5 Critical Steps to Creating a Great Small Business Website

Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash

Whether you’re a freelance photographer, own a hardware store, or have some other kind of small business, a good website is crucial to your business’s success. As a webmaster who has worked to create or market over 100 small business websites, I know what it takes to make a tremendous and engaging website for a business.

If you’re looking to create a new startup website or streamline your existing site, here are 10 essential steps to get you started and help your small business website compete effectively in the online marketplace.

1| Get a good domain name

A domain name, also known as a web address, is often the entry point to your website. Therefore, it must make a good impression for usability and search engine optimization (SEO) reasons.

Here are some tips on how to find an optimal domain name:

Make it easy to spell- Try to avoid using slang, fancy, or extremely obscure words.

Keep it as short as possible. The faster it is, the easier it is to remember and spell correctly.

Use the correct domain extension- For example, try to make sure it’s always a .com domain (as opposed to .net, .co, etc.) unless it’s more appropriate to use a different suffix such as .gov, .edu, or .org.

Avoid numbers and hyphens- They are more challenging to remember and less elegant and memorable than word-only domain names, and they can misunderstand when you say a domain name with a vowel.

Create a broad address to facilitate future growth- Amazon.com, for example, is a much wider URL than BooksOnline.com and allows Amazon to sell virtually all kinds of consumer goods, not just books, as was its original purpose.

Make it memorable- Given the sheer number of sites on the Internet, your site must have a catchy name, so people remember how to get to it in the future.

Research the domain name- Google it to see if a similar URL already exists on the Internet, and check USPTO.gov to make sure it doesn’t contain any registered trademarks.

Check that the price is correct- See if you can buy the desired URL at a reasonable price, as most good domain names are taken and must be purchase by the current owner.

Avoid meaningless names- Choose a name that makes sense, so users know immediately what your business is. For example, Yahoo and Google are catchy names, but their brand was costly, and your small business may not have the same budget.

Create an SEO-friendly URL- If possible, try to find an SEO-friendly web address that includes keywords and geographic location.”

2| Buy secure, scalable web hosting with good technical support

A web host (or sometimes called a web hosting provider) is a company that offers the technology and services needed to display a website on the Internet. With a hosting provider, you link your domain name so that when users visit your web address, they have shown your website, which you have stored on their hosting account.

Hosting services can cost anywhere from $2 to over $100 a month, depending on the type of support and assistance you prefer. You can typically get a reduction if you buy an annual plan instead of a monthly schedule.

Here are any guidelines for choosing a good web hosting plan:

• Although you can arrange a “shared server” hosting plan for as little as $2 a month, I wouldn’t usually recommend it. Shared hosting means you share your server and its resources with other customers, resulting in degraded performance for your site. Furthermore, if one of the other sites on the shared server is attacked by hackers, it may attack your site as well.
• A “dedicated server” hosting system is the most expensive option — costs can range from around $100 to $2,000 a month — but it will keep your site running optimally. A dedicated server system means that the material server machine is entirely dedicated to your site; consequently, all the devices are yours. It is more reliable than a shared hosting plan if the technology is optimal. However, it is much more expensive than most small businesses are usually willing to pay. When you have a very efficient website, it may be what you need, but it’s too expensive for most startups and small businesses.
• The compromise I usually recommend is a VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting package, which offers the best of both worlds. Its price ranges between $20 and $50 per month, which is a bargain compared to the hosting services you get. A VPS is a single machine shared by multiple machines, making shared hosting relatively inexpensive and offering the same security and performance as a dedicated server.
• Ensure your hosting business has phone and chat support to get help quickly if you have problems. Email support often takes too long and can be frustrating when a problem needs to be resolved immediately. Phone support is best, but chat also works well.
• A user-friendly interface, such as cPanel, should be available for the server. If you can’t afford to hire a professional server administrator to help you, you don’t want to use endpoint commands to review server content and make changes.
• Find out what kind of server security is in place on the server you are considering. You want to access the server via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and must back up the server content daily. There should additionally be an obvious one or two-click method for installing Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. Finally, make sure the hosting company performs regular security maintenance. Ideally, your hosting company will have a published security log where you can check how they protect their servers.

