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Building your business' website from the ground up
Learn the complete end-to-end process of building a successful website for your business in our comprehensive guide
Nov 21, 2019 • 18 minute read
Updated on Jan 15, 2020 by Closed User
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Not sure how to create a website for your business? We'll show you how
The business world has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. In today's business world it's almost impossible to make any sales without a business website.
But how do you build a website from the ground up? In this multi-part series we'll guide you through the complete end-to-end process of building a successful website for your business, from writing up an action plan to securing your very first customer.
This is part 1 of our ultimate guide to building a website series. To navigate to any of the other chapters refer to the table of contents below:
Planning your website build
This is the point most business owners screw up. They jump right into website design mockups without formulating an action plan first.
To ensure the entire project runs smoothly, you need to start with at least a basic plan.
All of the elements of website construction are covered by answering the following 3 questions:
1. What will the website say?
What type of questions will your visitors want answered?
What is your value proposition?
2. How will the website look?
What type of graphics or videos do you need?
What will your color scheme be?
3. How will your website get customers?
Will you be paying for traffic (search engine marketing), or getting free traffic (search engine optimisation) or both?
You should start by answering these questions as simply as possible to get your ideas out of your mind and onto paper. Not only will this help you estimate the timeframe of the project, but it'll also uncover any difficult tasks you should outsource to others.
Setting up your building blocks
There are 3 essential building blocks you'll need in place to make the creation of your website possible. Let's go over each of them.
1. Domain name
This is your web address. For example, "www.tesla.com." You can see if your domain name is available by searching for it in a free online tool.
If you want to secure your ideal domain name before anyone else does, name.com is a great choice. Name.com gives you the option of purchasing the domain name alone.
If you know which platform you'll be using, you can use their dedicated domain name search tool and purchase your domain when you sign up to their platform.
For example, if you plan to build your website on Squarespace , you can search for your prospective domain name from their dedicated search tool and then purchase it when you subscribe to their service:
If you're confused about all the different platform options, don't worry. We'll discuss them in detail shortly.
With your domain name purchased, the next step is to add it to a hosting plan.
2. Website hosting
A website host provides the technology and storage required to make your website visible on the internet. Any images and content you upload onto your website will be stored with your host and not on your computer.
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There are several hosting options available. As mentioned, some of them also offer domain name registration as well as website builder tools in their hosting packages:
3. Choose a website platform
With your domain name and hosting purchased, the next step is to choose a platform to build your site on.
If you purchase a domain before choosing a platform, you can transfer it to your chosen platform in just a few steps. Every web platform provides unique instructions for doing this.
Your choice of platform depends on how complex your business website needs to be, and also your web development capabilities.
If you have little to no web development experience, Squarespace and Wix are the simplest site builders to use, and because they also offer web hosting, you could have a website built and running online in minutes.
These web platforms allow you to create a website with a drag-and-drop builder.
If you don't have the time to build a website from a blank canvas, you can choose a template and customize it to your liking
If you're really short on time, Wix offers Artificial Design Intelligence, or Wix ADI, which will autonomously build a custom website for you based on your answers to a few questions.
Because these builders allow you to publish a fully functioning website in a short amount of time, they're a great option for quickly launching a basic ecommerce store before an upcoming sales season.
The caveat of these drag and drop builders is that they're not designed for complex websites. So if your business website requirements are beyond just the static display of information, you're better off using a more scalable platform like WordPress.
Have a look at the video below for a step-by-step tutorial on how to build a website with Wix:
If you want to build an ecommerce website with Wix, follow this tutorial:
Here's a step-by-step tutorial on how to build a website with Squarespace:
Here's a tutorial for building an ecommerce website on Squarespace:
Building a website with WordPress
If you have complex website feature requirements, you should build it with WordPress.
Wordpress is an incredibly popular platform choice. In fact, about 26% of websites on the internet are built on WordPress.
Because of this popularity, some hosting providers offer specific Wordpress hosting plans that are run on dedicated WordPress servers for optimum performance.
These hosting plans come with WordPress pre-installed, so you can instantly start using the platform right after signing up.
If you purchase web hosting separately, you'll need to install Wordpress manually (don't worry it's free).
The great thing about WordPress is that it's adaptable to a broad range of skill sets, so the platform can be used by both novice website builders and seasoned developers.
The tutorial below shows how to transform WordPress into a drag-and-drop website builder for those who don't know how to code.
Beginners can also build an ecommerce store with WordPress:
But if WordPress needs to be actively customized into a drag-and-drop builder, why would you choose it over dedicated drag-and-drop builders like Wix and Squarespace?
By building your website on WordPress, you'll always have the option of scaling the complexity of your website in the future.
Because WordPress is open source, its coding structure can be completely modified. So if you ever want to implement a particularly complex feature, simply hire a web developer and they'll personalize your WordPress website accordingly.
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Which bring us to our next point: How do you decide when you need to hire a web developer?
The best way of answering this is with some examples.
The websites examples below are WordPress websites created by web developers. If any of the functions or visuals mirror what you have in mind for your website, you'll need to hire a web developer to create it for you.
Click on the images to explore each website in a new tab:
Rafal Boja
Middle Child
Sea Harvest
Kobu
Invictus Games 2018
Keep in mind that you don't need to only outsource complex projects to web developers. If you just don't have the time to build your website, even with a drag-and-drop builder, you could completely outsource it to a web developer and focus on other, more important tasks.
Alternative to WordPress
Some business owners don't need a fancy website, just one that can publish blogs. If you find yourself in this category, the blogging platform Ghost is perfect for you.
Because Ghost is solely focused on blogging, the menu is built around blog creation. There's no clutter. Just a clean, easy-to-navigate interface.
Ghost's markdown editor streamlines blog editing. Editing options become visible as you select different sections of the blog, so there's no need to continuously navigate to the main menu.
The Duckduckgo blog was created with ghost. Click on the image below to see how it works.
Ghost is open source, and the coding is customizable, but there are limitations, so advanced websites are best created with Wordpress.
But in saying that, if you need a complex website but you prefer Ghost's blogging interface, you could install Ghost on a subdomain, separate to your main website.
That way all of your bloggers and content creators will only need to log into this sub domain, leaving your main website untouched. This will remove the possibility of accidental design modifications and greatly minimize the chances of a security breach.
Mozilla does hosts their Ghost blog on a subdomain. As you can see, their main website domain is Mozilla.org:
But their blog is installed on the subdomain blog.mozvr.com
Setting up a staging site
When modifying your website or experimenting with new features, you shouldn't be working on your live website. If something goes wrong, your website could break which will cut off all your traffic while you scramble to get it up and running again.
Instead, you should always work on a duplicate version of your website set up in a separate staging environment. Any changes you make in this staging environment will not effect your live site, and when you're ready, you can push this staging website over to the live environment without interrupting your internet presence.
This sounds complicated but thanks to plugins, it's super easy.
You will install and activate the plugin WP Staging . Another great option is Duplicator .
It is important to note that the free version of WP staging will only push your website over to a staging environment but it will not then push any changes you make back into the live environment. If you want this option you will need to upgrade to a paid subscription. For more details, refer to their pricing packages .
If you're not in a financial position to upgrade, you can just use this staging environment to test any changes you wish to make, and if nothing breaks, apply them to the live site.
When the WP Staging plugin is activated, select it in the left hand menu of your Wordpress Dashboard and then click "new staging site."
Source: wpcrafter.com
Next, give your staging website a name. You can delete it after you've finished testing in this environment and keep creating new staging sites every time you need them. So maybe name it as the day and time you created it.
Don't worry about the below entities, DB tables, Files, login options, all of