Web Development & Design

  Look and feel: This is the most important aspect to consider. Finding a theme that matches your website design vision is important. But don’t just fall in love with a design and select it—do your research. You’ll also want to check the theme details to make sure key areas are easily updatable so that you can customize them for your website. Popularity: You may decide you want a theme that no other sites are using. However, if you will need assistance with web development, you’ll want to find themes popularly used by developers. A good web developer can easily tweak your look and feel to make any theme feel like your own. Keep in mind that you’ll have more options when choosing independent web talent if you opt for a theme that’s more well-known or widely used. Responsiveness: These days, finding a responsive theme isn’t optional. With so many people viewing websites regularly from mobile devices, it’s important to find a website theme that’s not only responsive but also allows you to edit your settings to customize better how pages will look on certain devices and screen sizes.‍ Additional plug-ins, extensions and apps: Some plug-ins work better with certain themes. If you already know of plug-ins, extensions or apps you’d like to use, make sure they’re compatible with the theme you choose. While a DIY approach to website building might work for some, not everyone has the time, artistic eye or expertise to pull it off. Engaging an independent professional can help you build a professional website that meets your business needs. For example, an independent web designer can bring your ideas to light while also offering a unique perspective regarding website needs, usability, font type and size, website load speed, etc.

  There’s a lot to say about getting the professional-looking website of your dreams. With , you can find experienced web designers offering hourly pricing within your range. ‍ Plan and produce page content Remember the sitemap you started building in step one? You’re ready to put it to full use. You’ll want to lock down every page you’ll need on your site and decide which content will be placed on your homepage, which pages fall into the navigation menu, and which should only be accessed through links and buttons across your website. Once you have your final page list, it’s time to determine how each page should look and the content you’ll need. If you already have some designs or content to use, great! If you need more, you don’t have to go through the process alone. Create a content plan (such as coming up with a few blog ideas to start with) and work with independent designers and/or writers on to fully flesh out each webpage. Just be mindful of including keywords in your website’s content. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), keywords can be as little as one word or a longer phrase. Either way, keywords alert search engines (e.g., Google) to what your page is about. Using targeted keywords can increase organic search traffic to your website, increasing brand awareness and converting potential customers.

  Add functionality for your business You’re ready to add extra functionality to your website to enhance user experience further. Here are a few options to get started with: Scheduling apps: Do you want users to be able to set appointments? Integrating scheduling apps like Calendly or Square Appointments would be your next step. Look for the app you’d like to use and make sure it’s added to the correct pages on your website. Media plug-ins: Will you be hosting a large number of pictures or videos on your website? Media plug-ins can help you better organize and store this content, enhance the way it looks on your website, and offer you more robust storage options. E-commerce integrations: Do you need to be able to conduct sales on an online store? If you didn’t select an e-commerce platform, you might need to consider integration with a tool that can accept payments on your behalf. You can keep this simple with PayPal or Venmo integrations or build more professional stores using WooCommerce, Shopify or BigCommerce. Account creation tools: If you want users to log into your site to gain access to specific content or shopping tools, you’ll want to secure a plug-in or app that offers protected user accounts. Security apps: Keeping your information secure, particularly if you’re saving customer data like credit cards and passwords, is critical. These are just a few additional plug-ins and tools to consider. Do some research on your niche to find more that are well-suited to your industry or connect with an web developer to discover other recommended tools.

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  Start measuring key metrics Measuring your website traffic is key to growing your business and making money through specialized campaigns or web ads. You can integrate services like Google Ads and Google Analytics. Tracking metrics using free tools like Google Analytics can help you better understand your audience. Using cookies, Google Analytics can help you understand website traffic. For example, let’s say you post on social media about a sale on your website. Google Analytics can provide you with details regarding who visited your site. Curious if you have repeat visitors or if you’re attracting new customers? Google Analytics can show you data about new and returning visitors. Google Analytics also provides information about how many interactions a site visitor had within a specific period. Sessions, as Google calls them, start when a user visits your website and finishes 30 minutes after any activity. Although sessions finish after 30 minutes, you can adjust your settings for how much inactivity will lead to the end of the session. In addition to sessions, Google Analytics can tell you the average time visitors spend on a specific page. This insight is great for understanding how engaged visitors are with the content you create. Google Analytics can even tell you the type of devices visitors are using. This insight highlights the importance of a mobile-optimized site. It can also tell you if you need to work harder on mobile optimization. For example, an e-commerce small business owner might notice that their site’s visitors are mostly on mobile devices. To ensure their shopping experience is seamless, they might invest additional time in optimizing the site’s content for those devices.

