website: Starting a Business Website

Starting a Business Website

Starting a website for your business doesn't require that you to spend huge sums of money but it does require that you spend some time researching and planning your site.

The first thing you need to decide is.. Why do you want a website?
It isn't sufficient to think that just because everyone else has one you need one as well!

When you answer the why you also will probably answer, in part.. What will the site do for your business. An example would be. My business wants a website to:

Attract new clients
Inform new and existing clients on my products, services and costs.
Allow new clients to contact my business.
Provide support for my products and services to reduce the amount of telephone call enquiries we receive.

It is important to have a general idea of what you will eventually do with the site as it can have a big impact on what type of host/design you choose.

Website Research

Your website should be based around a predominant theme. Your business does something specific and that is your obvious theme. However you may need to emphasis that theme differently to establish a successful web presence.

To do that you will need to to some basic research to find the search terms that could/are being used to search for the services/products your business offers.

You can find out how in Website Research For Small Business Websites

Your Approach

As mentioned earlier there are two main approaches to website building.

Complete Do it yourself/self build approach
Partial self build approach

In reality a complete self build is rare except for small brochure type sites. Most business website owners adopt the do what you can and outsource what you can't approach.

For Example you may not feel capable of setting up a PPC (pay Per Click) campaign but you are happy to write web pages. So you write your own web pages and outsource the PPC campaign.

You should be aware that outsourcing doesn't necessary just mean getting someone to do some work for you. It can, and often does, mean buying a package that does the work.

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You may just feel that your time is better spent in your business and that you just want someone to do it all for you. If that applies to you then you should at least be aware of what is involved.

In using Websites for business owners I look at the website building process from an outsourcing perspective.

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The next step is to decide the approach you will take when building the site. See Small Business Website Design Considerations

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