Resources

The Four Necessities of Building a Website

Jan 29, 2020

A website is an inevitability that every business must face. When building a website, you may not know where the first place to start is. That is why our team has outlined the four necessities for building a website below!

STEPS TO BUILDING A WEBSITE

REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN

Think of your domain as your address, or home on the internet. It’s how people find you, but not in a creepy way. For potential customers to find your business, your domain name must be memorable, represent your business and not be a 17-letter acronym. The point is for people to remember it quickly but to retain the information for long periods.

DECIDE ON A WEB HOSTING COMPANY

Now, you must pick a hosting company for your website. Think of this as the land where your home sits. The hosting company encompasses your website content, images and overall awesomeness. Most major internet service providers and domain registrars have hosting options, but there are countless hosting companies on the internet. Before choosing a web hosting company, we recommend you do your research and read reviews to find the best one that fits your needs.

PREPARE YOUR CONTENT

Deciding on content for your website is as important, if not more than, any other choice you make when building your website. When making content decisions, think about what valuable information you feel potential clients need to be most informed.

At InnerAction Media, we recommend utilizing various types of short and long-form website pages. Short-form website pages are pages that may hold your About information and your team roster. A long-form page, also known as a pillar page, takes a topic on a service you provide to your customers and does a deep dive into it. When you’re developing your website content, we recommend that you try to put yourself in your audiences’ shoes. If you were coming to your site, what are the most important things you would want to know about your business?

BUILD A WEBSITE

You can build your website or hire a web designer/developer to develop your site for you. Just be sure to keep in mind that websites need regularly updated, so plan for ongoing maintenance and updating. Hiring someone to build your website is a good idea if you are, shall we say, technically challenged or if you are busy running your business and simply don’t have the time required to put into learning something new.

At IAM, we have a small checklist of what we need to know before developing a client’s site. This information includes having a clear description of what they do and provide, preferred domain name, business email address, website building platform (we utilize HubSpot, WordPress and Patient Sites), brand colors and logo and lastly, what other websites have caught their attention.

USEFUL TIPS FOR CREATING A WEBSITE

Think about what your customers want to know, not just what you want to tell them.
Use professionals to help you. An unprofessional website can potentially put customers off.
Update your site regularly, especially if you include information about your prices.
Make sure your contact details are correct and comfortable for your customers to find.
Promote your website in your marketing material and include it on your business cards.
Find out how you can make your website easy for search engines, such as Google, to find. This is called search engine optimization (SEO). A web developer can help you with SEO for your website.

Building a website takes time, and if done right, can serve you well into the future. At InnerAction Media, we like to say ‘a good website is like having a marketing team working around the clock’ as it will deliver content, add value and build trust with your audience anytime, day or night. If you have questions about how your website is currently performing, give us a call at 304-241-4959 or click here.

Relevant Blogs:

You should have a say in your story.

IAM can help your business prosper by creating a personalized plan for growth throughout our various mediums of expertise.