How to build a website for your business
Are you wondering why you need a website for your business?
Well for starters more than 70% of businesses have a website.
That means your competitors have a website. A website is seen as an essential for all businesses now, including small businesses and start-ups.
People search online before making a purchase decision and when they ‘do the Google’ and can’t find your business up there then you are missing a massive proportion of prospective customers.
Social media is all fine and dandy, but you don’t own social media and at any point your account could be disabled. Social media trends change as new platforms appear, older platforms lose their popularity and demographics shift.
Your website is your digital real estate, and your it boosts your credibility and increases your visibility.
I have a blog that explains the 10 reasons your business needs a website and also 5 reasons your business should be online.
So now, you’re hopefully wondering how to build a website for your business. Here we go!
Steps to building your business website
1. Choose a domain name
Some people will leave this until last and I think that can be a big mistake.
Imagine naming your business, maybe even registering your business, and then going through all the planning stages of building your website and then find the domain name that closely aligns with your business is no longer available?
Basically, once you have your business name sorted, then start to look at suitable domain names. Once you find a domain name available that nicely aligns with your business and it memorable, that you buy it. I can sit there ‘parked until you’re ready to use it.
At the same time, I always advise to look at social media handles too. If you have looked at your ideal customer demographics then you should be able to work out which social media platforms you can target your customers.
If you aren’t sure about which social media platforms are right the I have a guide to Which social media is right for your business.
2. Define your website goals
This should be fairly simple because in theory it should match your business goals.
There are lots of types of websites, which can match your business goals, e.g.
- Informational websites
- Ecommerce websites
- Booking websites
So, if you are selling products an ecommerce website may fit, and if you are selling services, a booking website may fit. If you are a coach, then you may want a membership website or a learning platform website.
There can be some differences, e.g. you have a physical shop selling your products, but you have decided not to sell the products online. Your website won’t actually be selling the products, but the messaging and the calls to action will still be geared towards selling your products, but from the shop rather than the website. Even though you aren’t physically selling online, the website can be key to customer research and for showing customer reviews.
You may also decide that due to time or budget constraints that you start with a more informational style website, with a view to growing the website as the business grows and expands.
Starting small in this way can be not only budget friendly, but also quicker. Getting a single page informational website up and running will be much quicker than building an online shop with hundreds of products. They will get your business up and online, with SEO friendly content that will start to gather ‘SEO juice’. Then once your business grows, you can grow your website with you, but it will already be established with search engines.
Defining your business goals for your website will then lead to choosing the right sort of website for your business. Here’s my guide to Choosing the best website for your business.
3. Define your website look and feel
The first question to ask here, is do you already have a brand? If you don’t have a full brand, do you are least have a logo for your business?
It’s important that your website matches your offline branding, whether that is a physical office/shop or brochures etc. You want people to identify your website with your brand.
The look and feel of your website is around this branding. That includes logo, colours and typography. There may be a few additional things to take on board, such as contrast between colours for accessibility online and some colours may appear ‘shouty’ online. Some fonts don’t work as well online and as a general rule of thumb I tend to say that script or handwriting style fonts should be used to a minimum as they are harder to read online.
What kind of imagery do you currently use or will resonate with your customers? People generally like to be able to ‘see themselves’ in any marketing messages, so think about the demographics you are looking at. Look at what assets you already have, might need, or what kind of stock photos might fit.
Generally, I would say that professional own images can really elevate a website. If you are just starting out, then don’t think you need to go for some massive (and expensive) photoshoot. Just a few well-thought-out images can really make the difference.
If your branding isn;t clear or you are still working on it, then you might want to have a read of What your brand colours are saying to your customers.
4. Define your website structure
I tend to think of this as a little bit of a cross between a filing cabinet and signposts in a big building.
You want your visitors to easily find what they are looking for and not to get lost.
The first thing to think about is the website goal, e.g. is this a shop which will mean the shops will need to feature in your main navigation. Are bookings key to your business, then that will need to be in your main navigation. Likewise for website that are informational or the call to action is the contact the business.
Most websites will include the following:
- Homepage – The main entry point for customers. It should have a clear overview of the business and may CTAs to the main purpose of the business. Clear signposting is useful on here too.
- About Page – This is the second most visited page on a website so deserves plenty of focus and love. It should tell visitors who you are and what you stand for.
