How to Start a Website
Learning how to start a website can be a nightmare!
Beginner web design research is a necessary evil and is an essential part of starting your own website. But there is so much information available that it can be hard to know where to turn and who to trust.
Chris Bates is the owner of Tech Monkeys He also has a new business called Business Going Online. He has contributed this article on 'How to Start a Website', to help guide you through the do's and dont's of beginner web design.
How To Start A Website
By Chris Bates
Having a website has become a necessity in this day and age. Businesses that don’t are missing out on having their name in front of millions of potential customers, in addition to failing to compete against their competitors that are online.
Before we begin, however, I feel there’s a foundation of understanding that you must grasp before finding out how to start a website. Bringing your business online is NOT just about your website, in fact failing to plan beyond a website will likely see the investment fail. This is where I key the term ‘web presence’, your business being online, in the right places, and getting in front of the consumer.
The second most important thing you need to understand is that you need a PLAN, you need a STRATEGY. Not only do you need to plan what your website is going to do, but you need a strategy for getting that website in front of the consumers. To do this, you need an understanding of the terms used in website design and beyond. This article will be an introduction to this, but by no means will it be a definitive guide.
What You Should Know About
How to Start a Website
What Makes Up A Website
This really is the ‘how to start a website’ information, these are the components that make up a website. To begin, you need a domain name, this is the address of your website (a pointer), which points to a server on the Internet that holds your actual website. It’s recommended that when you register your domain name, you register both the .com and the .com.au versions of it. This protects your branding (or business name), and catches those who forget the .au bit!
The second step, when it comes to how to start a website, is to pick your host, this is a company that sells space on their servers to hold your website. There is a myth around that getting Australian based servers is better for attracting traffic, compared to US based hosting. It’s not true, disregard those who try to tell you otherwise. Overseas hosting is significantly cheaper then Australian based hosting, and most overseas servers are equipped to deal with any type of website you wish to operate.
Lastly, you need to build your actual website. I will discuss DIY vs Professional further below, but here is where you need to PLAN. What are the goals of your website, if you’re a service business you want leads. If you’re a retail business, you want sales. What content will you have on your website? Which software will you use to build your website? There are many different solutions, way too many to discuss in this article, it depends on your level of expertise (DIY) or your budget (Professional).
That’s all there is to starting a website, once you have those three things you are online. You then need to drive traffic to it though, and that’s the hard part. Being a ‘general guide’ sort of article, I will introduce you to some terms for you to research more. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. Social Media, using Facebook and the likes to promote your business. Business Blogging. Article writings. Press Releases. Link Building. There’s many methods, you NEED to understand them. These are what make up your STRATEGY to getting people to visit your website. Google each of these terms individually, and understand which methods you could use to promote your business.
DIY Website Design V Professional
Many business owners that are starting out will look to doing their own website. They don’t have the thousand(s) of dollars to pay a professional, and it doesn’t really look THAT hard. Everyone does it, and everyone makes the same mistakes. Hopefully by reading the above, and with further research, you will be better equipped to make the decision of DIY vs Professional.
A business owner might invest 40 or more hours in researching and building their own website. If their time is worth $50 an hour, that’s $2000 of income they’ve lost by doing their own website. After 6 months and no results from their website, they give in and pay a professional $2000 to build them a website. Another 6 months and still no results from their website, they research SEO/PPC/SEM, then pay another company $2000 tryig to drive traffic. By the time their website is actually WORKING, it’s cost them some $6000, way over their original $0 budget.
You can see a DIY job may not be the best option, and I would really only recommend it to those who either have A LOT of time (for some reason), or have a background in IT. It’s important to understand how important your web presence is, nowadays you CANNOT afford to ignore it, because you WILL be missing out on customers.
A Word From Chris
Being an owner of a small business myself, having started a tech support company - I realise how much damage making the wrong decisions can be. That’s why I started Business-Going-Online.com so that I could be the go-to-guy for getting your business online. I develop a PLAN and a STRATEGY with my clients, and then get it implemented for them. That way my clients get the results they need, and I get to help other small business owners like myself.
Whatever way you wish to go, this ‘how to start a website’ guide is only the start of your research. If you want to go it alone, or if you want to pay a professional to do it, it still pays to do your research and understand what it’s all about. Do this and you wont regret it, you’ll have the knowledge to pick the right people for the right job.
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