An 8-point guide to a setting up a website, that works

1. An Idea

So, you have decided to setup a website? Images and text to highlight your business, your hobby, maybe the delightful antics of your new born? No matter your ultimate goal, publishing your website can seem like a challenge. But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it can be pretty fun. Grab a cup of your favorite coffee and let’s get to work.

If you don’t already know, start thinking of a few words that describe what this website should do for you. Promote your business? Show off your hobbies or interests? A way to share family photos? Having an idea in mind helps to get started in the right direction.

2. Finding a reliable Domain Name & Hosting company

A domain name is like the license plate you’re going to stick on your website, using which people will reach your site. Ex. www.yourcompanyname.com. Try to get a name which is simple to write and remember. .COM works best for a business or personal websites, while .ORG/.NET works best for NGOs. Other popular options are .IN, .CO.IN, .NET.IN, etc.

You then also need a place on the internet where you can park all the text/images on you webpages, which can then be made accessible to the world 24x7x365, it is called as web hosting.

Word of caution! The keyword is RELIABILITY. These days you find a domain / hosting company in every nook & corner of city, with packages ranging from earth to sky. If you do NOT want your website to be down few hours every day, and want your support calls to be answered in time, find a company which has been in business for sometime and have good reviews online. You can also ask the company to give a few customer references and talk to those who are already using their services. Once your checks are done, you are good to go. Getting a friend to refer you a provider, which he himself has been using, is not a bad idea either.

3. Selecting a hosting package

This is tricky, yet very simple to decide. The hosting space will basically be used by two things – website text/images and your emails.

Think for a while, what kind of a site you are going to have. More textual or more graphical, graphics normally use more space. Ideally for a standard company website, 20-25 mb should be an ideal buffer for website files.

Now, the space for your emails. Depending on your email usage being minimal to moderate to heavy, you can keep say 20mb for minimal usage, 50mb for moderate and 100mb for heavy usage per email id. You can then use a third party email software, like Outlook or Thunderbird, to regularly download emails to your local system and free the hosting space, to accommodate newer emails.

All hosting companies offer upgrade options from smaller packages to higher ones, which basically means, paying only for what you use and upgrade only when you need, by paying the difference amount.

4. Website Design – Simple & Easy to use

Website design is an ocean, and you don’t want to get caught in the waves of all that fancy stuff. As the saying goes, Simple is always beautiful, so focus on the necessary. Before you even start thinking about the styling of that creative flash animation on homepage which takes a hell lot of time to load, stop and ask yourself: do I really need this feature? And you may surprise yourself.

A simple navigation and optimized pages, works faster and better, enabling your visitors to find what they need, easily. As the thumb rule goes, a maximum of three clicks should take the visitor to the required page.

Clean graphics and easy navigation can go a long way to get the desired response from your website, which in-turn would help generate business and benefit you in a manner that you would have expected.

5. Adding relevant Content

Think like your audience. Survey tells, Fans / customers really only want a few things when they visit your website – especially if they’re visiting for the very first time, like:

  • About you or your company
  •  Your Products or Services
  •  Why should they do business with you
  •  Photos and videos
  •  How can they get in touch with you

All other stuffs can always be added as you go ahead. Start small and build on it, based on need and responses from your visitors.

6. Getting Your site Noticed

When your site is ready, you will need to submit it to search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Once submitted, the crawlers will index your website pages in their database, to show up in search results, which will inturn generate traffic to your site.

Also, in general, if your site is already linked to by other websites, you may not even need to submit it to these search engines. They will probably find it themselves by following the links on those websites. The more genuine sites linking to your site, the better your visibility on search results.

Apart from submitting your site to the search engines, you may also want to consider promoting it in other ways, say advertisements in the newspapers, word-of-mouth, email newsletters, bulk sms or bulk email campaigns, flyers, etc

7. Project a professional image with company email ids

Majority of communications happens on emails these days, taking a little time to think about how your email looks from the standpoint of the recipient can go a long ways toward presenting a professional image. An email like rajesh@gemimports.com, sounds much better than rajesh.gems@yahoo.com. Though it looks a very small thing, but seen from a customer point-of-view, goes a long way to build a professional image and confidence.

When creating a company email address, you want something that matches your business and looks professional. It needs to be easy to remember and fit nicely on business cards. Your hosting provider should have this company email facility in the package you have purchased, which also includes the ability to create multiple user email accounts, starting from 5 to unlimited. If your company doesn’t have a website, you still can create company email addresses relatively quickly and easily.

8. Keeping your site regularly updated

A great way to allow your website to convert a visitor who comes across your website to a person who contacts you for services is to have new content. Generally when someone is shopping around for services online they will type some keywords into a search engine and view the first several websites that appear on the list.

Not always does the visitor immediately makes a decision on which of these businesses to move forward with, but comes back to these websites at a later time to make their decision. Having new, relevant content when they return to your site is a great way to convince them your business is their best choice. Some good examples of updated content would be:

  • Industry specific news and articles
  • What’s new this week at the restaurant
  • Latest products added to catalog
  • Any kind of special or limited time offers and promotions

If your site is updated regularly, your existing customers get the confidence that they are working with a company where lots is happening, this in turn helps getting customers interested to come to your site regularly and remember to refer you whenever someone checks.

Your web development company will have some sort of maintenance services, where you can just keep emailing them the updates and it will be added to the site asap.

Leave a Reply