Popular web hosting companies include:

• GoDaddy
• DreamHost
• Bluehost
• InMotion
• SiteGround

3| Give a Clear Description of your company

People must know immediately who you are and what you do, so they don’t feel confused when they visit your small business website. Ensure that your homepage banner (also called a “hero image”) and other banners visually represent your services. There is also an introductory text at the top of the page that explains who you are and what you do.

Also, make sure that the main menu and footer have easily accessible links to the “About Us” page so people can click on it and read more about your business.

4| Implement the best Content Management System

A content management system (CMS) is software or employment used to design and distribute digital content. A good CMS will support you in maintaining your website, and you won’t need a lot of technical know-how to use it. However, it would be best to choose a CMS designed for your individual needs; different systems use various reasons, such as ease of use, scalability, and budget.

Some popular systems are listed below, with their strengths and weaknesses described.

WordPress: WordPress is the world’s most famous CMS. It has a large and active support community and many useful plug-ins that extend the functionality of your site. (And if you can’t find an add-on that does what you want, it’s easy to find a WordPress developer to create one for you!) WordPress is also free and relatively easy to install. Most website builders are familiar with it, so it’s not hard to find someone or an agency to work on your site. I generally recommend that small businesses use WordPress for website development because of its flexibility and scalability.

However, it should be noted that WordPress’s biggest weakness is its security — because it’s so popular, hackers have targeted it the most. As a result, WordPress sites need to be regularly maintained and protected to avoid hacking. It is also difficult to cover all third-party plug-ins, so safeguard your WordPress site should be an ongoing goal through several best practices (checking to see if plug-ins have been updated in the last few months, ensuring that it is a plug-in provided by the official WordPress repository, removing unused plug-ins immediately, and so on).

Drupal: Drupal is a different popular CMS. It offers various of the same benefits as WordPress, including flexibility, ease of use, and a large support community. It is notably a more secure CMS than WordPress (safer from malicious activity); however, it does not have as many add-ons or theme options, making it less scalable. For example, the White House website (whitehouse.gov) was maintained for years on Drupal but has since moved to WordPress, which it still uses.

Joomla! Another popular CMS is Joomla! Its SEO, security, and multilingual capabilities are inherently better than WordPress; however, with a few add-ons, WordPress outperforms Joomla!

Squarespace: Squarespace is a monthly or yearly subscription service that makes creating websites and blogs an easy “drag and drop” experience. It includes website design, development, software maintenance, metering, a domain name with annual purchase, SSL security, 24/7 support, and unlimited bandwidth and storage space hosting all in one package. It’s especially suited for creatives and provides you with cutting-edge design templates. So if you’re on a tight budget, need a simple and beautiful website, but can’t afford a web designer, this is an excellent service for you.

Squarespace has a much smaller learning curve than WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla! But doesn’t have nearly as much extensibility. However, if you have limited or no specialized knowledge and are looking for a quick and easy way to set up a website, Squarespace is an attractive opportunity.

Wix: Wix is very comparable to Squarespace, but it’s a bit more user-friendly. It offers a monthly subscription but not an annual subscription and includes similar features. Wix is also drag and drop — you can freely drag and drop elements anywhere on the page; Squarespace, on the other hand, has more structured sections that you can drag and drop on the page. Wix has an even shorter learning curve than Squarespace, so if you want to publish your site quickly, this may be your best bet.

Wix has many more templates than Squarespace, but once you’ve chosen a template, you have to stick with it, or you’ll be forced to rebuild your site from scratch. With Squarespace, you can change the template at any time without having to rebuild your entire site.

5| Choose a good e-commerce platform

If you’re going to sell goods and services through your website, you need the right technology to do so (if you’re not currently selling anything, you should consider it, as e-commerce can potentially increase your profits). If you decide to let users do financial business with you online, you need to choose the right platform for your business model.

Here are some popular e-commerce platforms for small businesses:

WooCommerce: WooCommerce: WooCommerce is one of the world’s most popular e-commerce platforms — it can turn your WordPress website into an online store. Like WordPress, many add-ons are available, and it attaches to WordPress, making it very flexible. There are many pre-built free and premium themes for WooCommerce. (It is usually better to use a premium theme from a reputable developer, as it offers better security and support). If you’re not tech-savvy, you’ll probably need a WordPress developer to help you get up and running. WooCommerce also offers a lot of features and scalability that your small business might need.

