How to Build a Great Website

1. Decide on the purpose of your website

Before you start designing your website, you need to define exactly what you need that site to do. Are you looking to sell goods and services directly to customers, or do you primarily need a convenient information source where people can learn about your business? Or both?

Get as specific as possible about what your goals are. For example, you might be hoping to:

• Sell physical or digital products or services
• Have a place where local customers can find your hours, prices, or other information about your company
• Communicate your brand’s identity and message
• Post announcements and updates
• Showcase customer reviews and testimonials
• Move leads through your sales funnel

It’s fine to have more than one goal for your website—as long as you have a strategy for achieving each one. For example, if one of your primary goals is to progress leads to purchase, how will your website accomplish that? Will you post explainer videos and product or service details so people can learn more before speaking with a sales rep? Are you planning to target top-of-funnel leads and generate the first spark of interest? Or will you have sections for both of these lead types?

The more specific you can be, the easier it will be to make decisions as you build your website.

2. Choose a custom domain

The first thing your website needs is a domain. Your domain is your home base on the internet and the signpost that allows the world to find you. Think of it as the virtual version of your store window.

Selecting your domain name

Your domain name is what people will type into their web browsers to find you. You want it to be memorable and unique while also being a logical match for your business. Don’t worry—coming up with one is easier than it sounds!

If you already have an established business name, start by finding out if that name is available as a domain. If it's already taken, check if adding location information would help. For example, if “carolsdogwash” is taken, you could try “carolsdogwashlondon" instead.

It’s okay to use an alternative if your business name is long or complex. In that case, shortening can work well—“dchlaw” for “The Law Firm of Dewey, Cheetem, and Howe,” for example. Notice that this name has the type of business—law—in the domain. That makes it easy to remember and easy for search engines to tell what type of content users can expect to see.

Picking a domain extension

When you pick your domain, you’ll also need to select an extension. If you have a for-profit business, the classic .com should generally be your first choice because people tend to type .com at the end of websites by default.

Other common domain extensions include:

• .net for tech companies
• .org for nonprofits
• .info for information-only sites
• .club for interest groups

Buying or connecting your domain

In many cases, you can purchase a domain through the same web creation platform that you'll use to design your website. If you already own a domain name, you'll just need to connect it to the site you've designed with the new provider.

3. Decide on a host

Every website needs a web hosting provider. A host is a company that sells or leases data space on its servers. That space becomes your website’s home, holding all the information for every page you build. Think of your hosting company as a property manager for the Internet.

Hosting providers offer two types of hosting:

• Shared hosting, in which multiple websites have storage space on a single server. Each site has its own section of the server, so everyone’s information stays secure.
• Dedicated hosting, in which one website has an entire server. This hosting type is often used by extremely large sites like Google and Amazon, which have thousands of pages, massive amounts of data, and lots of traffic.

As mentioned, the same tool that you use to create your website will often be able to provide hosting options, too. Some platforms give you access to free hosting—which can be a good starting point for beginners—but might limit the number of pages you can create or the amount of traffic your site can handle at once. As your website grows, you'll likely want to upgrade to a paid hosting option that offers more bandwidth, increased customization, and in-depth site analytics.

4. Choose a website builder

To stick with the real estate metaphor, when you’ve chosen an address (your domain) and bought the land (decided on a host), your next step is to build your house (the website).

Like building a physical structure, a solid framework will make your site look and perform at its best. One option is to pay a professional to build and design your site. If you choose that route, the cost to build a site for a small business could range anywhere from less than $1,000 to more than $10,000, depending on the size and complexity.

Part of that cost, in this case, is the design and coding skills necessary to structure a site. Think of that hypothetical building again. It takes a developer's expertise to create the framework for a website design from scratch, just like it takes expertise to create the framework for a house.

The difference is that when you’re building a website, you don’t necessarily have to create it from scratch. Platforms like Wix offer web design and publishing features with templates and intuitive tools that don't require a lot of technical expertise. You can just add your content and use a drag-and-drop editor to move that content to just the right spot.

5. Map out your site

Mapping out your site is incredibly important. Your site works like a family tree; the parents (your home page) are at the center, and the children (different pages) branch out from there. So, you need to know how to move site visitors from one page to another.

Site maps are also necessary for the designer as they need to know the depth and structure of the site. Once the site map is drawn, the designers can refine it and make sure the navigation makes sense.

While site mapping can be time-consuming, it’s essential to the development of a smart website that’s easy to navigate and that your customers will find easy to use.

It’s a good idea to have a home page—often containing all of the basic information about you or your business—and a contact page that gives visitors an easy way to get in touch. Beyond that, your site map will depend on the goals that you identified earlier in the process.

Here are some ideas to get you started in your website creation process:

• A “squeeze page,” which encourages the visitor to enter their email address, possibly to access downloadable content or receive a discount code
• A lead capture page where people enter their name and contact data so you can contact them with more information later
• An “about us” page with information about your company
• A page for customer testimonials and reviews
• A pricing page, which is important for businesses that have subscription or service levels

You can also create landing pages that coordinate with specific marketing campaigns. For example, if you run a campaign to promote a particular product category, you can create a landing page for that category and feature the items you’re promoting. You can even add promotional pricing.

Page design planning

Now that you have the bones of your site mapped out, it’s time to start planning the layout of each page. Will the page have graphics, columns, videos, or even testimonials?

Each page should be thought through and designed using a website wireframe. A wireframe is like a schematic; it serves as the basic structure of the page, allowing you to ensure the customer can navigate through your website easily.

6. Select a web design that fits your brand

Your website is one of the best tools you have for establishing your brand. It highlights all of the major elements of brand identity:

• Logos
• Typography
• Color
• Packaging
• Written content

The look of your website can blend each of these elements—yes, including packaging, as long as you have some kind of products or services page with images. Together, they showcase the personality of your brand.

