Are you a business owner?
Do you want to launch your official website?
Ever wonder how to rebuild your company’s website without hiring someone professional?
Now, probably you know that it costs thousands of dollars to get a professional website built that fulfills all the requirements of the modern-day world. And, when you don’t have an idea about the site development and features selection, you’re pretty much a web-handicap, means you’re unable to do something on your website and totally dependent on the web developer.
And, that’s not pretty.
Now, here I talk about empowerment and solutions for business starters. However, it always takes some time to learn things and experience counts a lot but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to do things…
In fact, you should make a start at this point. You got to learn someday, then why not now.
The best part is that you’re not signing up for any online training to set up your website or you’re even being enrolled in a long and hefty web design course.
This is totally free. It’s right here for you.
The next part is important and you’ll love it.
I’m going to share a guideline with a step-by-step tutorial to launch your website. You probably end up launching an online business once the website goes online. No one really knows.
What kind of Business you want to Start?
Now, let me ask you this.
Do you have a passion for entrepreneurship?
Any plan to start your business?
Do you want to know that how online businesses work?
Well, always remember that when you create an online solution on the internet, an online business takes birth.
This article could help start online businesses in the years to come. We don’t know yet.
Maybe, by the end of this article, you will be able to grab some ideas on starting an online business via a website.
Let’s dig in.
What kind of business can you start online?
- Services Business
- Online Retail
- SAAS-based (SAAS = Software-as-a-service)
In fact, we’re discussing to set up a business website here. I thought to add some value for the people who don’t have a business or a business idea (yet)…
And, they might read this article and think that this article is for business persons who already have their businesses in place.
Well, if you don’t have a business, this article can still benefit you, which is why I added three kinds of businesses which you can start online.
Hop in and start thinking about your business idea.
And those you already got their businesses and are looking to establish their business websites can follow these steps:
How to Create a Business Website within 24 hours
Choose the Right Platform
I didn’t say the platform — I said the ‘right platform’ — Now this is something interesting. The right platform is a platform that will help you grow. The platform is an online web solution which you will use to launch your website.
It should a SOLUTION, not a pain.
Always remember that.
I’d recommend the platform I personally use so that I can justify my point. Although, there are always options to consider in web businesses, but you have to pick the right platform. Sometimes it suits the best for the audience and often that comes up with the most reliable option.
Never mind.
Choose WordPress (self-hosted) platform to launch your website. I will let you know why to pick this platform and why you should not choose any of the WordPress alternatives.
We’re talking about a business website. We need to focus on the customer engagement, lead generation, funnel creation, email list building, online advertising, content marketing, and much more…
And, all begins from your business website, which is why I decided to put this option (Choose the Right Platform) at the beginning.
Other Platforms:
Medium:
It’s an emerging blogging platform. It offers a unique layout style with proper following and post liking system. It doesn’t offer features like WordPress self-hosted platform.
Blogger:
This is Google’s service for bloggers. You can link up your domain with your blogger.com’s blog. This isn’t something professionals choose to launch their blogs.
WordPress.com:
WordPress.com is a free service and pretty much a competitor of blogger.com. It’s a separate service from self-hosted WordPress platform but, of course, comes from the same mother company called Automattic.
This could be the good options for many of you, but I don’t recommend that. When it comes to a company’s website or a business website, you should look for the more professional approach.
Choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform means you can add plugins, themes, and other customization to make a whole new website for you. Such customization and functionalities aren’t available on blogger.com, wordpress.com, and medium.
Study the Platform
Technically, studying a platform would days or probably weeks — so let me rewrite something here. I’m rewriting the interpretation. You have to study the platform pretty quickly.
Since I’ve recommended WordPress to you all.
So, I’m going to stick with that.
Now, the next part is that what you should study.
Good question, though!
You have to study the following things:
Expansion Possibilities
Try to understand that to what extent WordPress can be extended to get the desired goals. It must contain the information regarding possible jobs that could be done through this web platform. WordPress can be used to launch a blog, website, social media platform, discussion forum, online store, and a video sharing site.
Average Use
Find out the average use of the platform. Normally people use WordPress to launch their blogs as well as websites. All they know that it’s an open source program. All we can do is to download the source and upload it to our server in order to launch the site or blog.
Industry Norms
Tap the industry’s norms to find out the exact use of WordPress. Learn about the companies and experts’ views on the platform’s ability of expansions. The best way to do is to find out the reviews and opinions about the platform with relevant keywords on the Google and YouTube.
This process shouldn’t take much longer. According to this article, the WordPress platform powers more than 25% websites in the world.
Launch your Website
Here comes the next part. At this point, you have to understand that how you can launch your business websites without hiring a web developer or spending thousands of dollars.
It’s true that companies charge between $1000 to $5000 for creating business websites in the USA and Europe.
So, decide whether you want to spend that amount of money on your website or you want to go to the simple procedure to set up your website within a day.
Remember, the website launch might take a few minutes. The whole learning and understanding the procedure could take a day or less if you’re not a web-savvy person. And, trust me, it’s a no-brainer. You’ll be fine.
