How to Start a Website

Creating a great website is key to running a successful business, but for those who lack the necessary tech-savvy, it could turn into a complicated process. This guide will get you started.

Tweet

iStock

Today, the website of a company has usurped the front office as the place where first impressions are gleaned. Where it used to take a meeting or a few product samples for a customer to form an opinion about your business, now it's only a matter of a simple Google search – which means you need to make sure that query result is a memorable one.
 
"Small businesses should be looking to have a personal presence on the Web – something that would back up a sales call or brochure," says Tim Zack, a marketing executive at Red Clay Interactive, an Atlanta-based Web development firm. "It definitely shouldn't be an afterthought – this is a capital investment in the success of your company."
 
The following guide will teach you the basics on how to start your website, as well as provide tips on designing and marketing the site to help drive business.
 
How to Start a Website: What Do You Want to Accomplish?
 
The first thing you should assess before embarking on your online venture is what exactly you want to accomplish with your site. Do you want to sell products? Do you want to create a blog about your company or service? Depending on your industry and the nature of your business, your site may have a combination of different functions.
 
Below are some of the basic types of the sites, and what they can help you to achieve:
 
•    Brochure/general information: This type of site basically serves as your online business card. It provides information about who you are, what your company does, product or service pricing, possibly previous and current clients, and how customers should contact you. BlueStar Energy and MonaVie are both companies with great examples of what a brochure site should accomplish.

•    Retail/e-commerce: An e-commerce site allows your company to sell products directly to customers. Sites like Amazon and Zappos are great examples of the success the e-commerce site can afford a business. It usually employs the use of a shopping cart and payment processing utility, such as PayPal.

•    Content-driven sites: These include sites like news aggregator The Huffington Post or streaming video hub Hulu, which generate revenue by posting fresh content on a regular basis, and maintain a library of hundreds or thousands of pages.

•    Blogs: The blog can also be considered a content-based site, but more specifically, it involves a person (or people) from the company or site who regularly posts information relevant to their product or industry. Many business owners use this format to help generate a loyal customer following and drive sales. A great example would be the product blog of 37Signals, creator of popular project management tools Campfire and Basecamp.
 
•    Database sites: Examples of these would be the localized classified site Craigslist or travel search engine Kayak, where users can search for content or information that has been amassed from different resources or websites.

•    Forum or community sites: These sites usually involve large groups of people who share ideas and comments with one another on various topics. These include Q&A sites, such as Bizmore.

Dig Deeper: Tips on Turning Browsers Into Buyers

How to Start a Website: Do it Yourself, or Hire Someone?

After you've decided on the basic goals you want to accomplish with your website, next, you need to make the all-important decision of whether or not you're going to build or buy. While there are tools such as GoDaddy.com or Wordpress.com that have made it easier than ever to build a website, keep in mind that the process can still be time-consuming, and that you will probably need at least a passing knowledge of HTML code.
 
Mitchell York, president of E2E Coaching, a small business consulting firm, and founder of TechWeb, a technology news-related site, advises small businesses to go ahead and make the financial investment in hiring a designer, if they can afford it. "I think most people just find it very hard to do on their own," York says. "If you had a store on Main Street and you had to decorate the window, you could just throw something up there, or hire someone who would do it so you would stop traffic. It's the same thing."
 
A good designer will likely cost you $1,500 and up, depending on the added tools and number of pages involved in the creation of your site. York suggests going to Elance or 99designs, which are crowdsourcing websites that allow you to post jobs and bid them out to people.

Dig Deeper: How to Hire a Web Designer, Not a Belly Itcher

 1 | 2 | 3  NEXT 

Read more:

J.J. McCorvey

J.J. McCorvey is a reporter at Inc. magazine, where he covers a wide range of topics, including technology and business research. He has covered metro news for The Detroit News, and his work has been featured in Men’s Fitness. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Sign-up for our Sales and Marketing Newsletter

Email Address: