Whatever business you’re in – or want to be in – you may well want to set up a website.
Setting Up A Website For Your Business
Setting up a website is a good way of generating customers. And a website can also make your business look more professional. Now you no longer need to pay an expert hundreds of pounds to set up a website for you. It’s perfectly possible to set up a simple website yourself for just a few pounds. Here are some basic tips on setting up a website.
Choosing and registering a domain name
Before you can set up your website you will need to register a domain name for it – this is the ‘www.whatever’ name that identifies your site. There are lots of domain name registration agencies that can tell you if your preferred name is available and register it for you. You can register your name for 1, 2 or 5 years at a time (it works out cheaper the longer you register it for).
Try to choose a domain that says what your business does, is catchy, and not too long so that it is easy for customers to remember and use.
Getting hosting for your website
Next you’ll need to arrange hosting for your website. A hosting service will hold your website on their servers so that it can be accessed by visitors at any time. Normally, they will also provide an email package so that you can send and receive email in your own domain name too.
There are plenty of website hosting services out there so shop around for the best prices. At the moment you can get hosting for a basic website for as little as £50 per year, so be sure to shop around for the best deals. You can buy hosting by the month, but it’s more usual to take hosting on a year-by-year basis.
Designing your website
At one time you had to get a website designer to design a website for you, and it could be expensive. Now you don’t need to – you can do it yourself even if you don’t have any design skills.
Many website hosting services also provide a website design system which can be perfectly adequate for a simple website. These operate on a template-based system. You choose a template that suits your business, pick the layout, colours and styles you require and then simply type in your content. You can also upload photographs, either from a photo library or your own photos.
Also take a look at WordPress: if you want to create a more sophisticated website with more features – such as ecommerce, a forum/chat room, video on so on then I strongly recommend you take a look at WordPress. WordPress started a while ago as a kind of blogging system but it now offers what is known as a content management system. It includes all the tools needed to design and build a website that looks every bit as good as a professional one.
More details about WordPress here: www.wordpress.org
Adding content to your website
Now this is one of the most important things about setting up your website. Try and make sure you add good quality to it on a regular basis. Not only will this make it more interesting for visitors and keep them coming back, it will help your site appear more in search engine searches.
Here are a few ways of adding content that needn’t take up a lot of time:
- Add news and articles about your business.
- Curate material from around the Internet to add to your site.
- Ask your customers to write and post reviews.
- Add your own photos.
- Add your own video footage (it’s easy and free to do this by hosting your videos on YouTube).
You can also build your own website by following the easy steps listed out in , a great website builder product.