  There are also a variety of additional features you can pay for to better understand what users are doing when they visit your site. These include Ad Manager, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360 and Campaign Manager 360. Furthermore, Analytics 360 includes customizable funnel reporting and access to advanced data and data-driven models. ‍ Test for bugs and compatibility issues Before launching your site, it’s important to test it for any potential bugs or compatibility issues. To get started, log out of your website (user experience can vary when you’re logged in) and test all of the links on your site. Make sure all buttons and image links work properly. You’ll also want to test videos, contact forms, the navigation menu and other apps to ensure they’re functioning correctly. Lastly, you’ll want to test compatibility and responsiveness from various devices (phones, tablets, large-screen monitors, etc.). You should also view your site in different web browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera) to ensure there are no compatibility issues. A QA tester can help ensure a full QA of your website and address and fix any bugs or compatibility problems. ‍

  Adapt to keep up with customers Once you’ve launched your new website, congratulate yourself! This is a major accomplishment that will bring you closer to achieving your business goals. Since digital media is at our fingertips, it’s important to keep your site current and updated. At this point in the website development process, it’s time to take another look at key metrics. Are there certain keywords that bring in traffic? In this case, writing a blog post with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind can help you continue to target your audience. Alternatively, you might have more projects to add to your portfolio. For example, you might have just taken wonderful wedding photos as a photographer—of course, you’ll want to add new pages to your website. Ultimately, updating your website regularly will help keep your content fresh and increase organic traffic. Build your website with the world’s best Creating a website that you can be proud of is important for any business. Websites attract new customers, bring in new readers and subscribers, and can help further legitimize brands and simplify the sales process.

  Build your brand’s new website quickly and effectively by recruiting the world’s best web designers, writers and developers. Let connect you with top talent across the world to build your website right the first time. Whether you are a freelance photographer, own a hardware store, or have another type of small business, a great website is essential for your company’s success. As a webmaster who has worked on building or marketing over 100 small business websites, I know what it takes to create great and engaging business websites. If you are looking to build a new startup website or make your current site more effective, here are 10 key steps to getting started and helping your small business website compete effectively in the online marketplace. Looking to build a new startup website or make your current site more effective

  Obtain a good domain name Your domain name, also known as your website address, is often the entry point to your site. It is important that it makes a good impression for usability purposes, as well as for search engine optimization (SEO). Here are some tips for coming up with an optimal domain name: Make it easy to spell. Try not to use slang, made up, or extremely esoteric words. Keep it as short as possible. The shorter it is, the easier it is to remember and type correctly. Use the proper domain extension. Try to always make it a .com domain name (as opposed to .net, .co, etc.) unless it is more appropriate to use another extension, such as .gov, .edu, or .org. Avoid numbers and hyphens. They are hard to remember and less elegant and memorable than word-only domain names, and may be misunderstood when vocalizing the domain name.

  Make the address broad to facilitate future growth. For example, Amazon.com is a much broader website address than BooksOnline.com and allows Amazon to sell pretty much every type of consumer good instead of books only, as was its original purpose. Ensure it is memorable. With so many websites on the internet, it is important that your website name is catchy so people will remember how to access it in the future. Research the domain name. Google it to see if a similar website address already exists online, and search on USPTO.gov to make sure it does not contain any registered trademarks. Check if the price is right. Determine if you can purchase your desired website address at a reasonable price since most good domain names are taken and will need to be bought from the current owner. Avoid nonsensical names. Choose a name that conveys a meaning so that users will know immediately what your business is. Yahoo and Google are catchy names, but they were very expensive to brand, and your small business may not have the same budget. Create an SEO-friendly URL. When appropriate, try to come up with an SEO-friendly website address that includes keywords and geo-location; for example, “www.LasVegasElectrician.com.” Purchase secure, scalable website hosting with good tech support A website host (or sometimes referred to as a website hosting provider) is a company that offers the technology and services necessary for a website to be viewed on the internet. You connect your domain name to your hosting provider so that when users visit your website address, they are shown your website that you store on your hosting account.

  Hosting services can cost anywhere between $2 to $100+ per month, depending on the kind of technology and support you choose. You can usually get a discount if you purchase a yearly plan as opposed to a monthly plan. Here are some guidelines for choosing a good website hosting plan: Although you can get a “shared server” hosting plan for as little as $2 per month, I would typically advise against this. Shared hosting means you are sharing a server and its resources with other customers, which can make the performance of your site suffer. Also, if one of the other websites on your shared server is hacked, it is possible for your website to also be infected. A “dedicated server” hosting plan is the most expensive option—cost can range from around $100 to $2,000 per month—but it would make your website perform the most optimally. Having a dedicated server plan means that the physical server machine is entirely dedicated to your site; therefore, all the resources are yours and it is more secure than a shared hosting plan, as long as the technology is optimal. However, it is much more expensive than what most small businesses usually are willing to pay. Once you have a very high-performing site, this may be what you need, but it is overkill for most early stage and small businesses.

