Things to Know Before Starting a Small Business Website

Making a website for small business is the latest trend to gain targeted consumers and grow it. And nowadays most of the business got their own websites, along with fan and follow pages to reach to a greater audience. This indeed makes a better business branding and let consumers aware about the types of services you provide. Starting a business website is an easy task but before that you’ll need to focus on a number of points to bring your business to a successful point.

Getting a business plan

 Focus on the type of business you want to start and list out the services you are going to provide your customers. Be specific about your services and make sure you have all the ideas properly placed in your mind. Consumers will look for an ideal solution in your services so you need to be attentive about it.

Seek for advices

Before setting up your business, seek for advices from people who are superior in this field. They will know about the pros and cons of a business so that will give you a proper idea about a business site.

Building a brand

Decide how you want to project your business and your target customers. Do a proper research and see how others in your industry are doing. Make a list of pros and cons of your top competitors. Try to think in terms of a customer. Try to figure out what works and what not. This is easier said than done but you will get a rough idea of the situation. Based on your insights that you gained by the research, do the following steps.

Getting a niche and catchy domain

Making a website will require a custom domain name. Make sure you select a proper domain that matches your business and that is easy for consumers to remember. It is better if the domain sounds catchy and short since lengthy domains are tough to memorize.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the method of selecting proper keywords for your website so that it gets indexed in search engines. There are professional SEO agencies that can give you a proper guidance about it, so if you are serious about your business better consult with them before starting a website. Remember, SEO is not just about link sharing, it is about good programming and converting your visitors into customers. A good SEO professional will help you in optimizing your site performance as well getting business. Choose a consultant after proper research.

Web designing

Building a site also requires a better design. Design your site the way so that consumers get attracted in the first glance. A minimal and easy to navigate site attracts customers  and make sure you avoid including too much of advertisements on the homepage of the site. Remember, you have only 10 seconds to convince your customers, so your site has to be fast and easy to navigate and should provoke the visitor to become a buyer.

Choosing Site Builders/ Content Management Systems (CMS)/Hosting

There are a number of website builders available on the web. These include Ucoz, Wix, Webs.com and many others that provide standard site building. Also there are CMS or site building platforms like Magento, OpenCart, ZenCart, PrestaShop, Shopify, Drupal, Joomla and WordPress among others which are appreciated by webmasters for quick design of a website.

When it comes on starting a site, a good host is very necessary. A number of hosting service providers like Hostgator, Dreamhost, Bluehost, etc. has affordable hosting plans according to your requirement. So you can select your plan according to your needs. As your business grows, you can switch to a dedicated Hosting service like Amazon.

Publicity and More Publicity

Publicize your business the more you can, but make sure you don’t spam. Promote it the way so that customers get more enthusiastic with each publicity. If you promote it the same manner everyday it will become a spam and consumers might lose interest in your business. You can also promote and send out daily or weekly business newsletters through email marketing which is also a convenient way to promote your business.

Create a Fan page

Create a Facebook fan page on your business to target more traffic. Facebook can give you 50% of the visitors to your website since you have your friends and co-workers there, they might be a helping hand to drive more traffic. Use targeted facebook ads. Don’t blow up a major amount of money as this will make your likes grow into unrealistic numbers in a small amount of time which will effect negatively. Go steady and slow and try to understand your audience and what they like and what they don’t.

Google Adwords

Google adwords for search is a good way to reach your targeted audience as these ads show up while searching particular keywords that is related to your business. This ads are highly effective in an affordable price.

Presenting your Business the Right Way

When starting a website, you have to give relevant information about your business. You can include About Us page telling about your business and the owners profile, various policies like shipping, return, payment, etc.  If possible include images so that customers know what your provide, present the list of services you are offering, give the right contact details so that customers find the exact support when they call you and display your business location. Reply queries instantly and you can capture potential customers.

Building Trust

Overall, the key is to build a trust among your customers so that they do business with you again and again. The above steps mentioned are a buildup to trust but you can gain trust of your users only by making your site secured.

Security Certificate

Security certificates ensure that the data in your site gets encrypted and cannot be seen by third parties while browsing your site. You can secure the entire site or only selected pages where personally identifiable data is used.

Getting a trusted payment gateway site

Use a trusted payment gateway for your transactions so that users are comfortable doing transactions.

Hoping that this article helps you build a great enterprise.

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