In this digital era, we have realized that advertising our business in the yellow pages and by word-of-mouth no longer brings in businesses as they used to in the past, hence it has become imperative to secure a personalized space online to reach out to our prospective clients.
The need for a website cannot be overemphasized. A website gives information about you, the services you offer, projects your brand better by adding credibility to it and also gives an insight to prospective clients on what to expect when doing business with you.
Having said that, let’s look at the 5 important steps to consider to get your website fully operational.
Define your Purpose
Just like any other task, you must ask yourself, why do i need a website, what do i need to achieve from setting up one, would this website be a medium to reach out to potential clients globally, would it be a channel for communication to prospective clients and an inspiration to fellow Tech Pundits. Would there be a Blog section to further engage the community as part of your social media strategy? These questions need to be answered so an adequate website structure can be designed and developed accordingly.
Secure a Domain
A domain is the address where internet users can follow to access your website. For example, if you look at the URL displayed in the address bar of this browser, you’ll see https:// i the address bar. The second part shows fortespyproductions.com. This second part is the domain name. The domain name is further divided into two parts. The part on the right is the Top Level Domain (or TLD). In this case, it’s “.com” but there are others like .net, .org. .uk, .de etc. The part on the left is referred to as the Second Level Domain. This can be any name related to you or your company. Once you come up with a suitable name, you’ll need to have it registered with a domain registrar. Here we use Namecheap and wh have been using them for over 8 years without any issues.
Subscribe to a hosting Plan
Hosting refers to a process whereby your website and all it’s related files are stored in a remote location with adequate security and made available to your site visitors. It’s like building a house (website). Before you build your residential house or office comples (website), you need to acquire a land (Hosting server). it’s on this land that you’ll build your house for people to visit. Some domain registrars also offer web hosting services e.g Godaddy, Namecheap, Bluehost etc.
Before you choose a host for your website, you’ll need to put a few things into consideration
- The credibility of the hosting company.
- The required bandwidth; Site traffic varies from one website to the other for example, an eCommerce website like Jumia would require more bandwidth to perform optimally than a company website like Fortespy Productions.
- Hosting Plans; Hosting companies usually offer various packages depending on the nature of the website and it’s needs. You could subscribe to a Shared hosting plan whereby multiple websites share the same server resources or you could settle for a Dedicated Server hosting plan. In this case, your website alone sits on the server and has all the server resources allocated to that website.
- Ease of Operation; This refers to the ease with which one can install the website and manage it’s files, scripts, updates without suffering any downtime whatsoever.
- Routine Backups; It’ll be an added advantage if the hosting company can back up the website periodically so if the website breaks or malfunctions, we can easily revert to a previous version that was backed up earlier and have the website restored immediately.
- Excellent Customer Service; Some hosting companies provide customer services that run round the clock/24 hours a day. This is ideal because you may be working on your website around midnight and something goes wrong, the prompt assistance of the technical team at the back-end is invaluable.
Deployment of a reliable CMS
CMS here is an acronym that stands for Content Management System. This serves as a container that houses your website. This container usually offers additional functionality and security. There are many of such systems like Drupal, Joomla but the most common CMS which has gained worldwide acceptance is WordPress. We also have Squarespace and Wix but sadly, they don’t offer as much versatility as WordPress does.
Content Development
This is a very important stage. Knowledge is power and Information is key. Now your website is up and running, you need to attract visitors to your site and convert them to clients. One sure way to do this is to create compelling content that passes helpful information to your site visitors. This could be achieved by
- Defining you target audience/market.
- The quality of your content should be compelling enough to encourage visitors to comment, book an appointment with you or ultimately find you worthy of doing business with.
- Your content must be visually appealing.
Conclusion
In summary, the first step is to get your domain name, secure a hosting plan, build your website and constantly maintain it. If you lack the technical ability to pull this off, we at Fortespy Productions can do it perfectly for you while you focus on your business.
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