  The compromise I typically recommend is a “virtual private server” (VPS) hosting plan which offers the best of both worlds. The cost ranges from around $20 to $50 per month, which is affordable for the hosting services you will receive. A VPS is one machine that is partitioned to act as multiple machines, which gives it a similar affordability to shared hosting, with similar security and performance potential as a dedicated server hosting plan. Make sure your hosting company has phone and/or chat support so you can be helped quickly if you have a problem. Email support can often take too long and become frustrating when a problem needs to be resolved immediately. Phone support is best, but chatting works well, too. There needs to be an easy to use server interface like cPanel to access your server. You do not want to have to use terminal commands to view your server contents and make changes, unless you can afford to hire a professional server administrator to help you. Check to see what kind of server security is in place on the server you are considering. You will want to be able to access your server via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). There should be daily backups being made of your server contents. There should also be an easy, one or two-click method to install Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. Make sure the hosting company performs regular security maintenance. Ideally your hosting company has a published security protocol you can review so you know how they keep their servers safe. Some popular website hosting companies include:

  GoDaddy DreamHost Bluehost InMotion SiteGround Prominently display a clear description of your business It is important to let people know who you are and what you do right away so they don’t feel confused when they visit your small business website. Make sure your main homepage banner (also known as a “hero image”) and subsequent banners are visual representations of your services, and also that you have an introductory text blurb near the top of the page that describes who you are and what you do. Additionally, make sure both your main and footer navigation menus have "About Us" page links easily accessible so people can click them and read more about your business in depth. Implement the best content management system A content management system (CMS) is a software program or application that is used to create and manage digital content. A good CMS will help you maintain your site, and you don’t need much technical knowledge to use it. You should choose a CMS that is designed for your unique needs; different systems are used for different reasons, such as user-friendliness, extensibility, and budget.

  The following are some popular systems with descriptions of their strengths and weaknesses. WordPress: WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS. It has a vast, active support community and many useful plugins to extend the functionality of your site. (And if you cannot find a plugin that does what you want, it is easy to find a WordPress developer who can make one for you!) WordPress is also free and relatively simple to install. Most website developers are familiar with it so it is not hard to find an individual or agency that can work on your site. I normally recommend that small businesses use WordPress to create their websites, due to its flexibility and extensibility. It must be noted, however, that WordPress's biggest weakness is security—because it is so popular, hackers target it the most. Your WordPress site needs to be regularly maintained and secured so it is not hacked. Also, it is difficult to secure every single third-party plugin, so keeping your WordPress site secure must be an ongoing commitment through various best practices (checking to see if your plugins have been updated within the past few months, making sure it is a plugin provided in the official WordPress repository, deleting unused plugins immediately, etc.).

  Drupal: Drupal is another popular CMS. It offers many of the same benefits as WordPress, including flexibility, ease of use, and a large support community. Notably it is a more secure CMS than WordPress (safer from malicious activity); however, it doesn’t have as many plugin or theme options, which makes it less extensible. For many years, the White House website (Whitehouse.gov) was run with Drupal, but has since switched to WordPress, which it still uses today. Joomla!: Another popular CMS is Joomla! Out of the box, it has better SEO, security, and multilingual capabilities than WordPress; however, with the help of a few plugins, WordPress surpasses Joomla!’s capabilities. Squarespace: Squarespace is a service you subscribe to monthly or annually that makes website and blog creation an easy “drag and drop” experience. It includes website design, development, software maintenance, metrics, domain name with annual purchase, SSL security, 24/7 support, and unlimited bandwidth and storage hosting all in one package. It is especially suitable for creatives and provides you with top-notch design templates. If you are on a tight budget, need a simple and beautiful site, but cannot afford a website designer, this is a great service for you. There is a much smaller learning curve with Squarespace than with WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla!, but it doesn’t have nearly as many extensibility options. However, if you have little or no technical knowledge and are looking for a quick and easy way to put up a website, Squarespace is an excellent option for you.

