A Guide to Building a Website For Your Start-Up

Whether you plan to operate your business entirely online or you will only use the digital realm for marketing and similar activities, you will need a website for your start-up. A website is a vital asset for your company, as it shows potential buyers that you are a trustworthy, legitimate business and that their money will be well-spent with you. However useful or important it is, building a website is likely going to be intimidating to those who are new to it. It is, therefore, vital that you build the website correctly to ensure that you get the highest return – that it is an asset that works for you rather than being a constant drain of time and resources. This guide is here to help you understand more about how to build a website for your start-up.

How to Choose a Domain Name

Some people have compared choosing a domain name to naming a baby. This might be a slightly hyperbolic comparison, but it is similar in that it needs to fit – your domain needs to exemplify your business so that people can easily find you and won’t have a second thought about whether they have found the right company. For example, if you sell shoes and name your website “number1forshoes.com”, but your company name is “Best Shoes Brooklyn”, you will not bring people to your site as easily as you otherwise might. You want to make things smooth and effortless for your customers with every interaction with your company. Your domain name is a good place to start.

When choosing a domain name, you should do the following:

• Abide by the KISS principle – keep it short and simple. Try to make it as easy as possible for people to find you without a search engine, that means a short site with few opportunities for spelling mistakes.
• Try to leverage keywords – these are vital for Search Engine Optimization (driving click that comes from a search engine results page). Try to use keywords that adequately describe both your business and all that you offer.
• You should try your hardest to avoid numbers and avoid hyphens. Both numbers and hyphens are not heard when somebody reads out the name of your website aloud. People tend to presume that you are using full words, and adding a hyphen confuses things. It’s also easier to forget the dash. If you need those in your domain, you need to register different variations for them to be safe.
• Try your hardest also to be memorable. This is far easier said than done, but it is important to try to stand out among the billions of registered domain names. Try to make it catchy – use saying it out loud as a test and ask as many people as you can if they will remember it.
• Finally, once you’ve found a good domain name, make sure it isn’t trademarked, copyrighted or in use otherwise. Another company could sue you, and you might find yourself having to spend thousands of dollars in unwanted legal fees.

Choose A Hosting Platform

Once you have found and bought your perfect domain name, you now need to decide how you are going to host your website. The host of the website will basically allow your site to connect to the internet – it is a company that stores your site and allows the site to connect to visitors. If you do not have a good host, you may risk your website going down when you need it most. There are many different types of website hosting options:

• Shared hosting

This is where multiple websites use one single web server. Shared hosting is the most economical, as server maintenance fees are spread out across range of users. It’s a little dangerous, though, as if a neighbor site gets hacked, you might be vulnerable too.

• Virtual private servers

These are operated in a similar way to dedicated physical servers but they are virtual – they’re software-enabled solutions, which means they are less expensive and easier to use.

• Dedicated hosting

This is where a website is hosted by its own server. This will be more expensive but will be more protected from threats and tends to come with fewer errors and less downtime.

• Cloud hosting

Sometimes servers just go down. Any downtime can impact your sales, as well as your placement on search engines. As a result, cloud hosting is a great solution. It uses many servers in different locations, so you have several different servers supporting your site.

• Managed Hosting

This is an add-on option to most hosting packages and involves a third party managing all your servers’ upkeep. Most of the hosting solutions that are targeted towards individuals and small businesses offer managed hosting.

Create a Digital Marketing Strategy

Madebyfactory.com defines a digital marketing strategy as a set of tasks that can help you achieve specific business goals using online marketing channels. It might seem a bit odd to start coming up with a digital marketing strategy before you have even got your website up and running, but it can be a very useful place to start. Coming up with your digital marketing strategy early ensures you are in the best position possible to make the most out of your website – it will also save you money and time in the long-run as it reduces the need to pivot substantially at a later stage. Understanding of your digital marketing strategy will impact several aspects of your website design – from conversion funnel optimization to the APIs you use. Digital marketing strategy will also help you to better understand who your target audience is and who you are as a brand. That will impact your website design down to the finest details, such as the colours palette you use, the images you feature, and the font you pick.

Design Your Layout

The pages that you include in your site’s layout will tend to depend on what exactly your start-up is trying to achieve. Typically, as well as a homepage, you’ll need an about-us page and a contact page. Apart from this, the sky’s the limit. Have a good think about what your start-up specifically wants to achieve. Think also about your target market and the “user journey” that you are looking to guide. Last but not least, make sure that your contact information is readily available, so you will always be quickly found by those looking to get in touch.