Congratulations, It’s good to hear that you have decided to start an online business. So you like to know what are the basic requirements to create a website. Right?
When you’re starting to think about starting an online business, the first thing that comes to your mind is how to start a blog to promote your business. In many cases, people are already running their business like brick and mortar store and want to migrate their business online.
So, you’re ready to build a website but have no idea what things are needed to start a blog or website.
If you don’t have proper steps that how to create a website then you and your ideas will be frozen. Learn here that what are the checklist to build a website.
To help you out I have written an article, a step-by-step guide to know what do you need to start a website for your business. You do not need to have coding knowledge or prior experience in order to start a website for your business online.
Basic Requirements To Create a Website Easily (15 Easy Steps)
We break down the important things to create a business website are follows:
1. A Goal
It’s great to hear you’re about to start a website. It’s sure that people always start a website to implement their plans. No one starts a website without having any plan. However, before getting deeper, you need to really clarify for yourself.
What is your goal and what do you want your blog or website to accomplish?
For example, if you’re going to start a service based business; your website should tell the people why they need to hire you and what services you offer them.
If your website is a product-based business then your motto would be the people or customers have to add the products on their cart.
In case, you just want to start a blog to share your knowledge, experience, photos and videos then your goals must be very simple to fulfill the readers who enjoy visiting your blog to read your posts.
Whatever may be your goal, but make sure that which role you’re going to play. This will help to go further based on your website and hosting plans.
2. Register a Domain Name.
Your business name or domain name forms the URL of your website or blog. Registering a perfect domain name is one of the basic requirements to create a website.
Entrepreneurs think that registering a domain for a website is the hardest part. But in reality, it’s not. You do not work hard or do not need a lot of tedious work to choose a domain name for your website or business.
However, it needs hard creative skill and decision. Many people are stuck here and very hard to go further from here.
When purchasing a domain name for your website, you must think many times what sounds good. When you do the brainstorming process, you must check the available domain name for your website. You do not need to register the exact domain name that you have in your mind on your website to have.
But it’s good if you get the name match, so the visitors to find you again.
We always recommend our readers to grab the .COM domain without using the weird spelling on the domain name.
You’ll surely feel some difficulties in this step. But you need to draw a deadline and choose a name for your website or domain.
- Make sure that your website is not having a similar name to other websites.
- Often brand name or business name is used in the website name.
In my case, Saran is my name and Saro is my nickname. So I wanted to promote my business via my name as a brand. That’s why I purchased a domain name as SaranSaro.com in 2013.
If you want to start an online business about mobile phone related then you may search for the website name as saranmobiles.com and so on.
You can choose your favorite domain name here.
3. Web Hosting
Web-hosting or website hosting is a company which has its own storage servers where the websites are hosted. When you register a hosting account, you’ll get space for your website. Web-hosting is one of the must needed things to start a website.
So Web-hosting is the place where your website’s data like text, image and videos will be stored on the internet.
Visitors anywhere from the world can easily access your website when your website has a hosting account created.
There are 3 popular hosting types to register with:
1. Shared hosting – This is the cheapest hosting plan offered by all the web host providers. Your website place will be shared with at least 200 or more website owners.
2. VPS hosting – This is also kind of shared hosting but you have an option to increase the resources. You can have more resources like memory, disk space, bandwidth based on the amount you pay to your host provider. You have some small control on your hosting to improve the website performance. You need to spend more than a shared hosting plan.
3. Dedicated hosting – Your website will have a separate place on the hosting server. Most of the large companies and large online business owners who have vast traffic will choose this plan. You’ve complete control in a dedicated hosting plan. Here you’re not going to share anything to others. Like you’re the building owner and need to pay more here.
There are many popular hosting companies offering hosting support. From my experience, Bluehost is the best hosting company where you can get 24X7 support.
4. Website Logo Design
It’s good to see that you’ve chosen your business name or website name and hosting plan.
Now, it’s the time to design a logo for your website or business. Logo is like an ad tool which helps to brand and promote your website or business.
Logo is a visual mode of your business or brand. People easily recognize your and your online business via your logo.
There are many freelancers available on the best freelancing sites to create a logo. Graphic designers or logo designers help you to create your business logo to promote your business brand.
Your business logo is not used only on the business website header. Logos can be used on the printed materials, business cards, sign boards, promotional materials and stationary as well.
Also Read: How to start a business?
5. Website Design
Every website you see on the web has its own style and appearance which you can remember when you come back to the website. Making your website appearance good is the one of the primary requirements to create a website.