- Products/Services Page – This is the piece that is the goal of your website, so shops, bookings etc.
- Contact Page – Another important page. People will want to be able to contact you.
- Blog – Not every website has a blog, but they can be useful for showcasing a business and providing answers to questions that customer might have, which can be good for SEO.
This is a fairly standard set of pages for most websites I build. There may also be FAQs, testimonials, reviews, location, and others depending on the business.
These pages will fit into your ‘filing cabinet’ to create the structure, which in turn pretty much creates your main navigation, or your top menu.
What it means is then when visitors pop onto your website they can clearly see the signposts to what they are looking for. For example, if they are looking to buy products then being able to the SHOP, in the top menu will be a fab signpost. If your services are split between demographics, like Men and Women, then using them as your top navigation will help to direct them to correct section.
5. Create high-quality content
High-quality content is valuable, well-structured, and engaging information that meets the needs of your audience and ranks well on search engines. Each page should have relevant and informative content. So, what do I mean by that?
- It provides value by answering questions, solving problems, and addressing the needs of visitors.
- Content should be clear and well-written, free from grammatical errors, and easy to understand.
- The tone and style should match your audience, whether professional, casual, or persuasive.
- Formatting matters too so use headings, bullet points, short paragraphs or colour blocking make the content easier to read. Make sure it flows well.
- Content should encourage visitors to take action, whether it’s subscribing, making a purchase, booking, contacting or sharing on social media.
- Include images, videos, and infographics helps keep users interested. Make sure any images are relevant to the content though.
- For SEO include relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and optimized headers to improve search rankings.
The homepage, because it the page most people are likely to land on, can be treated like a landing page and provide an overview of the sections and clear signposts to the right content or sections.
Write content for humans first, but think about how websites are crawled by SEO. If you wan to find out more about SEO and your business then have a read of Why SEO is so important for your business which not only gives you the reasons but the tips on how to do it and make improvements.
6. Call to action
Call to Actions (CTAs) should be relevant to the goals of the business and the website. Yes, it all keeps coming back to why you have a website for your business.
So, is you have a shop, then your CTAs are mainly going to the ‘SHOP’ and if you have a booking website, yes, they are going to the ‘BOOK’.
Try to keep the same call to action on each page is you can, rather than having multiple different CTAs. It can get confusing for the visitors and what you should be doing is pointing them in the right direction to fulfil the goal of your website.
Think about the words on the CTA too because ‘CLICK HERE’ might be kind of what you want the visitors to do, but when a search engine reads that it doesn’t convey the actual CTA message. You may wan to consider ‘BOOK MASSAGE’ or ‘SHOP BAGS’.
On the homepage you can have different CTAs if that makes sense to the flow and the blocking of the page. For example, if your homepage flows through with short exerts of ‘About’ or ‘Location’ then you might want o add CTAs there to find out more about the location etc.
One thing you really want to do is make those CTAs stand out and not blend in with the rest of the page. This is why they tend to be as buttons and it’s quite commonly accepted now that people scan a page, looking for the buttons. A contrasting or complimentary colour works well with making them into clear signposts.
7. Security
There’re a few things you need to think about here and some are essential depending on your website purpose and functionality.
From a security standpoint it can depend on the type of website you have. Some of the ‘managed’ websites like Wix or Shopify have their own security and backups built in. For WordPress there are a number of really good free plugins that will provide good security such as WordFence.
If you are collecting customer data in the UK, you must comply with data protection laws to ensure privacy and security. Here’s what to consider:
- UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR)
- Cookie consent and cookie policy
- ICO registration
Failing to comply can result in fines from the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office). It’s imperative that you check what the latest rules are regarding GDPR etc in the UK.
8. Analytics
Google Analytics is an essential tool for any business website because it helps you track, measure, and improve your online performance. It’s free and pretty easy to set up the basics. Generating and getting the Google Analytics tag on your website is straightforward. On WordPress there are plugins that make this a breeze.
Google Analytics will help you:
- Understand your Visitors – See where your visitors come from, what devices they use, and how they interact with your site.
- Track website performance – Find out which pages are most popular, how long visitors stay, and where they drop off.
- Improve digital marketing efforts – See how people find your site, whether through search engines, social media, or ads
- Measure conversions – If you have goals like sales, sign-ups, or downloads, then Google Analytics tracks conversions and helps identify what’s working.
