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6 Handy Tips To Create The Best Website For Your Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Website for Business|6 Handy Tips To Create The Best Website For Your BusinessA robust website is vital for the success of any small business of any industry, whether you run an ecommerce business, freelancing, or a traditional brick-to-mortar company. It takes substantial effort to develop a unique and engaging business website that will help your business reach a wider audience, increase revenue, and experience growth. But, where do you start from? Here are some effective tips to help your small business website give you all the benefits of a business website.

1. Create an outstanding display for your business description

When your potential customers visit your business website, it’s critical to let them know who you are and what you do immediately to spark up and retain their interest. Make sure your main homepage banner (sometimes called a “hero picture”) and succeeding banners visually represent your services. You should also include an introduction text snippet that conveys who you are and what you do. Ensure that your “About Us” page is easy to read and in both your main and footer navigation menus so that visitors may click them and learn more about your company.

2. Use a content management system

A content management system (CMS) is software that lets you produce and manage digital material- allowing you to edit, publish, and create content. You won’t need any technical skills to use a solid CMS to help you maintain your website. You will want to use a CMS that is tailored to your particular requirements. You can use several systems to meet different purposes, including user-friendliness, extensibility, and cost. A widely used CMS is WordPress.

WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system. It offers a large active support community and numerous useful plugins (read more about the Best WordPress security plugins) for extending the functionality and security of your website. A WordPress developer can create a plugin for you if you don’t find one that suits your website needs. Additionally, WordPress is also free and straightforward to set up. The popularity of this software makes it a pleasure to work with developers as many are experienced in using it.

However, in using CMS, you should pay attention to issues of security. Seasoned cybercriminals know the flaws in these softwares and can easily use that as a point to attack your website. Therefore, it is vital to conduct ample research and read through reviews before using a CMS. You should implement security measures and update them regularly.

3. Use a secure and dependable website hosting

A website hosting provider is a business or venture that provides the technical assistance and services needed to help companies create websites and allow their targeted audience to access these websites. When users put in your website address, they are sent to the website you have stored on your server since you have linked your name to your hosting account. Depending on the technology and support you choose, hosting services might cost anywhere from $2 to $100+ each month. You can purchase a “shared server” hosting package for as little as $2 per month, but this is usually not what you want. This option involves sharing a server and its resources with other users, which can slow down the speed of your website. If one of the other websites on your shared server is hacked, yours is likely to be as well. In the case where you have an issue, be sure to contact your hosting service provider immediately. The longer the problem persists, the more adverse effects it would have on your website and business.

It would be best if you also examined the server’s security. You’ll need Secure File Transfer Protocol access to connect to your server (SFTP). Backups of your server’s contents should be taken daily. Installing SSL certificates should be straightforward, using a few clicks to process. Make sure the hosting business maintains security regularly. Ideally, your hosting business should have a public security process that you can view to determine how they maintain the security of their servers.

4. Pick a good ecommerce platform if you want to sell products

You’ll need the right technologies if you wish to sell products or services through your website. If you aren’t already doing so, you should think about it because e-commerce can help you grow your business revenues. You’ll need to choose the correct platform if you want your clients to conduct financial transactions with you online.

5. Create quality content

Search engines value both the amount and reliability of the information, so make a plan to publish high-quality articles or blog posts on your site and on external sites that connect to your site. If you want to rank well in search engine results and entice people to return to your site, you must update it as often as possible with new and relevant content. Testimonials, in addition to static page content and articles, are a great sort of content to provide on your website.

6. Optimize your business website for search engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques you use on your website to guarantee that search engines correctly index and rank it and then display it to users. When a search engine “crawls” your website, it competes with other websites with similar material. The higher your site’s design and content rank on search engine result pages, the better. The following are the main components of SEO: Research and implementation of keywords, having an SSL certificate installed, and being secure; SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is a standard security protocol that protects the privacy of data transmitted between web servers and browsers.

A mobile-friendly website, the existence of high-quality backlinks (links to your site from other websites with similar content), and a large number of positive online reviews are essential. To keep visitors clicking and reading, add internal connections across your site and link the business’s social media accounts to the website.

With these simple tips, you should create an excellent website and significant growth in your business.

Web Hosting Options for your Website

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Web Hosting Options|Web Hosting Options for Your WebsiteOwning a website is the best way to stay visible in the digital world and a pre-requisite for businesses which intend to leverage the power of the internet and expand their reach. For individuals, a website can be a way to gain extra income or keep in touch with one’s followers.

There are different types of websites, classified according to functionality and content – each serving a unique purpose. They include blogging websites, community portals, eCommerce websites, brochures, social media sites, crowdfunding sites, and personal websites.