Web design is based on the theme you select for your website. Theme for website is very important for any website you create. There are many popular theme creators who help the blog owners by offering themes for low-cost.
But you do not need to pay for themes if you register your host with Bluehost. Because, Bluehost offers many eye-catching themes to its members for completely free of cost.
If you want to attract more visitors to your website, the website style and look must be more attractive. A website theme is a deciding factor of looks and appearance of any website.
So, it’s clear that a website theme will determine a website’s design and looks. Generally, a website theme includes:
- The font size and type of the fonts of any website or webpage.
- The color schemes and good appearance of a website.
6. Favicon
You might have seen in most of the website, a small image on the tab top of the browser on any website. This is called favicon.
Favicon is a very small image (16X16 pixel) or icon. It’s like a brand of your website. Favicon helps the visitors to locate your page on the browser easily.
We can say that Favicon is a visual reminder when people have opened many websites in their browser.
7. Email Address
You must have an email address when your website is up and running. Your website visitors will contact your through email.
There are two types of email address for your visitors to contact you.
1. Domain email – You’ll get a free domain email ids when you register your hosting account. In my case, my email id would be saran@saransaro.com.
When people see your email id, they’ll have more trust if your email id belongs to your domain name.
2. Public Email – Or you can use free web-based email programs like gmail.com or yahoo.com.
8. Text Content
As a new blogger, you may feel this is the most difficult job to write content for your website if you don’t have domain knowledge.
Choosing a niche blog is the best way to avoid content creation problems. If you have chosen a website to write content where you have sound knowledge then you no need to worry about that.
However, you want to write content where you don’t have knowledge, still you can get the job done by hiring freelance writers for your website.
If your blog’s business goal is to sell the products, you can hire professional writers to help you out. There are many experienced professional website copywriters available to help develop your online business.
So, if you think your writing is not your strength then do not waste your time to write content. Instead you may contact the freelance writing sites to hire the professional writers for your website.
However you want to write content for your website yourself, you can visit below websites to get some writing experience.
- Copyblogger
- Copyhackers
9. Images for your Website
Images are the key factor for any website. These do not only give a good look to the websites. A good image equals 10,000 words or texts.
Also images are the best tool to show the people or your website visitors about your product appearance.
The primary reason to use images in your website is to increase the numbers of times the post or page is viewed.
Skyword content marketing researchers say that 94% blog views increase when the website uses appropriate images.
If the websites are related with news and political stories will get more boost in the views when they use the corresponding images instead of content.
Adding between the paragraphs will make your website or post look great.
Another important reason to use images on your website is, your site will get optimized in the search engines. Using “Alt tags” and titles in the website images help to rank higher in the SERPs.
Having too many images in a single post or page may have a negative impact. Experts suggest that having an image for every 360 words is good enough.
10. SSL (Security Socket Layer)
SSL is like a backbone of your website which helps to secure the sensitive information of your website. As your website travels around the world’s computer network, so you need to secure your website with SSL.
Doesn’t matter, your website deals with the sensitive information or not; your website must have an SSL certificate installed. SSL is one of the most important and bais requirements to create a website.
SSL certificate provides security to your website and the user’s personal information as well. Nowadays, most of the websites are dealing with credit cards and more sensitive information. So there are many possibilities to steal confidential information.
Having SSL installed on your website will help to get rid of this issue. Digital technologies helped everyone to know the latest and updated information in the digital world. Even website visitors know that browsing the website which is not having SSL installed is not safe.
11. XML Sitemap
All new bloggers have a question in their mind: what is an XML sitemap and why should a website have this?
Simply saying XML sitemap is like a road map of your website or blog that leads search engines like Google to all your important posts and pages.
The XML sitemap is very essential for SEO. XML sitemap allows Google to find your website pages quickly.
So if you want Google and all other search engines to crawl all pages of your website, then you must have an XML sitemap for your website.
Most of the time, posts were published without any internal linking. If so, it’s very difficult for the search engines to find your website. But having an XML sitemap will help to Google with the list of your website’s posts and pages to crawl the same.
XML sitemap also helps search engines to understand your website’s structure.
12. Website Security & Website Firewall
Website hacking and malware infection happen now and then to all websites. These are happening by “bots“. Having website security and website firewall will take care of your website.
If your website has security and firewall installed, then the security firewall will monitor your website. Web security and firewall application will monitor your website for 24 hours in a day and filter the traffic from and to your website.
