A to Z of Website Building for Businesses

Building a small business website is important to inform your audience, explain your value proposition, boost brand recognition and drive sales. To build a business website, you first need to choose a domain name and secure web hosting. Then, optimize your website to improve your search engine rankings and drive traffic.

Keep your website up to date and optimized for mobile devices. Also ensure your site speed is adequate to improve your search engine rankings. This article is for small business owners looking to build a website or improve upon their existing website and the solutions you can get from top web hosting service at www.upperlink.ng.

It’s no longer feasible to run a business, even a brick-and-mortar one, without a web presence. Consumers turn to the internet for everything from product research to location and operating hours. Even just a simple, well-designed website can give you an edge in your field, and if you have products to sell, your site can open up new markets and expand your business cheaply and easily.

Website design software has evolved to be easy for anyone to use. You don’t need to know coding to develop an attractive and functional site. No matter what program you use, you just need to follow some basic rules and tips to give your website a professional look, make it easy to find, and show your company in the best light.

Here’s our step-by-step guide to creating a successful business website.

1.) Outline What Your Business is all About

A business website generally serves as a space to provide general information about your company or a direct platform for e-commerce. Whether you create a simple website that tells a little about your company or a more complex e-commerce site, the most important thing you must do is say what your company does – on the homepage in plain terms.

If you don’t plan to accept payments through your website, you won’t have as much work to do in setting it up. If you are a retailer or service provider and want to offer customers the option to pay online, you’ll need to use an external service to receive your payments, which we’ll discuss later in this article.

 

2.) Decide your domain name.

Your domain name is one of the most important features of your website. It’s the URL you’ll share with your current and potential clients and promote on social media. Therefore, you want it to be descriptive and easy to remember and type in. Try to keep it short, and steer clear of abbreviations, acronyms, and numbers, if possible, to avoid customer confusion.

You also need to decide your top-level domain, or TLD. This is the suffix at the end of your domain name, such as .com, .net or .biz. However, nontraditional TLD names have grown in recent years. These TLDs can be based on location, such as .nyc, or type of business, like .marketing, .agency or .law. While these can be descriptive, .com is still the main go-to.

Once you’ve selected your domain name, you’ll need to confirm its availability and purchase it through a domain registrar.

 

3.) Choose a web host.

Every website needs a host – a server where all its data is stored for the public to access at all times. Hosting your own website is probably too large an expense for your small business, so you’ll need to select an external host.

Depending on your budget, you can choose from two different routes. A shared web host, the less-expensive option, means you’ll share a server with other sites. Dedicated hosting costs significantly more, but it means that you get your own private server and won’t have to compete with other sites that could drag down your speed.

If you’re looking for free website hosting options, it’s important to remember that hosting a website is by no means free for the hosting company. Therefore, they may employ other methods, such as placing banner ads on your website, to compensate for the free hosting.

As your business grows, you may find that you need to upgrade to a different web host, or even work with multiple providers to handle your website traffic and operations. One web hosting service provider is www.upperlink.ng. Here, we offer different services and subscription plans that ensures that anyone who needs a website will get one, regardless of their budget. We offer quality, speed, optimization, availability, and just everything you need to get your business website up and running.

 

4.) Build your pages.

A good website is more than a static homepage. You’ll want to create multiple pages dedicated to different aspects of your business, such as a detailed catalog of your products or services, or a blog section for company updates. As for your overall website, make sure each page supports the site’s primary goal, has a clear purpose and includes a call to action (e.g., “learn more,” “sign up,” “contact us” or “buy this”).

A contact page, as your customers’ direct link to you, is one of the most important sections of a website, so include as much information as you can (your business’s phone number, email address and physical location, if you have one). It’s also a good idea to include information about the founding team or staff on an “about” page so customers can put real names and faces to your brand.

If your business doesn’t already have a logo, hire a graphic designer or create a logo yourself to use on your website, business cards, and social media profiles. This will help your clients identify your company quickly and easily on the web.

 

5.) Set up your payment system (if applicable).

While this step won’t apply to all business websites, companies that want to offer the option for customers to pay online will need to integrate electronic payment systems with their websites. The easiest way to do this is through e-commerce software or small business credit card processing solutions.

Many web hosts offer an in-house shopping cart or integration with e-commerce programs. www.upperlink.ng  offers a solution that’s easy to work with and flexible enough to meet your needs now and in the future.

 

6.) Test and publish your website.

Before announcing that your site is live on the web, make sure it works on all major browsers, like Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. Click through each page and feature on every browser to ensure images show up, links are correct and the format looks smooth. This will take some time, but the effort you put in now will save you future complaints from visitors who can’t access certain features.

Also make sure that your website displays properly on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This step should not be overlooked, as Google and other search engines have migrated to mobile-first indexing, which prioritizes the performance of the mobile version of your website when it comes to search engine rankings.

 

7.) Market your website on social media.

Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Pinterest is the best way to increase your audience reach and alert customers to what’s going on with your company. Whenever you update your website, post about it on your social media outlets, but balance that with genuine, nonpromotional engagement.

Also include links to your social media on your website. The most common places to do this are the footer or the ancillary bar (the extra menu in the top right that often holds login or contact links). Learn more about social media for business in our marketer’s guide.

 

8.) Invest in search engine optimization (SEO).

Submitting your website to major search engines will help direct potential leads to your page, as will deploying a strong SEO strategy across your site. Defining title tags, meta descriptions, and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) that are relevant to your company and aspects of your industry can boost your rankings in search engines for the products or services you’re trying to market.

As you build your business website, these important on-site SEO tactics can help you improve your ability to move up the ranks. (There are also off-site SEO tactics you can pursue).

Choose the right keywords. Select keywords that are relevant to your business and that your potential customers are searching for online. Visit our guide to SEO small business tools to find a solution that can help you identify, analyze and track these keywords.

Publish fresh content. Regularly publishing on a blog, adding to your website and updating your content all signal to search engines that your site is relevant for the chosen keywords. Choose topics that are relevant to your business and exciting for your industry to position yourself and your business as thought leaders in the space.

Place internal and external links. Internal links are the links on your website pages that lead to other pages on your site, while external links are your links to other popular, high-authority websites. Place these links strategically throughout your website. Make sure that the links make sense, fit the context and provide value to the reader; otherwise, linking may count against you.

Summary

For a complete web hosting solution that will help drive sales, optimize your website, improve customer experience, and so much more, Upperlink.ng offers a complete package that will yield results almost from the Go mark. With different subscription plans, pricing, and packages, there is just something for everyone. Because we know how important it is for a business today to have an online presence, Upperlink.ng is giving all entrepreneurs a shot at digital inclusion and its benefits. So what are you waiting for? Visit www.upperlink.ng and boundless web hosting possibilities.