  Wix: Wix is very similar to Squarespace, but it is a bit more user-friendly. It offers a monthly, but not annual, subscription and includes similar features. Wix is also a drag-and-drop builder—you can freely drag and drop elements anywhere on the page; in comparison, Squarespace is more structured in where you can drag and drop on the page. The learning curve to using Wix is even shorter than Squarespace, so if you need to publish a site quickly, this may be your best option. Wix has a lot more templates than Squarespace to choose from, but once you choose a template, you must stick with it or be forced to completely rebuild your site. With Squarespace, you can change your template anytime without having to rebuild the entire site. Choose a good e-commerce platform If you plan on selling goods and/or services through your website, you will need the right technology to do so. (If you do not currently sell anything, you may want to consider doing so since e-commerce could potentially increase your profits.) If you decide to allow users to financially transact with you online, you will need to choose the right platform for your business model. Here are some popular small business e-commerce platforms:

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  WooCommerce: WooCommerce is one of the world’s most popular e-commerce platforms—it can turn your WordPress website into an online store. Like WordPress, there are many plugins available, and it attaches to WordPress, which makes it extremely flexible. There are many free and premium themes pre-built for WooCommerce. (As a rule, it is better to use a premium theme from a reputable developer because it will offer better security and support.) If you are not tech-savvy, you will most likely need a WordPress developer to help you set it up and use it. WooCommerce also offers a very high amount of capabilities and scalability that your small business might need. Shopify: Shopify is a cloud based e-commerce platform that allows you to create and customize an online store, and to manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping. It is not a WordPress extension like WooCommerce—it is a standalone platform that is hosted on the Shopify server—so if you have a main website, your e-commerce site would technically be separate from that. You can link to your Shopify account from your regular website built with WordPress, Drupal, Wix, etc., unless your main website has a Shopify integration plugin. Features include unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, fraud analysis, discount codes, reports, and much more. The key benefits of Shopify are that you do not need a developer to set up a store, and everything on the backend is already set up for you when you subscribe. The downside is you do not have as much control or flexibility over your store as you would with WooCommerce.

  Shopify Plus: Shopify Plus is Shopify, but with a higher level of customization, more staff accounts, and international e-commerce options. It also has a higher level of support. However, all of this obviously comes with a higher subscription cost, and it still does not have all the flexibility and customization abilities as WooCommerce. Business Squarespace: Squarespace has an e-commerce subscription option, so if you chose Squarespace to build your site and have very simple e-commerce needs, you can choose this route. Business Squarespace charges a transaction fee, but this can be bypassed by upgrading your subscription to a basic online store. It includes a free domain, SSL security, SEO, abandoned cart recovery, discounts, real-time carrier shipping, and more. However, it has been noted it is not as user-friendly as Shopify. And like Shopify, it is simply not as flexible as WooCommerce. Wix: Wix actually has a Shopify extension which is very user friendly. You will have to upgrade your Wix account and subscribe to Shopify in order to use it.

  GoDaddy Online Store: GoDaddy has a relatively new e-commerce standalone subscription platform that is relatively easy to set up and use. Very little technical knowledge is required to launch your shop with GoDaddy Online Store. The templates are simple and clean, and somewhat customizable. Features include marketing and SEO tools, social media integration, appointment booking, SSL security, rapid page loading, and more. Other Articles From AllBusiness.com: The Complete 35-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business 25 Frequently Asked Questions on Starting a Business 50 Questions Angel Investors Will Ask Entrepreneurs 17 Key Lessons for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business Create an interesting, memorable, and engaging website user interface Make sure your small business website interface leaves a positive impression that drives results. You can do so by implementing the following suggestions:

  Use beautiful graphics and easy-to-read fonts. Make sure your graphics are compressed and optimized for fast loading. If your website is slow, search engines like Google will penalize your ranking. Research the competition to see how they have designed and optimized their websites; implement similar components that will work for your small business website. Research your target audience to see what they want from your site and make it easy for them to accomplish it. Stay consistently on brand throughout your website design. Design an intuitive navigation system which allows users to get to the pages they need quickly. Publish easily accessible contact information. Incorporate obvious call-to-actions (especially “buy now” buttons). Create pages that are standard for small business websites, such as:

 Home About us Products/Services (with descriptions and visually appealing images) Sitemap (for SEO purposes) Management team Contact us Terms of use (the online contract governing how users can use your site) Privacy policy Additional pages relevant to your specific small business Optimize your small business website for search engines SEO is a set of practices you apply to your website to ensure search engines index and rank your website appropriately and then show it to search engine users. Once your website is “crawled” by search engines, it competes with websites that have similar content. The better your website design and content is, the higher your site will show up on search engine result pages. SEO mainly includes the following practices:

  Keyword research and implementation Optimal website code Fast loading speed Being secure and having an SSL certificate installed; SSL is the standard security technology that ensures data passed between web servers and browsers remains private Having a mobile-friendly site Existence of high-quality backlinks (links on external websites with related content) that lead to your site Having lots of positive reviews online (Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc.) Using internal links throughout your site to keep people clicking and reading Using social media to link to your site (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) SEO is an extremely important ongoing process that can mean the difference between showing up on the first page of search engine results pages (resulting in large amounts of free traffic to your website) or page 300 (resulting in no traffic).