A personal website is a great way to share your knowledge, experience and expertise with the world. From food blogging, travel blogging, and book reviews to sharing pictures of events with friends, a personal website provides you with the means to share what you love online at little cost.

Creating and hosting a website may prove difficult after the need for a website has been identified. With open-source content management tools like WordPress, you can model a good website without much difficulty. Obtaining a domain name using domain name NZ seller Discount Domains and hosting options must be considered before you can share your desired content with the rest of the world.

There are many web hosting options available, each with its costs and payment plans. The right hosting platform depends heavily on the kind of website you want to host. Ensure you keep your eyes wide open while searching for the company that best fits what you are looking for. Their plans not only have different prices and memberships but also their payment methods differ. There are month-to-month hosting plans, bi-annuals, and annuals. With all this information at hand, you will hit the nail when hiring the best hosting service.

If you are looking for a suitable host for your personal website, here are your best web-hosting options

Hostinger

Hostinger’s single web hosting package is ideal for personal websites. At just $2.15, Hostinger offers a complete package for a basic website. Hostinger has other packages which make it suitable for other types of websites too, but the low cost of its single package makes it personal-website-friendly.

It offers 99.9% guaranteed uptime and 24/7 online support which keeps your site online and helps you resolve any issues you may encounter. It is user-friendly, optimised for the best WordPress performance, has an easy SEO-optimised website builder, and gives you every resource to set your own rules.

TMD Hosting

TMD prides itself on being one of the few hosting platforms which provide a Linux-shared, cutting edge technology, and fully managed hosting for its subscribers at a low price. Its least package, the shared hosting, comes at $2.95 per month and has the same features as the premium versions of most web hosting platforms.

Thanks to its cutting-edge tech and many data centres all around the world, websites hosted under them work seamlessly, and at optimum speed. TMD Hosting also provides daily backups, regular updates and 24/7 traffic and content monitoring.

HostGator

With more than 8 million subscriptions, HostGator is one of the leading hosting platforms in the world. For as low as $3.13 dollars per month, you get a free website builder, page transfer at zero cost, free marketing plan, and a 45-day money-back guarantee.

For personal websites, HostGator’s Baby Plan provides scalable tools that grow with the site, unlimited domains, unlimited emails, and 24/7 support. HostGator is the ideal hosting platform for personal websites, as its tools make building and managing the website very easy. You also have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and more than enough resources in their knowledge base for every problem you may encounter.

SiteGround

SiteGround may not be among the cheapest web-hosting platforms, but it offers you a chance to enjoy premium features in even the most basic of their packages. Its basic package, StartUp, comes at $3.95 per month and its other two packages, GrowBig and GoGeek, cost $5.95 and $11.95 respectively. If you do not expect more than 10,000 visits monthly, then the StartUp plan is best for your personal website.

While it does not have all the great features other platforms offer, its fewer features make it faster and more effective than others. SiteGround provides daily backups even for shared packages – which is not common with all other web-hosting platforms. The platform offers one of the best protection options with its multiple layers of security, which is what helped the site itself survive a 2011 WordPress hack.

DreamHost

Depending on your needs, DreamHost has two hostings – shared hosting, and WordPress. To ensure 100% guaranteed uptime, the platform scales up its bandwidth from time to time – a very uncommon practice. Its shared hosting features unlimited domain names and websites with just one account, for as low as $2.59 per month.

DreamHost, besides hosting your personal website, also offers many tools that will make managing the site easy for you. This includes a page builder at $4.95 a month – Remixer – which aids you in designing your website. The platform is very easy to use, very reliable and provides 24/7 support.

Blue Host

Blue Host is one of the best hosting platforms for websites designed using WordPress. With more than 2 million subscribers, the platform is very popular and safe. For as low as $2.95 you get a basic website package, with a free SSL certificate, 24/7 support, and 30-day money-back guarantee.

Thanks to its alliance with WordPress, Blue Host offers a lot of great features for sites built with WordPress. The site is reportedly slow for basic packages due to the limited resources shared by its 2 million subscribers.

However, its premium package promises improved performance.

iPage

iPage offers a lot of awesome features at an introductory offer of $1.99 and a low renewal amount monthly. It also comes with a free easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder for better website efficiency.

With iPage, you also get free ad credits for your marketing campaign, free email addresses, unlimited disk space, unlimited MySQL databases, enhanced security suite, scalable bandwidth and you can host unlimited domains – all in one cheap package. You can also track your website’s performance with the analytics tool that comes with the hosting package.