Website firewall will allow the safe traffic and will block the bad or hacking related things to your website.
Security team will continuously update their anti-virus program and patches to secure the websites. Having updated virus definitions files and threat policies is good to protect the websites.
Website Application Firewall (WAF) is the gate of lock of your website. It never allows any suspicious login or attempt to your website.
If your website has effective web-application firewall protection, then you will have peace of mind. You can spend more time to promote your business.
13. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
Just setting up your website is not enough or optimized for phones and tables. There are design works to be done to make your website mobile friendly.
There are few important reasons to have your website mobile-friendly.
1. Google always prioritizes mobile-friendly websites.
2. Most people in the world use smartphones as their sixth finger.
3. Mobile-friendly websites always help to build credibility with your customers.
4. Able to reach more consumers faster.
5. You can make more subscribers using a mobile-friendly blog or site.
6. Google recommends having a mobile-friendly website for SEO.
7. Having a mobile-friendly website looks great and performs well in any other devices and modes.
8. Your online business will be modern, reputation and relevant when your site is mobile friendly.
Most of the websites aren’t mobile-friendly and will go off from the search engines soon. If your website is not seen by the search engines then you will not succeed in your business. There are many apps for money available to check the mobile friendliness.
Create Mobile-Friendly Content
You might have seen the importance to have a mobile-friendly website for your business online. You can use some simple ways to organize, format and enhance your content to look great on mobile devices. Once your website looks great on the smartphone, users get solid and good experience using your website.
How to create mobile-friendly content?
1. Limit Pop-Ups or Eliminate Pop Ups
2. Use % Width
3. Make your Website as Mobile Responsive
4. Avoid more Sidebars
5. Think about Future Features
6. Redesign often / Be updated.
14. Link your Website with Social Media Networks
Creating a website is not getting to the end once your website is alive. A perfect website should be visible anywhere on the internet.
Social media is an ideal method to promote your website or bring more visitors to your site. Social media networks are the important roles to develop your business or personal website.
Make sure that your website is built with responsive design to support all types of social media networks.
Top Reasons to Have Social Media Links to Your Website
1. Easy to communicate with others.
2. Help to create a distinct presence online.
3. Opportunities to add more keywords to your website.
4. You can start social media marketing easily.
5. You can easily capture a niche target audience.
15. Google Analytics for your Website
Now your website is up and running. However, it’s very essential to understand and know how your website works on the web.
Google Analytics is great free tools which tracks and sends your reports and your website traffic. This is where you can easily analyze your website performance and look for website optimization.
Google Analytics is an awesome tool which gives you valuable insights to take your website (business) to the profit and success path.
Top Reasons to Use Google Analytics in your Website:
1. Google Analytics is 100% Free
The Google analytics tool is free and you can use this wonderful optimization and reporting tool to any online business. This tool supports any size of the websites.
You can register free with Google analytics and add your website with it. Once your website is properly added with Google Analytics, you can easily extract your website data and optimize accordingly.
2. Collects the Data Automatically
The best part of Google Analytics is, it will collect your website data automatically. Once you’ve set up your website with Google Analytics, you’ll get a piece of code from Google Analytics and you need to paste this analytics code on your website.
It means, you’ve authenticated to get the data and see the website traffic. Now you’re good to go to check the data in terms of types of audience, Geo location, conversion rate, age, gender, page, post and more details.
3. Google Analytics with Third Party Tools
Another advantage of Google Analytics is, you can easily integrate with any kind third-party tools. The popular platform integrate well with Google Analytics are,
4. Find Top Marketing Campaigns
If you’re running an online advertisement to promote your website products or online store, you can easily find the best marketing campaigns using Google Analytics.
Using Google Analytics advanced segments and features; you can specifically extract the data to boost your ad campaigns.
5. Determine Best Visitors Location Wise
Google Analytics differentiate the factors based on the location wise also. So if a business owner likes to target a specific location, you can easily find the location based visitors.
You can apply local SEO strategies to attract local visitors or location-based visitors.
If you tab to Google Analytics > Audience > Geo , you will get complete data based on the country or city.
Conclusion
We have listed the basic requirements to create a website in detail.
These are the important things needed to start a website effectively. I would strongly suggest you follow these steps to create a website.
Once your website is up and ready with all the checklists we discussed, you need to focus on the SEO part. Find my ways to promote your website using the latest SEO strategies to get rank on the Google search (SERPs).
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