Website Design & Development Services

1. Establish Your Purpose

Why do you need a website? Maybe you have a new service that you want clients to use to find your business and book appointments. Perhaps you have a great product line and want to launch an online store or direct customers to your physical location. Some sites just exist to share information and ideas. Your purpose will help you in choosing the right name, web design services, and the type of site to build. This article has some great information for website purposes for small businesses, nonprofit organizations, portfolios, and more. Of course you can always ask us for some help.

2. Get Your Domain Name

Choose your domain extension like .com, .net, .org, or .ca. Some of the extensions have to do with your purpose, like .edu for educational purposes. Others are geographic like .ca for Canada. For most businesses, sticking with .com is the best choice because smartphones have a .com button making users more likely to look for those sites. Also, .com is generally the most trusted extension.

Choose your name to make it unique and brand-focused. Avoid hyphenation and double-letters if possible. Shorter is better and try to use keywords that users may search as part of the name. If you’re stuck, try using a name generator like Nameboy which can help you come up with a name.

Once you have your name in mind, you will need to purchase the name with the extension from a domain registrar. Every year you will have to pay to keep your name or someone else can purchase it. There are several places you can buy domain names (they often offer hosting and building services too):

• Bluehost—great for WordPress
• HostGator–offer free domain names when purchasing hosting
• Domain.com–no hosting, they just sell domain names
• GoDaddy–largest domain registrar in the world

Hosting services is how your site actually gets on the Internet. Your webhost will store your website on their server and ensure that the domain name is accessible to users on the Internet. There are several things to set up that are part of your DNS records, like the server address, A & AAAA records, & the CNAME among others. If you hire a company, they will look after these details for you. Otherwise, organizations like GoDaddy or HostGator offer hosting with good customer service. They have step by step guides which make it easier for a new user to set up their hosting. It all comes with financial and time cost, so choose the host that works best for your business needs. 

Are you running a site with a large database that needs to be accessible by employees and customers? In that case, having a web design company with hosting is a better choice because they can be immediately responsive to your needs. The more personalized you need the hosting and back end of your site, the more you’re better off hiring a web design company like Bold Elixir. Find out what makes us tick.

4. Design Your Website

You have many options with a wide variety of price ranges to suit your needs. Tools like Wix or Square Space offer website builders for folks to create their site. Most hosting services offer something similar and some you can get for free. Remember, that you will get what you pay for. Often the better templates and tools are only available for a higher cost.

If you would like a professional to build your site, it can cost a little more depending on the services you need. If your developer is building custom code from the ground up and managing large databases, that will increase your costs. The expertise is probably worth it for complex builds. Another advantage of professionals is that they often have licenses that are accessible to make your site more functional, faster, and more attractive. These licenses can be very expensive for a single user with a single site, but the web design agency would be able to spread the costs across several customers. Most importantly, a professional web designer focuses on the website so you don’t have to. You can focus on running your business. 

5. Optimizing for SEO and Developing Content

Having a beautiful, effective website is not worth much if you can rank on the first page on Internet searches. Once your site is built (and during the construction phase), it’s important to make sure that you have the correct keywords, metadata, and site architecture to help you move up those search rankings. It’s important to build content on your site that can be used for effective backlinks and internal links in your site.

If you are a small business, looking for a local audience, make sure to implement successful Local SEO strategies. Semrush has some great explanations of Local SEO, but it deals primarily with optimizing your site with local keywords, citations, and local link building. Using a tool like ahrefs can help you find those local trends.

Hiring an agency that specializes in Local SEO can be very beneficial. At Bold Elixir, we make small and Local SEO our priority.

Conclusion:

Obviously, this is a quick summary of how you can go about building a website. If you have any questions or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you! Just reach out and we can perform a free consultation for you.

blake@boldelixir.com