How to Create a Website for Your Business: 9 Key Factors

Are you a service-based business looking to create a website for your business? Maintaining an online presence is essential in today’s digital age, and having a website for your services is one of the best ways to showcase what you have to offer.

It may sound intimidating, but with the right tools, creating a professional and attractive website can be surprisingly doable—that’s why we’ve put together this comprehensive guide on the factors that go into how to create a website for your service-based business in 9 straightforward steps.

Ready? Let’s get started!

Choose a Domain Name and Hosting Provider

When picking a domain name, you’ll want to think through all the possible web addresses that could work for your business. You may be tempted to pick a name with the sole purpose of recognition, but if it’s too long, hard to remember, and even difficult to spell, then visitors may give up trying to find your website altogether.

Tips for Choosing the Right Domain Name:

• Pick a domain name that is easy to remember and spell. (Ex: YourBusinessName.com)
• Check to see if your domain name is taken before deciding on a final option.
• Avoid using hyphens, numbers, or other symbols that could make the website harder to remember.
• Choose a short domain name if possible, as longer names may be harder for customers to type in or remember.

Examples of Short, Memorable Domain Names:

• youtube.com
• amazon.com
• instagram.com
• nfl.com
• dropbox.com
• medium.com
• hubspot.com
• Airbnb.com

We recommend getting your domain from GoDaddy, the number one domain registrar worldwide. It’s user-friendly and offers affordable prices. Plus, you can use their powerful Domain Name Checker Tool to quickly determine if your desired domain name is available before diving into any branding.

Once you find the perfect domain name that is short, relevant, and memorable for your audience, you need to look for a hosting provider. A web hosting provider serves as an enabler between web servers and Domain Name System (DNS). Choose a reliable web hosting service so your website runs quickly and can withstand traffic.

The web hosting provider the team at By Timeless likes to use is SiteGround, as they offer a variety of hosting plans for businesses that range from shared to cloud hosting as well as WordPress-focused packages. From what we’ve experienced, they’re the most reliable hosting provider we’ve used. Check them out here.

Design the Look of Your Website

Creating an attractive website design is the first step in building a web presence for your business. It doesn’t matter if you are using a content management system or pursuing web development, having the right tools and knowing how to use them is key when designing the look of your website.

When considering web design options, take into account user experience and functionality. You want to ensure that all areas are responsive and intuitive. Make sure you also implement clear labeling for navigating each page. Customers will be accessing your website from various devices, so make sure that your website will still look great and responsive no matter what web browser they use.

Taking the appropriate steps to design a web page that complies with accessibility needs is also important. Keep up with web-design trends and customer feedback during this process to make sure your web design provides the best possible experience for everyone visiting it.

Examples of accessibility factors to consider:

• Provide multiple ways for users to navigate your web pages. Like adding an internal search feature or site map.
• Provide transcripts or captions for audio/video content so people with hearing impairments can still access your content.
• Include descriptive text for images, so visually impaired users can still understand what’s on the page.
• Check contrast levels between text, links, and backgrounds to make sure they are readable by people with low vision or color blindness.
• Create simple, easy-to-follow visual cues.
• Develop relevant quality content.

Now that your website design is ready, it’s time to develop and add the content.

Decide Which Platform and/or Website Builders You’ll Use

Choosing which platform to use for your website can be a daunting task. Luckily, wordpress has become the go-to solution for many individuals and businesses. It powers about 43.2% of the internet. With an abundance of helpful templates, design options, and intuitive plugins, wordpress is an excellent choice for anyone looking to build a site on their own.

It’s also relatively easy to learn and use, with an expansive library of tutorials and guides available online. So if you’re not sure where to start when it comes to creating your own space on the web, WordPress is for you.

Best Website Builders:

• Elementor
• Wix
• Divi

These website builders allow you to quickly and easily build a professional-looking website with minimal coding. Elementor, Divi, and Wix are popular choices for their attractive design options, user-friendly interfaces, and customizability.

Regardless of which platform you choose, make sure it’s the right fit for your business’s web design and digital marketing goals.

Add Content That Hooks the Reader’s Attention

Content is key to hooking your reader’s attention if you have an online service-based business. From copywriting that carefully communicates just the right words to visuals and images that give life to your content, content creation is crucial to grab your customer/reader’s attention.

Adding text, videos, stock images, and other graphic elements to your website enables you to showcase your services while providing an engaging user experience for users. There are a range of content delivery options available, like blogs, newsletters with downloadable content, and social media posts — and as a bonus, this content can be repurposed on other platforms as well!

When content is valuable and keeps readers up-to-date with the products or services you offer, this attracts their attention and establishes trust — benefiting both customers and yourself alike. Careful content creation gives you the opportunity to make your business shine by showcasing how you can benefit your customers.

Examples of content that will hook readers:

• Descriptive characteristics of services/products.
• Testimonials from customers.
• User-generated content, like videos of customers getting your service or using your products.
• Before/After photos or videos.
• Answers to frequently asked questions.
• Tutorials or how-to guides.
• Available discounts or promotional offers.
• Upcoming events related to your business.
• Special offers for subscribers.