Cloudways

Unlike most web-hosting companies, Cloudways offers a fully managed cloud hosting for all kinds of websites on a pay-as-you-go basis. This means you can select the feature or service you need and pay for that only. The account comes with a CloudwaysBot assistant that keeps users updated on the health of their websites.

Being a cloud hosting platform, Cloudways provides a better alternative to VPS and gives you a full package for your website. It also offers a free trial and a free migration from the previous host. It is easy for clients who are not tech-savvy to operate as it takes away technical complexities so users can focus on growing their website.

InMotion Hosting

InMotion has an optimised WordPress option for personal websites that will be run on WordPress. The option has the CMS already pre-installed in order to get you live as quickly as possible. Its drag and drop builder and pre-installed themes are made available to first-time users to enable the easy building of the website and navigation.

Inmotion’s shared Business plan, just like the WordPress plan, also comes with unlimited disk space, unlimited emails, ultra-fast performance, free data backups and malware protection. The account comes with a free SSL certificate, auto-updates on web apps, a custom firewall, and DDoS protection.

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website? A Guide on Web Design Prices

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |web design prices |How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website? A Guide on Web Design PricesDespite the fact that we’re all living in a digital world these days, there are still a lot of small businesses out there operating without a website.

In fact, studies have shown that about 50% of small businesses don’t have a website set up at the moment. This is likely having an impact on many of these businesses’ bottom lines by affecting their ability to generate income month in and month out.

One of the reasons why some business owners choose not to invest in a website for their company is because of their perceived web design prices. They’re often under the impression that a website is going to cost too much money to create.

But this couldn’t be further from the truth. If you own a small business, you can get a website up and running without breaking the bank.

Before you take this leap, though, find out some of the factors that will impact how much a website will cost you. It’ll allow you to budget money wisely for creating a website.

Here are some of the things that can lead to web design prices going up or down.

What Is Your Website’s Domain Name Going to Be?

Before you can begin building a website for your business, you’re going to need to invest in a domain name for it. More often than not, your domain name is going to be your business name with “.com” on the end of it.

If this domain name is readily available, it shouldn’t cost you much money at all to snatch it up for your website. But there is a chance that someone might already own the rights to the domain name that you want.

If this turns out to be the case, you can:

  • Come up with a different domain name other than the one that you had in mind
  • Consider paying whoever owns the domain name that you want for the rights to it

Often times, business owners will go with the first option to avoid spending a small fortune on a domain name. But if you really want a domain name, you can make whoever owns it an offer.
Doing this will cost you more than you anticipated to spend. But it’ll be well worth it if you think that the domain name is going to help drive more traffic to your site.

Who Is Going to Host Your Website?

Buying the domain name that you want for your website is going to be the first expense you incur when creating a site for your business. Finding a website hosting service is going to be the expense that comes right behind it.

You’ll need a reliable website hosting service on your side to help you with all your hosting needs when you’re getting a site off the ground. They should have a great reputation for helping host small business sites.

You might have to pay a little extra to work with one of the best website hosting services in the business. But it’ll be worth it once you see the services that they’re able to extend to you while you’re in the process of setting your site up and updating it over time.

Is Your Website Going to Get a Custom Look?

Once you have a domain name for your website and a website hosting service on your side, it’ll be time to get down to business. You’ll be ready to start putting together plans for your actual site.

To do this, you’ll have the option of either:

  • Using a website template to create your site
  • Hiring a web designer to create a custom site from scratch

The first option is hands down, the better option for anyone on a tight budget. You’ll keep your web design prices low by going with a website template.

But the second one is great for those businesses that want to make their websites stand out. You can hire a website development company to bring each and every idea that you have for your site to life.

Who Is Going to Create Your Website?

If you decide that you’re going to hire a website development company to work on a custom site for you, the specific company you hire will affect your web design prices.

If you choose to hire a well-established company with a lot of web design experience, they’re going to charge you more than someone who just started designing websites last week. Consider a bunch of different options when looking for the right website development company.

The company that you bring on board to work on your website should have:

  • Plenty of experience in the website development industry
  • A long list of web design services
  • Lots of examples of sites they’ve developed in the past
  • Fair and affordable prices on the services they offer

It’s not a bad idea to call a handful of website development companies to get quotes for their services. It’ll help you keep your web design prices as low as you can.

How Many Different Pages Are Going to Be on Your Website?

There are some websites out there that have little more than a homepage and maybe an “About Us” page and a “Contact” page. These basic sites are easy to design and won’t cost much money to create.

But many times, businesses need their websites to have more than just those pages. They also need product pages, service pages, blog pages, and more set up. They want to be able to jampack their sites with all the necessary information.

If your website is going to need more than a few pages on it, it’s going to send your web design prices soaring. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t still create those pages. But you should be mindful of the fact that it’s going to impact the final cost of your site.