Follow the step-by-step procedure to launch a WordPress-based website:
- Make sure you have purchased your (linux-based) web hosting from a reputed and high-quality web hosting service like Bluehost or checkout my guide on choosing the cheapest wordpress hosting company.
- Register your domain with Godaddy or Namecheap.
- Insert your web hosting’s nameservers into your domain’s settings (it might take 24 hours to propagate).
- Buy a WordPress themes membership to get a bundle of premium WordPress themes. I use and recommend Elegant Themes. They are affordable and professional theme maker.
- Go to the wordpress.org and download the WordPress source to install on your server.
- Open your Cpanel (given by the web hosting company)
- Create the database from your Cpanel, and then create a user for that database.
- Unzip the WordPress source, and rename the wp-config-sample file to wp-config.
- Insert that database information (database name, username, password) into the wp-config file, and save it.
- Upload all those files to your public_html directory. (Main directory through Cpanel)
- Visit the URL of your site to run the installation pack.
- Add the relevant information and admin details to complete the installation.
Don’t like the manual procedure?
No worries.
You can install a WordPress site within a few minutes by an auto-install feature available in your Bluehost web hosting account…
Although, I recommend to install it manually as described above
There are a few reasons of that:
- Your backup procedure remains smooth when you would have installed it manually.
- Your WordPress installation remains a framework free (auto-installation script free)
- You can quickly move from one web hosting to another.
But, if you don’t really care of moving your WordPress site to another hosting or you’re not very cautious about your site’s backup, then you can use this guide to install your WordPress within 15 minutes.
Fill up with the Information
You’ve purchased your domain, hosting, and theme.
You’ve launched your site.
Congratulations.
The next part is filling up the site with the engaging and meaningful content. The engaging & meaningful content means your content should be understandable by the humans as well as the search engine bots.
When you clearly depict the SERVICES and PRODUCTS of yours in your content, you’ll automatically be telling the right thing to the audience. This is something I want you to do.
Trust me.
I will tell you how you would do the SEO Optimization without spending hundreds of dollars on SEO and Search engine ranking.
All you need is to understand your BUSINESS and TARGET AUDIENCE.
6 Components of a Website Content
Here are the necessary parts of any website’s content:
Homepage:
The homepage normally welcomes the visitors and it is also considered a landing page of the website. Although, the landing page could be any page of the website where a visitor lands, but in online marketing, a landing page is specifically considered a single page site which is used to engage the audience. On the homepage, a well-explained information about the company’s mission and products/services should be available.
About us:
This section of the website should be used to explain that what does the company do to make money. It can also include the mission, vision, and growth strategy of the brand. In fact, one can add a little history about the company too.
Services/Products
Services/Product area should be displaying all the services or products of the company. It could under the Products/Services dropdown menu. Moreover, if your company sells a single product or service, you can simply put up a single page with the product name or Purchase button.
Opt-in forms:
Here comes the engagement part. Without adding some opt-in forms and popups, you can’t make any sort of successful business website. It’s extremely important to utilize the options to engage the site visitors to make them enter into the sales funnel.
Call-to-Action:
One of the most important components of any business website would be appropriate call-to-action buttons. From the right text (on the buttons) to colors, the CTA buttons play a vital role in the prospect engagement and customer acquisition.
Get Social to Promote Your Site
Getting social doesn’t mean to create pages on Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
That’s it and wait for things to happen.
Not at all.
Getting social means engage the audience ONLINE and OFFLINE.
Make them find you on the Facebook and Twitter.
Play a role in their lives so that they start finding you every.
Meet new people, deliver them value and make new friends.
Still not impressed with ONLINE and OFFLINE communication and relation building?
Okay…
This article of Social Media Today also emphasizes on the importance of offline relation building and creatively suggests to the brands on not neglecting the offline communication with the audience.
This article on Hongkiat also expressed the importance of offline relation strengthening as compared to social media connectivity and interactions.
Create a Communication Funnel
Now, this might solve the problem for many businesses. You might have spent a lot of money on your website. You design is new and the site is responsive.
From a chat box to quick contact form scroll box, there could a number of options to use in order to begin the communication.
The right form of the option is a must pick.
Olark, Velaro, and tawk.to are the popular services which can be used for this kind of need.
In addition to that, you can use a number of engagement and communication tools like Hellobar and ManyContacts to make the visitors enter the funnel of communication.
Pinch them politely, so that they itch and ask you for the solution.
Conclusion
You want to start your business website. Because you want to expand your horizon to internet.
And it’s because, you are looking for ways to earn money on internet with your current business.
Now, you’ve got the way to launch your WordPress site within a few minutes.
You got the solutions of web hosting, WordPress themes, and installation guide.
Plus, you got some tips and tricks to take your business website to the next level.
Do you know why did I write this article?
Because every entrepreneur collects chunks of inspiration from different people…
I’ve given you my part. You might collect other pieces from other experts around the world.
Keep collecting. Keep running.
Don’t stop!
Now launch your website and bring your ideas to life.