Shopify: Shopify is a cloud-based ecommerce policy that allows you to create and customize your online store and manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping. It’s not a WordPress extension like WooCommerce — it’s a standalone platform hosted on Shopify’s server — so if you had a primary site, your ecommerce site would be technically separate from it. So instead, you can link to your Shopify account from your regular website built with WordPress, Drupal, Wix, etc., unless your leading site has a Shopify integration plug-in.

The main advantages of Shopify are that you don’t need a developer to set up your store and that everything is already set up in the background when you order your online store. The downside is that you don’t have as much control or flexibility over your store as you do.

Shopify Plus: Shopify Plus is Shopify but includes a higher customization level, more employee accounts, and international e-commerce capabilities. It also has a greater level of support. But all of this comes with a higher subscription price, of course, and it still doesn’t have the same flexibility and customization options as WooCommerce.

Business Squarespace: Squarespace has an e-commerce recommendation option, so if you’ve chosen Squarespace to build your site and have specific e-commerce needs, you may want to go the route. Business Squarespace charges a transaction fee, but this can be circumvented by upgrading your subscription to an essential e-commerce subscription. It includes SSL security, free domain SEO, abandoned cart recovery, discounts, real-time shipping with carriers, and other features. However, it has been noted that it is not as user-friendly as Shopify. And like Shopify, it’s simply not as flexible as WooCommerce.

Wix: Wix has a Shopify extension that is very user-friendly. To use it, you need to upgrade your Wix account and subscribe to Shopify.

GoDaddy Online Store: in this case, GoDaddy has a relatively new standalone e-commerce platform with a subscription that is relatively easy to set up and use. Very little technical knowledge is required to run a store with GoDaddy Online Store. The templates are simple and straightforward and can be customized to some extent. Features include marketing and SEO tools, appointment booking, social media integration, SSL security, fast page loading, and more.

6| Create an enjoyable, memorable, and engaging user interface for the site

Make sure the interface of your small business website leaves a positive impression that drives results. You can achieve this by implementing the following suggestions:

• Use beautiful graphics and easy-to-read fonts.
• Make sure graphics are compressed and optimized for fast loading. If your site is slow, search engines like Google will penalize your rankings.
• Research your competitors and see how they have designed and optimized their sites; implement similar elements that will work on your small business website.
• Research your objective audience, find out what they want from your site, and make it easy to reach them.
• Stay consistent on the same brand throughout your website design.
• Design an intuitive navigation system so users can quickly get to the pages they need.
• Make contact information easily accessible.
• Include clear calls to action (mainly “buy now” buttons).
• Design pages that are standard for small business websites, such as
• Website
• Site map (for SEO purposes)
• Management team
• Contact us
• Terms of use (an online agreement that governs how users can use your site)
• Privacy policy
• Other sites relevant to your specific small business

7| Optimising your Small business website for search engines

SEO is a series of methods that you apply to your website so that search engines index and rank your website correctly and then display it to search engine users. When search engines “crawl” your site, sites with similar content compete with it. Therefore, the better the design and content of your website, the higher your website will appear on search engine results pages.

SEO mainly involves the following methods:

• Searching for and implementing keywords
• Optimal code for the site
• Fast load times
• Security and installation of an SSL certificate; SSL is a standard security technology that ensures that data sent between web servers and browsers remains private.
• Mobile-friendly site
• Quality backlinks (links on external sites with related content) are available to your site.
• A wealth of positive reviews on the Internet (Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc.)
• Use of internal links on the site to get people to click and read.
• Use social media to link to your site (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.)
• SEO is an essential ongoing process that can mean the difference between showing up on the first page of search results (which leads to many free visitors to your site) or page 300 (which leads to no traffic).

8| Create and Publish Quality Content Regularly

Both quantity and freshness of content are essential to search engines, so you must develop a schedule for publishing quality articles and blog posts on your site and on external sites that link to your site. In addition, if you want to rank high in search results and get people to return to your site repeatedly, you need to update your site with new and relevant content as often as possible.

Conclusion

As you can see after reading this article, creating a good website for a small business may not be as easy as you initially thought. However, if you follow the steps outlined in this article, your small business will have a great chance of succeeding in the online market. If you are looking for a web developer there are many web development companies in India that can help in building a website.

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