Having a functional website is a non-negotiable part of any business marketing strategy in this age. When properly leveraged, your business website enhances discoverability and could serve as a source of quality leads for your business. But what does it take to create an engaging website for your small business? Whether you’re just about to build yours or looking to upgrade an existing one, here are some essential steps that will give your website a competitive head-start in the online marketplace:

1. Define your website goals

While it’s essential to have a website for your small business, it’s more important to know what you want to achieve with the website. Do you want to use it as an e-commerce platform? Or do you wish to post content that will inform and educate your clients? Or perhaps, you want to leverage the website as a traffic source to your brick-and-mortar store? The answer to these questions would determine the overall structure and features of your website.

For example, if your website will serve as an e-commerce platform, you’ll have to implement a payment gateway, products catalog, and other sales-related features. On the contrary, if your objective is to gain more leads, you’d need to pay more attention to aesthetics and display your service in a way that’ll attract customers.

2. Get a good domain name

A befitting domain name should make a good impression for search engine optimization as well as usability purposes. The ideal choice would be a name that matches your company name or embodies your business in some ways. As you grow, you may need to have multiple domains that direct to your website. However, it could be challenging to achieve such a level of growth if you do not start with the right domain name. Here are some guidelines you should have in mind when choosing your domain name:

Make it easy to spell
Keep it short
Avoid hyphens, numbers, and symbols
Use the appropriate domain extension
Make your URL SEO-friendly wherever possible

3. Choose a secure and scalable hosting platform

Your website host is akin to your real estate provider on the internet. Your website is stored with your hosting provider, and users who type their domain name assess the saved data. Because your hosting provider plays a vital role in determining your website’s speed, performance, and availability, it’s essential to carefully consider your choices before settling for one. Below are a few tips you’ll find helpful when choosing your website host:

Although shared hosting can be an excellent way to save costs, the potential risks hardly outweigh the benefit.
Virtual Private Servers offers affordable yet efficient and secure hosting
Always go for a hosting provider that has multiple active support channels
The ideal hosting platform will have a simple user interface

4. Create a befitting interface

Your business website should be easy to navigate and leave a good impression on any visitor. However, as you want to make your business website attractive, you must remember that simplicity remains the best design element. Some valuable tips for making your website interface memorable are highlighted below:

Use easy-to-read fonts and beautiful graphics
Combine colors in an aesthetically pleasing manner
Create separate pages to make navigation easier for your users
Ensure your design elements resonates with your target audience

5. Choose your Content Management System (CMS)

Your CMS is the application that helps you post and organize the content on your website. Popular content management systems include WordPress, Drupal, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla, etc. Before the advent of content management systems, publishing a simple blog post would require writing many lines of code, and you couldn’t even edit the post at will.

The ideal CMS will have a simple interface that allows you to post and edit content just as you would on Microsoft Word. Aside from ease of use, it would also help to consider affordability, extensibility, SEO capabilities, and support community. WordPress ranks high on most of these fronts. Hence, it’s the most popular choice among small business owners.

6. Optimize your website for search engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps you drive organic traffic to your website, thus making it easier to meet your business goals. Although SEO is a continuous process, it’s essential to implement basic SEO principles when designing your website if you wish to have a smooth ride. Such basics include:

Optimal website code
Fast loading speed
Responsiveness and mobile-friendliness
Detailed sitemap

Once you’ve taken care of the technical aspects of SEO, you can now focus on optimizing your content to show up on the first page of search engine queries. Remember, the goal is to get as much organic traffic as possible. So, you’ll continue to research your potential clients’ most commonly used keywords and search terms and optimize your content to rank high for them.

Outsource to the experts

Creating a functional business website and optimizing it for search engines requires a certain level of expertise. If you’re not well versed in digital marketing, you may struggle to take care of all the necessary tasks on your own.

Even if you’re a digital marketing pro, you’ll probably need to devote time towards the day-to-day running of the business, and you may not have too much time to spare. This makes hiring an expert imperative, especially if you care about getting it right on the first try. It may also interest you to know that upgrading a badly built website is just as expensive as building a new one, if not more. So, why take chances if you can get it right at once?

Do you need a professional web designer in Toronto? Tap Marketing is just a message away. Get in touch with us, and we’ll be glad to discuss how we can help.