will help you understand what kind of site do you need – a very simple one like a blog, an e-commerce store, a CMS website or something else. This is the first step towards building your own website.

Choosing a domain name for the website

If you have already registered your business, try finding a domain name that matches your business name. This eliminates confusion and helps gain more traffic in the long run. If you haven’t already registered, think of a name that you would like for your business and buy a domain similar to that.

Choosing your host

This part is very important as your web host will go a long way in determining the performance of your website. Try to avoid free hosts as troubles often occur with these hosts. If your website is going to be very simple and will include only what you would like to share with others, then a very cheap and basic hosting plan will do quite well for you. However, if you want to add a lot of functionalities to your website, like selling several products online, then you would need a host that’s more stable and offers more bandwidth. So, the choice of the host and plan must be made according to your needs.

Choosing the right builder

Once, you have your domain name and host ready, you can now choose amongst the various web builder tools that are available in the market. Some are free, while others are not. Some offer unlimited options, while others can be used to build only basic websites. You can read the AWA review of Weebly site builder to know more about how one of the most common web builders work and find out if it is suitable to serve your purpose.

Creating web pages

To make your website look clutter-free and well organized, start building different pages, each serving a different purpose. The most common pages that almost all websites have Home, About us/me, and Contact. You can further add pages like Products/Services if you sell something, Images/Gallery for displaying images, videos, etc., Demo/Portfolio for putting up links or images of work done/products sold previously. Various pages and subpages can be added according to needs.

Personalize your website

Add images of your products, services, offices, employees, facilities, etc. to your website. Also, if you have a logo, banner or a tagline, update them on your website. Add details like visiting hours, contact info (virtual and physical), location maps, etc. so that your website embodies your business. Also, make sure that you add relevant content to each page so that your customers can identify that they are at the right place. This and optimizing your website will also help you get better search engine results.