Is Your Website Safe and Secure?

Cybersecurity should be a top priority if you have a website. Web security threats constantly evolve, making it difficult to protect against online attacks. That’s why it’s important to stay one step ahead with comprehensive online security and privacy protection protocols.

Regularly updating and maintaining your website is key to protecting yourself from hackers, viruses, and other data thieves looking to steal your sensitive information.

Keep your customers’ data safe by ensuring your web hosting platform has the highest level of encryption available, as well as an updated backup of your website in case of any losses or emergencies. With these steps in place, you can focus on running your business without worrying about the safety and security of your website.

Ways to Protect Your Website:

• Invest in a secure web hosting platform with the highest level of encryption and firewall protection.
• Keep software and plugins up-to-date.
• Use a web application firewall.
• Always back up your website regularly.
• Monitor systems continuously for suspicious activity.
• Train employees on safe web practices.
• Implement two-factor authentication for logins.
• Secure file transfers with TLS/SSL encryption.
• Disable scripting when possible.
• Keep your website’s code clean and free of errors.
• Update your website’s passwords regularly.
• Hire a professional to audit your security protocols.

By following these steps, you can ensure your website is safe and secure — which will also give you peace of mind knowing that your customer’s data is secure too — since they’ll be the primary users of your website.

Test and Debug Any Errors or Issues With the Website’s Functionality

Quality assurance is a crucial part of any website’s successful launch and maintenance. Testing and debugging any issues with the website’s functionality is key to ensuring that users have a positive experience on your site.

This includes functional testing, load time testing, bug fixing, and troubleshooting — all the components that ensure a website runs smoothly and optimally.

Quality assurance might not be the most thrilling topic, but having a reliable website that can stand the test of time will make you outshine your competitors, and it’ll give your users an undeniably satisfying online experience across all browsers and devices!

A tool you can use to troubleshoot your website is the web developer tools in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, or any other browser.

Promote Your Website on Social Media Platforms and Other Outlets for Traffic

Digital marketing is an important part of any website strategy, and social media platforms are the perfect opportunity to engage with users. From Instagram stories to Tweets to Facebook groups — there are many different ways you can use a social media presence to promote your website and its content.

By providing fresh, relevant content that revolves around user intent on your social accounts and tracking user engagement — you will effectively create brand awareness and drive traffic to your website.

Digital marketing strategies involve understanding the target audience, being creative with content pieces, and measuring user impact — all of which can be achieved through testing different social media marketing channels.

Search Engine Optimization

If you want to get your website seen, search engine optimization is a must. Keyword research and on-page optimization go hand-in-hand in making sure your content has the right mix of words for maximum visibility. But SEO isn’t just about optimizing for keywords – backlink building and optimizing meta tags are also key elements in helping Google find you.

There’s also search intent, which is the main focus of SEO. It’s important to understand what your users are searching for and how they want that information delivered — this will help you create content that meets users’ needs, and Google will reward you for it by ranking you on the first page — and in most ideal situations the #1 spot.

Having a comprehensive SEO strategy in place is key to your website’s success, as it will help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) — resulting in more organic traffic, better user experience, and ultimately more conversions.

Once you have the keywords you want to rank for (that fulfill search intent) — it’s time to get to blogging, creating content pieces that are written in a way that satisfies search intent while also helping your website rank on SERPs. This type of content is also known as evergreen content because it’s content that’s relevant for a long time and can be updated to keep up with the latest trends.

Best tools for Keyword Research and SEO Strategies and Monitoring

• ahrefs
• Google Search Console
• SEMrush
• Moz Pro
• Google Trends
• Answer the Public
• Google

By taking each of these steps and leveraging keyword research tools, you can launch yourself ahead of the competition and drive more traffic to your website.

Hone in on Your Website’s Analytics: Monitoring, Tracking, Optimizing

The goal for any website should be to maximize its potential. That’s why it’s essential to hone in on your website’s analytics. User behavior, page views, bounce rate, conversions, traffic, and marketing campaigns are all important elements to track.

Knowing what is working and what isn’t can help you make better decisions to optimize your website’s performance and ultimately attract more customers. How else will you keep up with the competition without monitoring, tracking, and optimizing? Take note of these key metrics to truly master the power of analytics.

Tools you can use to measure website analytics:

• Google Analytics
• Kissmetrics
• Hotjar
• Clicky
• Mixpanel

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to website creation, optimization, and maintenance. In order to stay competitive and get the most out of your business’s website, there are many other things to consider, such as SEO. Let’s briefly get into that.

Conclusion

Although creating a website is doable — it’s no easy task — it requires constant maintenance, security updates, content creation, curation, optimization, and tracking. With the right tools and knowledge, you can create a website that brings organic traffic, drives conversions, and helps build lasting business — but wouldn’t you rather save your time and hire a professional that can get it done effortlessly and faster?

If so, whenever you’re ready to get a website and lead generation strategy created, By Timeless is here to help. Just fill out our brief questionnaire here.