- SEO – Discover which keywords bring traffic and which blog posts or pages perform best.
Other tags you want to include on your website are social media pixels, such as Meta, Pinterest or LinkedIn. These can be useful if you may be looking to do and paid social media in the future. Getting the pixels on the website straight aways can help to ‘season; the pixel so then when you are ready to use paid social then the platform will already have some information about your visitors.
9. Test your website
You can’t go live without testing your website if you want to look professional.
You need to check:
- Spelling mistakes, typos etc
- Do all the links work, on menus, buttons, text links etc.
- Do contact forms, feedback forms etc work.
- Walk through the processes like shopping or booking or signing up and check everything functions OK.
- Check it on different browsers, e.g. Google, Edge etc.
- Check it on mobiles to make sure the experience is just as good, if not better
It’s also useful to get friends or family to have a look over the website. Ask them to try and book your service or buy a product and ask them how easy or difficult it was.
There are a few tools that can help with checking too. These will give you more insights into areas like SEO and accessibility.
- You can use Google’s Page Insights to check the speed of your website and see if there is anything, like large images, slowing it down.
- AHRefs is a useful tool for checking out websites and their search engine optimisation. There is a free version if you signup. Likewise, SemRUSH and others will usually allow a free version f you signup. They don’t go into as much detail a paid versions but can be enough to get a good over view.
- This tool is useful for testing that the contrast of your background and text is good WebAIM Contrast Checker These guys also have other tools to check accessibility.
10. Promote your website
Once your shiny new website is live to everyone, you will need to let them know that it’s there. They won’t just find it by accident.
Even if you have optimised your website really well for SEO, it can take weeks or even months until Google indexes your website and make it visible in search results.
So, some of the key ways you can promote your website are:
- On your social media. Let people know you have a new website. It’s even better if you can give them a fab reason to visit your website, like a new blog offering valuable information or maybe a discount on your products or services.
- Use email marketing. Send out an email or newsletter to your list to let them know it’s live. Think about offers or blogs as above etc.
- List it on directories. Find local online directories or niche specific directories and list your website there.
- Networking groups. Whether in person or on Zoom, let them know you have a new website. Give them the link or a QR code of your URL.
- Run paid ads. This will obviously be budget dependant, but you can run Meta or Google Ads to drive relevant traffic to your website.
If you’ve worked on optimising your website for SEO, then you will start to see the benefits in search results once Google has indexed your website properly. Keep focusing on backlinks and creating valuable and shareable content though as this will help to improve those rankings.
Now the website is live, is that it?
Well, yes and no as in it depends.
You may have products or services to keep up to date, just the same as if you were receiving new products for a physical shop.
You may find you need to add additional questions to your FAQs because a number of customers have been emailing the same questions.
Blogging regularly can be a food way of increasing valuable and shareable content to your website. Your blogs can be used it to share information or even showcase your business with case studies or events you have been at.
You will also find it valuable to analyse your website usage with Google Analytics and Google Search console. It’s useful to view which pages are the most popular, top paths through the website, drop out points, or where the traffic is coming from. All of these can be valuable in analysing your visitors and making improvements and tweaks to your website.
Analyse and make improvements
This is where having Google Analytics on your website can really help once your website has been running for a little while and Google has started to gather visitor/traffic information.
You may want to see which pages are popular, or where visitors are dropping out of your website. You can see where traffic is coming from, as in social media, or maybe directories that you have registered on.
What keywords and phrases are people using to find your website? Search Console is good for this too. It’s also worth doing a few Google searches yourself and see what you competitors are doing. Are they doing a better job of answering customer questions in their copy?
Do you have a feedback form on your website? These can be quite useful for gather customer information, about how easy the website was to use, or was the checkout process easily or if people have found any issues.
You could send out a newsletter to your customers asking them for website feedback or if they have any suggestions for what they would lie to see.
All of this can go into the mix of making improvements to your website.
How can Plumb Digital help?
Well, I don’t just build and market websites. I also do Website Audits and SEO Audits. Both of which can give you the full lowdown on how your website could be improved for customer and search engines. I can also talk you through which ones may be easier for you to tackle and which ones may be a little more technical. At that point you can make changes yourself or chat with me about scheduling you in to get your website working harder.
If you’d like to have a chat about any of this then Contact Me via my contact page.