Small business owners don’t need to learn code, hire a web designer or find an expert in a computer language to make a website. Web builder programs like Weebly, HostGator, Wix, and Bluehost make building and promoting an online presence as easy as winning online slots real money South Africa casino games.
If you’re going to use a web builder program you must acknowledge that you won’t have all of the high-tech features that you’d enjoy with a program that was built by a web designer.
A large company, for instance, would probably not be satisfied with a simple design because those basic designs don’t allow the site to deliver the impact that the company wants to make.
According to multiple studies, almost 50% of site visitors put their trust in a company based on the website’s design. So many businesses invest in a web designer who can build a more visually appealing site.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t create an effective website with a web builder program. If you do your research you can create a high-quality site that gives you the features that you need for SEO optimization, loads quickly and easily on mobile devices, gives you as many web pages as you want, and allows for user-friendly navigation that will get your message effectively.
Getting Started
Start by choosing your domain name. The domain name should reflect you’re the face that you want to present to the world – your brand, your service, your product, etc. You’ll need to register your domain with a domain registration company like A2, GoDaddy or Namecheap. (Sometimes you can register your domain name through the web builder program.)
Start by checking the name that you want to use for your website. The domain registration companies have Availability Checkers that allow you to ascertain that your domain name isn’t identical to any other domain that’s already registered. Register your chosen domain name, complete the purchase and verify ownership. The domain name is now yours and you can use it as you start to build your site.
Software
Choosing your website program should involve making sure that the program:
- Has SEO optimization features
- Is HTML5 based (as opposed to Flash-based)
- Is mobile-enabled
- Loads quickly both on PC and on mobile
You have multiple website builder programs from which to choose including Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Duda, Google Workspace, Elementor, WordPress and HubSpot.
Decide on the type of subscription you need – if you’ll be selling directly from the site you’ll need an eCommerce site with eCommerce features while if you simply want to present the information you will need an informational site.
Check to see which extra features the site offers and if you need to upgrade your subscription in order to access those features (removing the web builder name from your footer, obtaining an email with your domain name, etc.)
Now, you can start building your site. The software programs give you a wide range of basic features so you can divide up your webpages with heading, subheadings and text, add in videos and images, insert internal and external links, maps, slideshows, contact forms, buttons, newsletter subscribe forms, links to a blog, embed codes, picture galleries, etc.
Pages
You want your site to be streamlined with a different webpage for each separate sub-topic. For instance, if you’re selling clothes, you’ll want one separate webpage for dresses, another for skirts, another for pants, another for shirts, etc. Within those pages, you might want to divide up even more – dressy skirts, casual skirts, large sizes, etc.
It will be helpful to create a rough site map of how you want the site to look before you start creating pages. The site map will reflect how you want your site to look and how you want users to navigate your site.
Navigation tools should be readily available on all pages so regardless of which page a user is looking at, they will be able to find other pages quickly and easily. You want your users to be able to understand how each page links to the other pages and to the homepage.
SEO Optimization
The site’s design and outward appearance are the Frontends. The BackEnd is the part of the site that is not viewable to the public but embedded in the BackEnd is the information that search engines “read” so they know how to classify your site and when and how to direct searchers to your site.
Some of the most important elements of the BackEnd – also known as the site’s Settings – are the site’s description, the data needed for SEO optimization and the header and footer codes.
When you start to build your site you can take advantage of the opportunity to include basic SEO optimization tools as you build the pages instead of trying to play catch-up and add them in later.
- There should be keywords and a footer code (same code for the overall site and for individual website pages) on the backend of each webpage. You can find relevant keywords by using the Google keyword tracker tool – that tracker tool will give you the keywords that are most frequently typed in by people looking for the kind of information that you are providing and by using those keywords, you’ll reach your audience more effectively.
- For every page, there should be a short description of the information that users will find on that page so that when that page shows up on a search engine page, the searcher will be able to ascertain, more or less, what information is presented on that page. The site’s setting page will also need a description of the site.
- To make sure that potential viewers will find your website, match the keywords that you have in your backend to text on your front end, both in headers and in the text itself.
- Organize your pages for easy reading with headers and subheaders. Use plenty of images. (if appropriate and label those photos on the back end so that search engines find them and label them for searchers. Use videos to enhance SEO optimization.
- Add links from one webpage to another as well as to other sites to show search engines that your site is one that provides valuable content and, thus, should be ranked higher in the search engines. Finally, having a blog that features fresh content on a regular basis is helpful in drawing visitors to your site.