  Regularly create and publish quality content Both content quantity and freshness are important to search engines, so it’s important that you create a plan to publish quality articles and/or blog posts on your site and on external sites that link to your site. If you want to rank highly in search engine results and encourage people to return to your site again and again, you will have to update your website with new and relevant content as frequently as possible. In addition to static page content and articles, a great form of content to post on your website is testimonials. Asking for testimonials from your customers and then publishing them on your website is a great way to post fresh, high-quality content on your site that makes your small business more attractive. Make sure your content uses an appropriate, on-brand tone that people will enjoy reading. Install webmaster tools Make use of vital data to help you analyze traffic and site performance by installing Google Analytics and Google Search Console (both preferably via Google Tag Manager), and Bing Webmaster Tools. These tools can be used to track the following types of information:

  Daily, weekly, and monthly visitors to your site Number of views on each page of your site “Bounce rate”—the percentage of users who come to your site and leave after having only viewed one page (Google algorithms give higher rankings to websites that have a low bounce rate, on the theory that visitors are spending more time on the site and find it valuable.) Average time spent on site by visitors Crawl errors on your site (errors that the search engines found on your site in crawling its content) Broken links on the site Keywords that lead users to your site Backlinks to your site Web page download time Other information that can help you enhance your SEO Implement a website maintenance plan A website shouldn’t be created and then allowed to grow stale. In order to have a successful website that ranks well in search engines and doesn't get hacked, you need to make sure it is properly maintained. Here are some tips to create a small business website maintenance plan:

  Check Webmaster Tools data at least once a month and have any vital errors emailed to you in real time. Use traffic data to learn more about your audience so you can better cater to them. Use performance data to optimize and fix warnings and errors. Make sure all software is always up to date. Run security scans so you know your website is clean of malware and hasn’t been hacked. Use “split testing” to see if certain variations of your website help performance; for example, if you are selling a product, you might have two versions of a particular landing page with different images and wording—the split testing allows you to see which version has a higher conversion rate. Follow my advice about SEO (see point #7), and continually publish quality content (see point #8). Find on-trend and effective ways to market your business online. Allow website users to provide you with feedback about your site. Continue to check out your competition from time to time to see what they are doing with their online presence and see if what they’ve done can work for you as well. Make sure your website is backed up in multiple ways at least once a day and at least 10 days back. Conclusion As you can tell after reading this article, creating a great small business website may not be as simple as you first thought. However, if you follow the steps set forth in this article, your small business will have an excellent chance at succeeding in the online marketplace.

  When you consider this in the context of how to make a website or making a blog, it’s much the same. You spend days, weeks, even months working to build your perfect website. You utilize a chunk of your business budget to create this incredible user experience, hoping it leads to customer satisfaction and increased consumers or visitors. When creating a website or undergoing a site redesign, there shouldn’t be any pieces left behind. The various aspects should fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, eventually compiling the perfect picture. When learning how to design a website, you want to create the optimal user experience. To do so, go through your site piece by piece and make sure you have these key elements. The following features are purposeful elements of a website that users have come to expect and will leave a lasting and positive impression on all those who navigate your way. Home Page Features for Your Website The home page is where most first impressions are made. It’s a user’s first look at who you are and what you’re about. Don’t mince words here. Be concise and effective with your communications, and make it a quick place for users to understand your business. website-features Domain Name The URL for your website that appears in the navigation bar. This is the address where visitors are able to find you, or the address they are taken to after search leads them to your site. Domain name creation is one of the first steps to website creation, and you cannot have a functioning site without one. Make the domain simple and easy to spell so visitors may find you without trouble. If your ideal domain name is taken, think outside the box and get creative. Domain names are registered for brands, so you will either need to find an unregistered domain or acquire a domain that is owned by someone else.

  Company Name Your company’s name should appear pretty high up somewhere on the homepage, reassuring visitors they’ve come to the website they were looking for. Users should not have to scroll to find your company name. Search Bar Some users know exactly what they want from your site, and just need help navigating to that page. Including a search bar on your homepage, a