How to Host Your Business Website: First Steps

Host Your Business Website

Just like a photographer, blogger, or lawyer offering their services to the general public, a hardware store, a beauty salon, or a children’s toy store all need their own website. In today’s world, doing business without promotion in the global network is extremely difficult. But to create a successful website for a beginner is not easy. We have decided to make it a little easier for you and offer a road map that will allow you to quickly build an attractive business resource.

What is hosting?

In order for a site written on a computer by a web designer to be seen by Internet users, it is moved to a server. Hosting a website makes the files publicly available on the web. The server receives incoming requests from visitors and responds by sending the requested page to the client’s browser.

So, you need to choose a provider and a data plan. And then you have to launch the site. Don’t worry that your experience is not enough to go it alone. Serious companies, such as Hostzealot Server Hosting, offer full customer support during the transfer of a web resource and throughout all the stages of its development.

How do I launch a website?

Choose a domain name

This is the website address through which visitors will find you on the borderless web. It should be simple, short and visually comfortable, and easy to write. Believe me, a long convoluted name won’t do the site any good. By choosing a complicated name, you lose up to 10% of potential customers, just because they can not remember and correctly write the domain name.

Think about prospects. Even if you’re only selling books today, don’t reduce your domain name to Books.com. Make the address broad, and you can diversify your product range in the future without sacrificing your reputation. For example, Amazon.com – it’s sonorous, easy to remember, and not tied to a single group of consumer products. Amazon, too, originally planned to sell only books. But its managers pushed the boundaries, and they got it right.

Try to provide the name with uniqueness, otherwise, the website will be confused with others. Avoid abstract names. Of course, today everyone knows Yahoo. But to promote it, its creators have spent huge amounts of money. Your budget may not be able to take the strain.

Think about SEO. If possible, add keywords and geolocation to the URL. For example, www.ParisAdvocate.com – this domain name immediately indicates what and where the company does.

Safe and reliable hosting

Buy hosting with good technical support from a reliable provider. When a network user enters your domain name, the hosting provider will show them your site. Hosting will cost the site owner between $2 and $150 per month, depending on the plan you choose. The pricing plan is the features that the hoster provides.

Recommendations for choosing a tariff are as follows:

Although you can buy shared hosting for $2 a month, we do not recommend doing this for those who are focused on the development of the site. Shared hosting assumes the neighborhood with other clients. This negatively affects the performance of each resource. And if one of the sites on a shared server is hacked, all participants will be at risk.
An expensive dedicated server costs $100-2000. It is reliable, scalable, and productive. The provider transfers the entire physical server to the tenant without any risky neighbors. However, the price is too high and unreasonable for small businesses.
Optimal option – renting a virtual private server. The cost of the service is affordable and security is high enough. The service provides that one physical machine is divided into several virtual parts. Each of them is leased to a separate client. The potential of the virtual private server is the same as that of its dedicated counterpart. And the capabilities are determined by the plan.
Find out if your provider has 24-hour technical support. You may need it at the most unexpected moment.
If you cannot hire a professional system administrator, it is important that a simple interface such as cPanel provides access to the server.
Make sure that the provider guarantees reliable protection of the server – it is accessed via SFTP, backups are performed daily, and SSL certificates can be installed.
Find out which security protocol is accepted by your hoster. The security of your server directly depends on it.

The more detailed and thorough you are going to choose a provider, the more stable and reliable your site will be.

Marketing campaign

It’s time to announce your new site online. When placing your ads, be specific. Clearly state what you do, and what services you provide. This is important so that people who will go to the site through a link, do not feel cheated. You don’t want random traffic, a smaller number but interested users will be much more useful.

Choose a good content management system

A good content management application will help maintain the site. WordPress is a popular CMS. It has plugins that will allow you to expand the functionality of the site. Also, WordPress is free and easy to install. But WordPress is often the target of hacker attacks. Therefore, the WordPress site should always be protected from hacking.

Choose a good e-commerce platform

You need the right technology for an e-commerce site. Introducing popular e-commerce platforms:

WooCommerce turns a WordPress site into an online store. If you’re not tech-savvy, you can contact a provider who will customize WooCommerce to your needs.
The Shopify e-commerce platform allows you to create an online store with easy management of merchandise, payments, and shipping. To launch the platform, you need to link your WordPress site account to your Shopify account.

Choosing a platform should be based on ease of management and personal preferences.

Create a bright and interesting interface for the site

Your site should evoke positive emotions. In this case, you can count on the conversion rate. Some useful recommendations on how to make the right site:

beautiful design, readable fonts pleasing to the visitor’s eye;
optimization (compression) of images is necessary for fast loading;
visit the sites of successful competitors, use similar components for your website, but do not forget about exclusivity;
study your target audience to know why people will come to your site;
develop a roadmap for brand promotion;
create simple navigation on the site, so the visitor can easily find the right product;
do not overload the site with unnecessary information.

There are thousands of successful sites on the web, analyze them to see what the secret to their success is.

Optimize the site for search engines.

Make sure that search engines are indexing and ranking the pages of the site. Only then will the resource begin to compete with stores that sell similar products. Key recommendations:

Write unique tags and popular keywords.
Check site code and loading speed.
Use SSL certificate.
Make sure you have a mobile version.
Take care of quality backlinks, and relinking within the site.
Use social media for promotion.

SEO is an important process that should not stop. Organic traffic directly depends on it.

Publish quality unique content

Search algorithms pay attention to the presence and quantity of content, so keep a blog, and publish useful information. Ask for feedback from clients, and publish it – it’s not just new content, it’s a way to demonstrate the benefits of working specifically with your company.

Use webmaster tools

Monitor site traffic and performance. Dedicated tools help you get this data:

Traffic for a specific period.
Popular pages.
Page load time, conversion rate.
Bounce rate.
Average time of visit on the site.
Errors, broken links.
Requests that provide traffic.

This information will help improve SEO.

Site maintenance

For the site to be successful, it needs to be maintained: use webmaster tools, fix bugs, update software, take care of security, and back up the site.