The Steps to Building a New Website
Registering your website address
There are lots of companies who sell domain names. So the first steps to building a new website is to decide whether you want your domain name to be a .co.uk, .com or .org, for example. Once you’ve chosen we can help you to buy your domain name – this is what a user enters into the web browser in order to be able to find your site. Contact Us if you want help with any of these steps.
Getting your website address ready to appear on the internet
The next critical part of getting your website live is to tell the internet where to look for your website and email addresses. This is a technical but important step that your web developer or domain registrar can do for you.
Hosting your website
When it comes to hosting your website, there are lots of different options based upon the size of your website and your monthly budget. It’s true that you get what you pay for, so a cheaper solution may not give you the speed, security and scalability that you need.
We use a cloud-based solution called Cloudways but would be happy to advise you on this, and other options available to you.
Hosting your emails
You may need to consider how and where you are going to store your emails and for how long eg. if there is a legal requirement. Consider this when choosing your email provider, as cloud storage is often limited and usually not free. For many businesses however, one of the webmail or workspace packages are generally enough and allow you to link email addresses to your domain name.
We use Rackspaces email that is provided by Cloudways (our hosting provider), but equally Google Workspace or Office 365 are very good options.
Building your website
A range of technologies are available to develop the actual website but most typically use a Content Management System such as market-leader WordPress. There are many free and premium themes from which you can choose, which will determine the look and feel of your website and it’s functionality.
Populating your website
Content is key to making your website engaging and informative. There are many websites that offer royalty free images, as well as websites such as Shutterstock and Getty, where you can license them for a small fee. The same can be said for written content – you can pay a copywriter or content manager or you can write it yourself. We normally recommend to our clients to use a mix – a professional could actually save you time and money as well as uncovering awesome content in nuggets that you might not have considered.
Testing and launching your website
All of the websites that we develop go through a stringent pre-launch checklist before they are made live. This includes comprehensive testing across all of the most popular browsers on desktop, mac and mobile to ensure that your new website is responsive, looks good and performs well.
This is particularly important in ensuring that search engines can find your site, and that you perform well in their rankings. Getting higher rankings on search engines means more people and more business going through your website.
YOUR WEBSITE IS NOW LIVE!
