You’ve started a new business and you may already have some paying customers. Now what? One of the first things you need to do is create your website. You might be wondering how to get started, how much to pay, and what to do about an email account. Let me help.
Domain name
First things first! Getting your domain name is the very first thing you need to think about. Go to bluehost.com, rebel.ca, godaddy.com or any other domain registrar, and register your domain yourself. This may cost anywhere from $10 to $40. For Canadian companies, keep in mind that not all registrars support “.ca” domain names. We generally use canspace.ca and do not recommend godaddy.com for various reasons including they tend to oversell you with services that are not needed.
All you will need to register for a domain is a credit card or a PayPal account. Regardless if you are working with an agency or building your website by yourself, it is important that you purchase and control your own domain name. This gives you top-level control, and will save you headaches in the future should you want to change web providers.
Choosing A Domain Name
What’s in a name? Actually, there’s a ton of misinformation about how to select a domain name. It used to be that a domain name also carried a lot of “SEO Juice” but this is no longer the case. While they do still give a bit of a boost, it’s not quite the same as it used to be.
You want your domain name to be your business name if possible, and it should be easy to remember. Don’t forget to consider how long the domain name is – you’ll be using it on business cards and other printed material. If it’s long, will it easily fit on those printed marketing flyers, business cards, and other business stationery?
Web Hosting
Your domain name doesn’t have to be hosted at the same place as your website. In many cases, it’s best if it is not for the reason stated above – control. For example, you could find yourself with a domain name at rebel.ca, a website hosted on bluehost.com and emails hosted by Google for Works. Variety gives you flexibility and top-level control over your website. Hosting means you are renting space on a server to give people access to your site. Shared hosting costs around $10 a month. Shared hosting is perfectly fine to get your website started, but as your company grows you may want to consider upgrading. Shared hosting can often degrade over time in both speed and resources.
Building Your Website
How you create your website might depend on whether you are short on time or money. If you are short on money but have time, then you may want to build your own website. Systems such as wix.com or sitebuilder.com offer an easy way to build an elegant website.
Wix is its own hosting platform, so your domain could be hosted at rebel.ca but point its DNS to Wix as the hosting provider. And yes, you do want to pay that $10 a month to remove the wix.com branding from your site.
If you are short on time, working with an agency may be a good option. Working with an agency can cost you anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 depending on custom features, maintenance contracts, imagery licenses, amount of content, etc.
One consideration about sitebuilders is that you won’t be able to make a copy of your site and host it somewhere else. It can be an issue when you use proprietary website builders. If for some reason a place like wix.com goes out of business, you’ll have to start all over again with your website design. However, if you use an open source platform such as WordPress and then make backups of your website files and database, it will be much easier to move or migrate your website to another hosting company.
E-commerce
If your website is going to have an online store you may want to consider Shopify. Shopify.com comes with an all-in-one e-commerce platform and several templates ready to use. It’s a great DIY tool. WordPress is also a great e-commerce platform with 3rd party plugins such as WooCommerce and Cart66.
But again, there are some caveats with using Shopify – it can get expensive when you start to add extra features that you will need in the future. As well, it’s a proprietary platform.
E-commerce plugins are available for WordPress – WooCommerce being the most popular. Thousands of businesses use WooCommerce and with many plugins available for added functionality, it’s a great choice. Having a web developer that knows WordPress and WooCommerce can be very helpful in ensuring everything runs smoothly. An experienced developer can help you with custom functionality or may know the right plugin to use for additional features you want on your e-commerce shop.
WordPress
Speaking of WordPress, if you are thinking of creating a website with weekly content updates, a blogging CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress may be the right choice for you. www.wordpress.com can host your website for you (similar to Wix but not the same), and the WordPress app allows you to post content on your website right from your phone. You can also host your own WordPress site by installing it via the tools provided by CanSpace, bluehost, godaddy, or most other hosting providers. This is a bit more complex, but it will give your website more flexibility. Other good CMS options include Drupal, Joomla and Mambo.
Email addresses
There is nothing worse than reading Yoyofun55@hotmail.com on a business card. Get that Joe@yourdomain.com and info@ yourdomain.com, and set them up to all go to the same inbox. Generally, emails are hosted at the same place as your web hosting service, but if you are emailing customers all day and rely on emails for your business operation, you will benefit from a more robust email provider such as Google for Works. It’s basically a gmail account which can support your domain name and can be configured in Outlook (also consider Thunderbird for your email app) and your CRM. It filters your spam better than most email platforms, and you can be sure that recipients are getting your emails. Inboxes can have several aliases, so you can have emails like hr@, info@, and sales@ all going to one single inbox.
Search Engine Optimization
Build it and they will come…. Not quite! At the end of the day, your website should be a tool that generates leads and helps you with your sales process, but you will still have to work to drive traffic to your site. A website can help you look more credible, and it can automate a lot of your business process. Being found on Google is critical for a lot of companies, but for a new website, being found online is a process that can take time.
Being found on Google and ranking well is a great reason to have a web developer who also understands Google’s Standards (this company has clients in many Provinces as providing International services). While an amateur website or a website done by an agency that does not know anything about Standards will still be indexed, you’ll get a boost right off the bat with one that has been designed around the standards that Google has published and that is fast. Huge file-size images are a big no-no and you’ll want to make sure they are optimized.
You’ll also want to keep in mind that some Provinces in Canada now have “Usability” AKA accessibility regulations that most businesses must now meet. Website Usability refers to how well a website performs for those that do not use a standard browser like Firefox or Chrome – but perhaps browse the website with tools to assist with disabilities such as eyesight impairments.
Based On An Article By Dominick Blais