Most of your customers expect to be able to find your business on the internet. Whether you sell your products online, or simply want to provide information about your business, such as contact information or hours, having a website is essential. Does a business without a website really exist today? Nothing is less sure. Moreover, the vast majority of companies that go bankrupt had no online presence...
Whether you want to create a website yourself, or whether prefer to surround yourself with professionals, you will have to follow the following steps.
1. Definition of the needs
Pre-project
The first step is to define why you need a website.
Even if it seems logical and your needs are obvious, you have to think about what you hope to achieve with your website before you start creating it:
- Do you want to sell online?
- Have a showcase of your business and your activities?
- Get new customers?
The answer(s) to this question will largely determine the price of your website!
Think about it
Research the names of your competitors, their digital strategy can help you get an idea of what might be best for your business.
Specifications
This is an important step: you need to write a specification. These specifications are based on your project and your ideas, which is why you must first define the objectives of the website.
The drafting of the specifications allows the different participants present during the design of the website (graphic designers, SEO, developers...) to list all the tasks they will have to perform, as well as the constraints they will face to complete the project.
2. Domain name and hosting
Domain name
Your domain name should reflect your products or services so that your customers can easily find your business through a search engine. Your customers can also expect your domain name to be your company name.
The chosen domain name will also be used for your email address. While you can use a free email address like Gmail, sending emails from a business address sounds more... professional!
To register your domain name, you will need to find an accredited registrar and pay an annual fee. These "registrars
Hosting
You will also need to find a hosting provider. Most major domain name providers also offer web hosting services.
What you should know
Monthly hosting fees vary depending on the size of your website, and the number of visits you receive.
The choice of hosting will also depend on the type of your website:
- Showcase site: Showcase sites don't need a lot of hard drive space, nor do they require a large database. You can therefore reduce the costs and go for a "basic" rate, at a few Euros per month.
- eCommerce: Contrary to storefront sites, online sales sites need a substantial SQL server and a space that can store the numerous articles and images present on the product sheets of this type of website. The price remains very reasonable, rest assured!
- High audience website: High audience websites receive more than 25 000 visits per day and require a dedicated web server. The prices vary according to the technical capacities of the server. The price will vary from several dozen to several hundred Euros per month.
If you are not sure where to go or what to choose, you can hire a webmaster for the creation or daily management of your quality website. He can register the domain name and choose for you the hosting that will best suit your project. He will take care of creating your professional e-mail addresses and will renew these services at the anniversary date.
3. Build the website
Graphic charter
As its name indicates, the graphic charter of a website is the set of rules that define the graphic identity of a website. By extension, we often abuse the expression of the graphic charter to talk about the whole visual identity of a website.
The objective of this graphic charter is to have coherence whatever the page of the website, and whatever the support of communication used, in order to reinforce the brand image. The graphic charter also facilitates navigation and reading, through the use of constant visual cues.
Attention
For a website, the graphic charter plays a determining role in the first impression and the credibility of your site. You should not neglect this step, the best being to call upon a professional graphic designer.
Here is the list of the main elements of the graphic charter of a website.
- Colors: RGB / Hexadecimal references of the various colors used. It is advised not to exceed two main colors. One can also specify generally the references CMYK, in the case of a declination paper.
- Typography: List of fonts used, size, and colors for each Hx tag. As for the colors, it is preferable not to exceed 2 fonts: in general, you will have a font for the body of the text and another for the titles.
- Logo: All variants of the logo, on white/black background, transparent, in black and white, with colors and in different sizes.
- Icons: It is advisable to use icons from a complete set in order to have a graphic consistency. There are a large number of fonts for icons, which it is also advisable to use for their ease of customization (in size, colors ...)
Several personalized models can be developed from the elements in the specifications.
Content
You can have the most beautiful website in your industry, if your prospects can't find it through a simple search, it won't matter much.
Whether it's a homepage, landing page, case study, or any other type of content, you need to take advantage of SEO best practices. Make your content user-friendly by naturally incorporating useful and authoritative hyperlinks. Research relevant keywords and include them in page titles while being careful to avoid keyword "stuffing" or your site could be penalized for violating search engine guidelines.
Sometimes a company's marketing department has only one person: its manager. If this is the case, you'll have a hard time creating every piece of content. Not only will you be overwhelmed by the task, but it's easy to make mistakes.
Again, you can use professional copywriters. By outsourcing the writing of your web pages and the SEO optimization of your website to freelance writers, you will be more confident in your website's ability to reach your target audience and in its persuasiveness to prospects.
Development
You have defined your needs, drawn up specifications, found a domain name and hosting. You have a graphic charter and the content of your future site. It is now that the construction can begin.
You can build your website yourself, or have it built by a professional web developer.
- You can use website creation software to create your website yourself. There is a lot of such software, all claiming to be easy to create your website yourself... This is not always the case depending on the solution you choose, or the person who does it... If you choose this solution, our tutorials can help you to develop your website properly.
- If you are a novice, it is better to entrust the creation of your website to a pro. A web developer can build your site quickly and give you many tips for a successful design.
Hiring a professional can be especially helpful if you plan to create an online store, or offer other services on your website.
Your website should be built so that it can be easily used on smartphones and other tablets.
Attention
A website must absolutely be kept up to date, make sure you plan for continuous maintenance.
4. Referencing
Before your pages appear on the results page of search engines, they must browse your website. SEO is slow and the sooner you start, the better off you will be.
Because even though Google's crawlers usually find their way to your website on their own, even without any action on your part, you can speed things up by submitting your sitemap via Google Search Console. This involves communicating directly to Google the existence of your website while indicating all the pages it contains.
In order to show up in search engines and have people find the information or products you provide, you need to work on curating your content and becoming an authority on the web.
Start as soon as possible to put a long-term SEO plan in place. Ask yourself if you have time to learn all the tricks of the trade and do the work yourself, or if you need a professional SEO
Whichever path you choose, you need to make it a priority and you need to have a long-term vision of the goals and progress you want to make.
Conclusion
A well-designed website that is easy for customers to use will help your business stand out. Relevant and appropriate content and images will help customers understand your products and services and make them feel comfortable buying from you.
Only, creating a website involves many very specific trades.
Just as you can choose to do everything on your own, it is possible (and even advisable) to hire a professional to design your site. You can also consider hiring a professional to write and structure its content. A webmaster will be able to maintain it while an SEO consultant will work on the referencing.
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