Every business needs a website, and this is clear, and we don't need to go into the whys of this unless you've been living on another planet then you'll be aware that everything is done online these days, hey you're even reading this online.
But beyond knowing you should have one, the decisions about how to go about getting one, what to put in it and how to manage and maintain it are not as straightforward as you might think, especially if you've never done it before.
Who Should Design It
Who should design the website is your first bug question. There are many places that you can get an easy website up and running, and your host might be able to offer a free (or cheap) website builder tool where you type in your text, add your images and logo, and you've got a fully functional website ready to go.
This strategy is fine for a straightforward business site if all you need is some info on who you are and where to find you. If your requirements are more such as e-commerce or websites that require more input from users such as customer accounts online etc then you will need a more specialist designer.
How To Make Sure The Site Is Visible
Websites these days require constant attention to ensure that they are high up the search engines, which means when you type in a phrase on Google, for example, "Housebuilders in Boston" that if you are a house builder in Boston, your website will appear. This is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and if you employ a local SEO audit service, then you can be sure all aspects of this can be assessed and optimized to make your site as visible as it can be.
What Is The Best Way To Update & Maintain The Site
Once your website is designed and working, then you will need to keep it up to date and make any simple changes as things can always move on. New products or services might need to be added or even contact details or anything else.
If you are not competent in design or coding, then you can have a content management system installed that allows you to make content changes with no real skills. But if you need structural or more complicated changes, it makes sense to have a package where the designer updates the site as well as initially designing it.
Choosing A Hosting Platform
There are plenty of different companies that will host a website for you. But what you want to ensure is reliability, you can check online how much time certain hosts have been down for. This information is vital as there are always some limited outages and this is not a considerable problem generally if it's minimal but if the site is out and down often then it can affect your reputation and even negatively impact on your Google rankings.
