If you don’t have a digital presence, you’re running your business wrong. The way brick and mortar stores are going, it is no longer a feasible marketing plan to not have a robust digital presence. After all, business is all about thriving where your customers enjoy being.

Modern consumers no longer rely on their location to find reliable answers for problems that they may be facing or to get the products they want. For all the many of questions that they may have – Google has the answer. With every business, you want to connect with your audience through a platform that they love being on. In this case, we are referring to your website and how its search engine optimized.

But let’s face it, setting up a website for small business sounds so tedious, and expensive. You need to worry about web developers, graphic designers, sales staff, and who knows what else. The good news is that the difficulty behind building a website for small business is hyped up to make it easier for digital marketing agencies to sell their services. Throughout this article, we will discuss just a few simple steps, which will help you start your website from ground zero.

What Is The Point Of Your Website?

Have you looked at your niche? You should be evaluating what competitor websites are doing. On the surface, to the average joe, it looks amazing, right? There are beautiful, enticing pictures. Various articles offering solutions to current, and relevant problems in your target market. It’s just incredible. Well, these websites have a purpose, which is why they are able to convey that feeling of professionalism and trust.

It’s important to understand the meaning of everything on a site. Businesses create robust content pieces on their sites because they want to make them shareable on social media, optimize them to rank on search engines and explain their product or industry to potential customers to convert them into customers.

Some good examples of content “with a point” are this guide to AP Automation, this one that explains bankruptcy, and this one that explains DRaaS software. In all cases, content is written both to inform people generally interested in these topics, but it also piques reader interest in actually using the services offered by the rest of the site.

Nothing about your online presence should be without purpose.

Think about what the purpose is for your brick and mortar location. Now, what can your website do to convey that same vision for your business? It is important to make it clear from the “homepage” that your business offers solutions that can solve your target markets problems.

The last thing you want is potential leads getting despondent, and closing your page because they cannot find the service that they are looking for. Think about what your “perfect” user wants, what do they want to see, what do they want to read… that is how you should design the interface of your website.

Create A Domain Name That Aligns With Your Brand

Now, this is a crucial step to building your business. All the successful businesses in your market will have one thing in common. A strong brand name, which creates trust. You want to be clear that the website still falls under your brand regardless of the source of traffic to the website.

It is important to keep it short, and sweet – to the point if you will. For example, https:www.companyname.co.

Once you know what you want in the prefix of your domain name, you need to consider what the name ends in. This is also known as the top-level domain name. Essentially this is the suffix, which is at the end of your domain name. For example. “.net”, “co”, “org”.  

Usually, .com is the default suffix. But the world is at your fingertips – you have the potential to create a unique, and interesting brand for your potential customers to enjoy.

Making Your Website “Viewable” To The General Public

Great, we are getting somewhere. Although, it may not feel like it. Now that you have pinpointed the vision of your website, and settled on a domain name, it’s time to talk about hosting. You may be curious as to what hosting means.

Well, in order for anyone to view your website, it needs to be stored on a server, which is accessible by the public. This is easiest to do with WordPress sites, as they comprise about a third of the internet already. Hosting is essentially any service that offers a secure place to store your website, and most hosting services are most familiar with WordPress. But there is a legion of companies out there, which offer hosting services. So, finding the right service for you may become a tad stressful.

When it comes to the fastest WordPress hosting services, you can either get a private server or shared hosting. Essentially, shared hosting is a great starting platform for most businesses. After all, it’s more affordable. But if you see a large number of viewers on your web page daily, the decreased speed may cause irreparable harm to your online presence, which is why we would suggest opting for the private hosting.

Once you have covered all of these basic steps – you will have the foundation of your website sorted. The next step is developing content, and enticing graphics to improve your sales funnel, and provide solutions to any questions that your potential customers may have.