Is Your Website Going to Have Any Special Features?

With almost 1.8 billion websites on the internet today, you’re going to want to find ways to make your site stand out. That might mean adding a bunch of special features to your site to make it unique.

Some businesses are incorporating things like video into the mix on their websites these days. They’re finding that they’re able to get more traction with customers this way.

Other businesses are adding things like chatbots to their sites so that customers can connect with them in a hurry without picking up the phone. This is making it easier for many businesses to form bonds with their customers.

You don’t have to invest in these kinds of special features. But it’s worth looking into some of them to see how they might improve your site, even if they cause a slight bump in your web design prices.

Will Your Website Need to Have a Store Included on It?

Are you going to sell products and/or services to your customers through your website? If that’s your plan, you’re going to need to create a store that can accept payments from them.

Doing this isn’t anywhere near as complicated as it used to be. You can have a web designer build you a special section on your site where people will be able to order products and services from you.

But this will often come at an additional cost, especially if your web development company has to beef up your site’s security so that you can start taking online orders. You’ll need to make room in your budget for this particular aspect of your site.

Who Is Going to Be in Charge of Updating Your Site?

Once you have your website up and running, updating it is going to be of the utmost importance. If you don’t take the time to update your site, it’s going to take a toll on your site’s search engine optimization and make it hard for people to find it.

If you’re even the least bit web savvy, you should be able to handle updating your site on your own. You can add new content to it every so often to show Google and the other search engines that you’re on top of maintaining it.
But if you don’t have the time, energy, or patience to update your site, that will be another additional cost you’ll have to factor in. You may need to enlist the services of a company that specializes in beefing up the SEO of websites.

Don’t Let Web Design Prices Stop You From Creating a Website

Now that you know some of the factors that affect web design prices, you might feel overwhelmed by the costs associated with setting up a site. Don’t be!

You can get a website started in no time with a small investment on your part. You can then add to it over time as you see fit to make the costs that come along with owning a website more manageable.

A website will help your company do better business from now on. By spending a little bit of money on your site, you can get a great return on your investment.

Learn how to use a website to your advantage by reading through the other articles on our blog.

Tips for Creating Successful Small Business Websites

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Websites for Small Businesses|Tips for Creating Successful Small Business WebsitesThe trick to making a great website is sound planning. This is the case for small personal sites and the websites of large businesses that see hundreds of thousands of visitors per day. Your small business’ website should be set up on the same ethos – with your visibility, find-ability, and navigability in the forefront of your mind as you develop your own corner of the world wide web.

This article features some crucial tips to help you make the most of the opportunities for small businesses brought about by hosting your own site on the global and open-access internet.

Select a Host

First thing’s first; your host will determine the success of your website by providing cheap, reliable and efficient hosting for you and your company’s website. Partnering with reliable hosts means you’re able to focus on the day-to-day of business without worrying about how your site will be appearing on the internet. Use Hosting Foundry to compare and select the hosts that’ll be best-suited to your needs.

Create a Site Map

Your site map is the blueprint of your website. It’s a kind of bird’s eye view that oversees all the pages that you will create, and how they’ll be linked together. Ordinarily, websites will have a set of the following pages, as standard:

  • A home page
  • An about page
  • A contact page
  • A products page
  • A staff/hiring page
  • A press/PR page

Of course, you might find that you require more pages or less, depending on the nature of your website. However, it’s important to remember that website visitors are used to receiving a certain set of information from the sites they browse, meaning your site will feel abnormal if it doesn’t provide this vital information. It might discourage sales if your website isn’t uniform with the high standards of business sites across the web.

Partner with Software

Possibly the most important tip to help you make the most out of your experimentation with web design and site hosting as a small business – software partnerships can truly be the difference between a successful website and an unsuccessful one. Here, you’ll be able to explore a very busy and impressive marketplace of selling solutions to benefit any business, with especially product hosting options for you to promote your goods or payment software that’ll help you process the wide variety of payments that your company will receive.

Modern Design Trends

The world of graphic design and web design is ever-changing, with innovations and creativity making older styles obsolete and boring to the web users who’re frequently browsing hundreds of different websites per week. To be eye-catching and bold, as well as reliable and trustworthy to your consumer, it’s important to strike the right balance here between striking design and ergonomic design. You’ll no doubt be helped in making design-based decisions by the individual or agency you choose to partner with when creating your site; they’ll be able to throw around ideas in a sandbox with you to see what sticks.

Creating a site can be a long journey, but it’s a vital asset in the digital age of commerce. Your small business site can benefit from the tips outlined above, in order to draw traffic and sales into its own online entity.