If you’re a new business and/or do not currently have a website then you will need the following services:
- A domain name
- An email account
- Website hosting
- A website design
- Copywriting
- WordPress (or another CMS) development
- Search engine optimisation (SEO)
1. Domain name e.g. yourbusinessname.co.uk
A domain name is roughly £5-10 a year (and can often be found for cheaper) 123-reg is a decent option. I’d recommend that you buy a .co.uk or a .com.
Don’t try and buy something quirky because it’s on offer e.g. .gb.com or .ly because normal people get confused by them and sometimes Google doesn’t rate them as highly.
After you’ve bought your domain make sure you write your username/password somewhere – you will need to give these log-in credentials to your web developer so they can set-up your email and point your new domain name at your new website.
2. Email account
Emailing business contacts via a personal email account can look unprofessional. An email from yourname@yourbusinessname.co.uk looks much better and it isn’t expensive to set-up.
An email account may come free with your hosting account but I recommend running your email through Google Apps, which is free but there would be admin fee for setting this up.
Here is a great guide on setting up Google Apps with 123-reg in case you fancy having a go yourself and saving yourself a few quid.
3.Website hosting
Website hosting is roughly around £10 per month with fasthosts being a reasonable choice for a new business. Cheap and cheerful.
As you become more established you may find the above company to not be as reliable (that is my personal opinion) but for a new website with limited footfall it is a reasonable solution.
If you want to be able to update your website yourself (see point 6) then you’ll need a web hosting package that includes the following services:
- MySQL database
- PHP
Fasthosts’ Business Standard (linux) hosting package will suit your needs best this way you’ll be able to run the WordPress software (more on that in point 6 below)
4. Website design
As you are a new business, you may wish to save costs by using what’s known as a theme.
Many websites, for instance, this website: http://one69a.com/ are based on the default WordPress theme. By starting off like this and just customising colours and imagery you can save a lot of money.
It is also worth noting that in the early days, your brand may not be fully developed and so commissioning a bespoke design at too an early stage may leave you with a design concept that doesn’t match your business 6-12 months later.
Once you are more established and your new business is making money you should definitely invest in a bespoke design that matches your requirements more than a default theme can.
5. Copywriting
You’ll need to know what you want written on your website – how many pages and what copy should be on each of those pages? Would you be supplying this copy or would you expect the web developer to write it for you?
For the most basic website you’ll need copy for the following pages
- Homepage
- About us page
- Services page (and copy for each individual service you offer)
- Contact details page
6. Website development
WordPress is probably the best solution for your needs. It’s very easy to use and with certain ‘plugins’ like, WordPress SEO, make it much easier to basic perform SEO on your website.
This website runs on WordPress, it makes it very easy for me to add new pages and arrange them.
7. Search engine optimisation (SEO)
In terms of SEO, it’s important you realise it is a very difficult and lengthy process. No-one can guarantee you any position for any particular keyword. You have two parts to play with SEO.
- Write copy that is ‘salesy’ enough for humans to want to hire you but also has the relevant keywords/phrase that you want people to find you with via google.
- Get links from relevant websites
Point 2 is the hard bit and is an ongoing process which can be quite organic but if you want you to really put some effort into it then you need a specialised person to do it for you – and a reasonable budget.
The important thing is to get your website up and running; let’s worry about SEO a little later down the line. Don’t get me wrong, it is important, it’s possibly the most important part but in the early stages taking this slowly is your best approach.
It is important that your website appears in Google, Bing and Yahoo (preferably on the first page and even more preferably in top 5 results) when someone searches for your business name and if your website is constructed in the correct way that should happen naturally.
