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Research shows that one in four small businesses still doesn’t have a website for their business. Is it because owners still have a skeptical look towards the whole digital revolution? I think not. We can see the penetration of technology into the nooks and corners of every industry. Even the cynics have started giving a chance and are growing digitally.
So, the most plausible reason is the affordability of quality web development services. If web development and related services are too costly, it is natural that small businesses hesitate to invest in them. After all, building a business is a tough feature and it is their hard-earned money. In fact, there are some of the best Web development companies that deliver high-quality websites without getting too deep into their clients’ pockets.
However, if you still feel that it is too much of a “risk”, you can always develop your own basic websites with functionalities easily. You don’t need coding knowledge or fancy titles, just curiosity to build a website for your business. It is tough to run a business with zero digital presence these days, and why would you say ‘no’ if you can do it yourself?
The following are the steps involved in building professional websites for your business. If you are not satisfied with your work, you can always hire some top web developers to revamp your work.
Step-by-Step Guide to Web Development
Let’s take an example throughout this blog. Let’s say you are a traditional bookstore owner with zero online presence. I’m sure business must have been tough post amazon. But, there are always your regular customers and people who support local businesses. What you have to do is simply make it easy for such customers to reach you with the website. Shall we start?
1) Focus on the Purpose
There are different kinds of websites. Informational websites, product websites, service websites, portal websites, and so on and so forth. You have to decide on the purpose of your website. It can be anything ranging from reaching your target audiences to selling your products/ services. You have to define it and work towards it. My advice would be to keep it simple. Let people know what you do in simple words.
Coming to the example, you obviously can go two ways about it. One is to create a website that tells people about your bookstore, and your love for books, and maybe even publish some book reviews in blogs. This can increase offline visitors. Or you can integrate an e-commerce platform that will help you sell books online. Ultimately you have to choose.
2) Choose Your Domain Name
This step is crucial for your business. A domain name is the website URL that you share with your customer and the online world. If you’re a new business there are various options to choose from. For example, if you are operating in a very particular geographical region, you might as well include that in your domain name for better reach. Make sure it is descriptive and that people understand the gist of your business with your domain name. The Top-Level Domain or TLD which is the part that comes after the ‘.’ should also be chosen accordingly.
For a bookstore, the proper domain name could be ‘xyzbookstore.com’ or ‘xyzbooks.store’. The possibilities are endless and you have to decide what you want. Once chosen you to have to purchase the domain through a domain registrar. If it’s already taken, the registrar can also help you with getting it through negotiation. But, you have to pay a fee for it. Some of the top domain registrars are.
- Godaddy.com
- Wix.com
- Domain.com
3) Choose Host and Build Pages
Websites require hosting services. Setting up your own server is too costly and is not an option. The only feasible option is to pay for hosting. Depending on your budget you can go for shared hosting or dedicated hosting. Some of the best hosting services are,
- SiteGround
- WP Engine
- AWS Lightsail
You pay only for what you use and so you can scale up as your business’s online presence grows. Once you have sorted out your hosting, then comes the major work of building your pages. Usually, most web development companies design their website with a professional designer before building their website. But, today there are lots of no-code and low-code platforms that can be utilized for the same. The output would not be as great as a custom-developed website, but it is definitely better to establish your online presence than having none at all.
Hire a designer or design your own logos to be used on your website, visiting cards, social media, etc. (lots of tools these days to design logos). Once done start building different pages. Generally, a website should contain a homepage, service/product pages, a cart (if required), blogs, and a contact form. Making these pages would shape your website good and presentable. Do some research and develop your site using CMS such as web-flow, WordPress, Shopify, etc.
4) Setup Up the Payment System
This completely depends on your website requirements. If you’re developing an eCommerce website, it is best that you integrate payment gateways. But, it can get a bit complicated. You can research and do it yourself. Or, you can hire top web developers on a feasible engagement model to do it for you. You can also check if your web host offers a shopping cart and payment integrations. If that’s the case, you can definitely go with that.
Taking the example, in this case, definitely requires a shopping cart and payment gateway. These are books we are talking about and people definitely would buy online. If you’re expecting bulk orders you might as well have proper warehouse management and automate every process from buying to delivering the books.
5) Launch Your Website
Before launching, it is important that you test your website. Testing is very simple but crucial for your website’s performance. Testing is the process of making sure that your website is working properly in all browsers and all devices. If you research about manual testing, you can easily figure out how to do it just with an excel sheet.
Once proper testing and fixing are done, your website is ready to go live. If you think that your journey to the digital world ends here. You are just getting started. Brace yourselves for after the publishing comes the world of analytics, SEO, digital marketing, etc. to grow your business.
Conclusion
While it is entirely possible to do it all by yourself, what I would still recommend is hiring any of the leading web development companies to do it for you. Spending all your time on building your website is going to cost you precious time that you can spend on expanding your business in other ways.
Stop seeing it as money spent and start seeing it as money invested. Invested for growth. And, if you search you will definitely find the best web development company that can fit their service right into your budget and deliver high-quality websites.