Your identity has to be consistent, especially when your business is new and you're building your brand. A consistent look helps attract new customers to your brand. People feel drawn to different brand aesthetics, from the graphics style to the color scheme. You’ll even connect with different people depending on whether your brand is formal or informal, contemporary or classic, and so on.

Pro tip: Keep the color, font, and graphic style the same across all of your landing pages. You can still vary the layout and image choices, but your brand identity will stay consistent this way.

7. Build your pages

Once you have your aesthetic set, you can being constructing various pages. Your main goal is to make the site intuitive, easy to navigate, and descriptive of your business. Build your navigation menu so that visitors can find the pages they're looking for quickly. Consider using dropdowns or hamburger menus so that the bar doesn’t get too crowded. For example, if you offer multiple services, you could list them all in a “services” dropdown.

Always have a descriptive heading at the top of every page so visitors know what they’re looking at. Creative phrasing is fine, but make sure the message comes across. That’s important for all content that appears above the “fold,” the invisible line on a page that divides what you see first to what you have to scroll to see.

Do your best to keep the most important information and key messaging above the fold—the top half of the page that's visible without scrolling. You can certainly include more details later in the page, but keep the design clean and uncluttered.

If you have a call to action (CTA) link or button, find an obvious place for it. A lot of people will scroll to the bottom to find the CTA, but sometimes it’ll be better at the top of the page. Try different locations to find out what drives the most engagement.

8. Connect your payment processor

Once you’ve completed the mapping process, built your pages, and are happy with the look and feel of the site, it's time to move on to the next step. Those that have an e-commerce site must choose a payment processing provider. Anyone doing business online should be able to accept different forms of payment.

The process only takes a couple of minutes, but a lot happens in those few minutes. During e-commerce payment processing, all information passes through a secure gateway that keeps it safe. Preventing your customers' financial information from falling into the wrong hands is essential, so make sure to do your research before connecting with a payment processor.

9. Optimize for search engines

SEO, or search engine optimization, is something every business website owner should consider. SEO is the practice of creating and optimizing your content based on how your potential customers look for your products or services in search engines.

Every search engine has a different algorithm, but Google handles approximately 92% of all searches, so it’s best to optimize for Google. Whenever someone searches, Google will show them the websites it believes to be the most authoritative and relevant to that search. Making your content search-friendly means creating content that Google wants to show everyone.

The rules of SEO change frequently, but two things are consistently important: keywords and quality content. Take some time to research the keywords that people use to find products or services like yours in search engines to customize your content accordingly. Your content should be unique and descriptive.

Backlinks, or inbound links—links to your site from other sites—are important, too, but they take time to build. As soon as you have a website, start linking to it from your social media—and encourage your followers to do the same. You can also invite your audience to review your products and services on consumer review sites to get more backlinks.

Before your site goes live, follow this SEO checklist to make sure you're leveraging every opportunity to draw people to your site.

Pro tip: Today’s search engines know that 59% of US search engine visits happen on mobile devices, so they prioritize sites that are mobile-friendly. Make sure that your pages are easy to view and navigate from smartphones and tablets.

10. Check your links and preview your website

Test your website. Your internal links should be a priority. These links are how your users, as well as Google’s site crawlers, find the different parts of your site, and if they don’t work, your users and Google might not realize that those other pages exist.

Next, check any backlinks from sites you control, such as your Facebook page or Instagram bio. Also, make sure any links to third-party sites go to active pages. Broken links can make your site look less professional—and hurt your users' experience.

Consider asking someone else to look at your website and click around a bit so you get a second opinion on how well it works. You can send the site to a select few to ensure that it is functioning correctly and the navigation makes sense. Links and buttons should work as expected, and the website should be free of typos and grammatical errors.

11. Publish your website

Once your website is designed, tested, and ready to reveal to the world, click the publish button so it goes live on the Internet. Share a link to your new site across all of your other marketing channels—like social media or email, for example—so your customers (and potential customers) know where to find you online.

Things to do after your website is published

You can sit back and do nothing now that your website is done, right? Well, not exactly. After building and publishing a great website, knowing how to maintain it is essential.

You have checked everything and know the site is functional and live, but you still must perform ongoing maintenance to ensure your site is always fresh and full of new information for users.

Here are some things you can consider doing regularly to maintain your website:

• Verify the information on the site is up-to-date and accurate.
• Add new products and services.
• Add customer testimonials.
• Add a blog to help position the company as an industry leader.
• Check the site for customer feedback.
• Ensure the site's e-commerce elements are working properly.

Building a website: Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to build a website?

As noted earlier, large, complex websites can be costly to create, especially when working with a professional designer or website developer. However, there are other options that make building a website far more affordable.

Wix, for example, offers easy-to-use site-building tools with multiple pricing plans that can align with your needs—and your budget—so you can build a great website that will help support your business, grow your brand, and generate revenue.

What key features should my website have?

Your website can have an array of features. However, a few of the most important ones include:

• Your logo
• Your business name
• Details about the products or services you offer
• Navigation bar
• Contact information

How long does it take to build a website?

Creating a website can be a time-consuming task because there are a lot of different elements to consider. Obviously, websites with more pages and features will take longer to build, but using a platform that offers templates and a drag-and-drop editor can speed up the process considerably.

Build and publish a great website

Building a website doesn’t have to be a headache. A web creation platform like Wix can help you establish your online business presence with intuitive tools that allow you to launch a professional website in minutes, regardless of your industry. And since it's easy to connect a Wix website to Mailchimp, you'll have everything you need to elevate your marketing with personalized, automated email campaigns that turn site visitors into customers.