Don’t have business website yet and decided to open one? It is essential to have a business website to communicate better with your customers and boost your sales. Whether you hire someone to make it for you or you create your own by using a website builder, you need to prepare few things to get the process moving smoothly.
As a website creator who has been working to build the numerous business websites for our customers, it is much more efficient to work with the customers who have the below steps ready. Use this as your checklist for your business website before you meet the web designer or you buy the website building service.
1. Get a domain name
Coming up with a good and memorable domain name is the starting point of building your business website. A good domain name attracts more people’s interest and affects the good impression on your business and brand. When you consider the domain names, keep the following in mind.
- Make it easy to spell and remember
- Name it same or as close as possible to your business name or brand name (it will also help you boost the search engine optimization)
- Consider a .com domain name as it is the most commonly used (as apposed to .net, .co, inc. etc.)
- Keep a consistent name with other social media usernames
2. Check the availability and purchase the domain
Go to www.bluehost.com or other host alike (GoDaddy.com and domains.google) and check the availability of your domain name. It may cost more if the domain name you want to use has been already taken. Check the best option for the name and add on any other desired extensions for your domain.
3. Set the goals of your website
Depending on how you want to use your website, you need to choose the right website builders that will suit your plan better. Even when you hire a web developer, it is very important to give clear direction of what you are aiming to get from your website. Some of the goals of having a website should be to get more traffic (visitors) to your website and increase your sales, but also consider how much money and time you want and are able to spend on maintaining your website to achieve these goals. It might need extra dedicated staff, like a web developer who can maintain your website. Some of your goals can be the following.
1) Have your business introduction and contact information :
Having this basic and standard information only will cost you the minimal. You would need the initial design, hosting set up and your domain / web hosting cost. Even with just a simple website containing an introduction or your brand and services including your contact information, would be very beneficial to building an online presence since more people can now find you 24/7 from anywhere.
2) Getting customer information by offering newsletters and other forms for customer bookings/inquiry/comments
: It is good to get any inquiry online to start building a customer database from those who visit your website. New inquiry/comments/signing up info can be sent to any of your linked e-mail or preferred method of communication, so you can keep your communication with possible customers closely.
3) E-commerce online sales or online delivery orders (for restaurants or foodservice businesses)
If you hope to add these functions, the website building and management becomes more complex and time consuming. It requires a constant maintenance for adding new products and checking & handling the incoming orders, shipping and accepting payments. One or more dedicated web managing staff might be needed depending on how many products/online sales.
4) SEO, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), e-mail/online marketing & customer service
There are many marketing tools/CRM software that can be plugged into your website based on the data that you get from the visitors/customers or any potential audience from your social media channels. It will also be very efficient to attract more customers by doing online ads (google/social media ads). To constantly work on these, web managing staffs and purchasing/subscribing the extra software would be needed.
4. Collect any of your design elements and have the website contents ready
- Any design elements – logos/store name font/colors : If you have brick-and-motar store, you probably have the outside signage and window decals with your store name/logos. Have the graphic file collected and ready to use for your website. It will keep your business logo/store theme consistent between online and offline mediums.
- About Us : Consider the history of your business, what your missions are, what the key points of service & products you offer. An “About Us” or “Company” page should have this information, so take the time to write and make these points clear. And present them in an interesting way. It should take you time to write and develop these points so you may also consider hiring a professional copywriter to write and come up with valuable content for your website.
- Product images /descriptions/inventory status or menu description (for restaurants) : If you plan on building an e-commerce store or take online orders, having the product information ready to upload is essential to the website building process. Not having this information will delay your websites development and increase your cost exponentially.
5. Choose the right CMS (Content Management System) or find the right web developer
There are many CMS – godaddy.com, bluehost.com, wix.com, squarespace.com etc. with many different features and functions, pros & cons, price options, etc. Do the research to find the best suitable system or service for your business/goals/current systems, etc. Or find a web developer who you can comfortably communicate and work with. Contact ACBM Tech for affordable and reliable web design and development services.
