More than 90% of the people rely on internet to find local services and businesses. If you’re not online, you’ll be missing countless potential customers.
Marking your presence online informs people about who you are and what you offer. It also promotes and protects your brand. The website will allow you to be available to the people 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It gives your business credibility and tells people that you are a serious business.
The basic information you need to put in your website include Name of your business, logo of your business, your business’s location and contact information along with detailed description of products or services.
There are a lot of free tools with which you can create professional looking web sites with minimal effort. You can also find a guide to website maintenance easily on the internet.
Let’s have a look at how can you take your business online.
- Get a Domain: The part that comes after www. and before .com is called a domain. Most of the businesses use professional email address based on their domain name. For example, if the domain name is www.name.com then the owner of the website can use an email address such as info@name.com. You should choose a domain name that reflects your business in order to increase your customer base. Your business name will show up if people search for something you offer. Make sure that your domain name is memorable.
- Decide a Domain Extension: A domain’s extension is the top level domain, the part which follows after dot. The most common domain extension is .com, .net, .info, .co, and .org. These domain extensions have been around the internet for a long time. According to GoDaddy, there are more than 124 million domain names ending in .com. You can use country specific domain names such as .in, .ca, .au, etc.
- Register your domain: Visit your preferred domain registrar who sells domain names to the public. Registering your domain is a kind of leasing it, you’ll need to pay for your domain every year. Once your domain is registered, no one else can claim it. It is better to register your domain for two or more years so you will need not worry about renewal while your business is in growing stage. The cost of a domain varies depending on the popularity and its extension.
- Plan your website approach: After you have registered your domain, begin with a site that will achieve your business objectives. Map the direction for your business website. If you’re planning to create an e-commerce website then you will need to plan a few things such as a shopping cart which will store products that your customers are willing to buy. You will need a third party payment processing service such as PayPal to collect payments. You can also accept credit/debit card payment.
- SSL: Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is the most important thing people look for while making a purchase online. This certificate encrypts information that your customers send when purchasing something from your website.
- Set up your priorities: Decide what you want your visitors to do as soon as they land into your website. Include data which tells people what you offer and how it is beneficial for them. Ensure that your website covers basic questions that people ask about the service you provide.
- Resolve what pages to incorporate: The basic web pages that you must incorporate in your website include about us and a contact us web page. With time, you can also add product pages for each and every product you sell.
- Edit the theme: Editing the theme will make customers happy as they will get to see something new in your website after a long period of time. It would be advisable to use original photos instead of some inventory photos.
- Plan for future: Building and launching a website are basic things, in order to stay ahead of your competitors you will need to update your website regularly. Create a plan on how you will update your website for sales and offers and how you’ll launch new products.
Conclusion
It might sound weird but a good website which is updated regularly can make your business a brand. You just need to register a domain which can be easily memorized as in this fast pace world we tend to forget things easily. If you’re new to technical world, you can either hire someone to do the job or can search in internet about how to build a website and how to maintain it. You will get plenty of guides to website maintenance. Follow the above-mentioned steps to bring your business online.
