What are the things you should consider before you build a website for your business? Many times, businesses say they need websites so a lot of people can see what they do, their services and goods.
This decision comes out of the thinking that once there is a website a lot of their problems are solved.
It is true in a sense, but there are some things businesses need to take into consideration so they do not end up with non-functional websites.
See Also: Start Your Business in 30 Days- Move from idea to starting and setting up your business in 30 days.
Here are seven essentials to consider before you build a website for your business.
Start by selling on social media
If your business is about a product or service, first consider selling on social media. This eliminates incurring the cost of building a website and still gets your products and services to customers.
The target audience you want to reach are already on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can sell on these platforms.
Selling on social media will help you understand your business and you will get to the point where you can assess if social media still meets your needs and if it is time to move on to a website.
Thought leadership
This second point goes especially for service-selling businesses. In the service industry, you want to have some form of thought leadership in your field; to let people see you as one who has unique insights into what the industry does.
To achieve this, you need to write regularly about the happenings in your industry and about the problems and challenges that you are solving.
This should be done on a platform where your audience can read and comment on your articles.
Total cost of ownership
The third point is about what I consider the most important – cost. It is what I call the total cost of ownership.
I will explain this term with this example: if one buys a tin of milk and uses just some out of it for breakfast, one has to store the rest in the refrigerator so it does not go bad.
This action has simply increased the total cost of the tin of milk. This is so because one has to employ a refrigerator to keep it fresh, a generator (in cases where there isn’t a public electricity supply) to power the refrigerator and petrol to run the generator. If it had been bought at N200, the total cost of owning that tin of milk is now more than N200. This applies to owning a website.
You need to consider how the articles you want to put out on the website will be produced. Will you hire somebody to do the writing? Will you do it yourself if you can’t hire someone? Do you have the time to write those articles? If photos are needed for the website, how are the photos going to be sourced?
Therefore, the total cost of owning a website goes beyond building it. There are going to be management costs and other considerations.
Websites are fantastic tools when used rightly. But one needs to know what will be involved in running the website.
Example
To give an example, if your website is an online clothes store, the total cost of ownership will include the method of acquiring display images of those clothes to be put up. Do you have a camera or do you need to hire a photographer? If you have the photos already, do you upload the photos on the website yourself or do you need to train someone to do that job?
These are costs that need to be understood before building that online store. These costs usually take the unprepared business person by surprise. (Other costs are website hosting costs and paying for your domain name.)
Domain names and hosting
The fourth essential point to consider before you build a website for your business is domain names and hosting. You only arrive here if you have finally decided that a website is absolutely important. Domain names and hosting are not as complex as people think.
To explain them-
A domain name is simply www.entrepreneurs.ng or www.redahliaworkspaces.com
Hosting is the server (a computer) on which your website will be stored.
As much as possible, the business owner should buy the domain himself. To expand on the definitions, the domain name is like the house address pointing to a house. It points to the hosting computer (where the website is stored).
It is important to buy the domain name and hosting by yourself from registrars (people in charge of selling domain names), after checking for availability.
The way the internet works is that the person who buys a domain name (say abcdrycleaners.com) is considered the owner of that domain.
So, if you tell a website builder to purchase a domain on your behalf, but does not transfer ownership of the domain to you along with the finished website (due to any number of reasons) when it is time to renew your subscription, he might no longer be available to do this.
Write a brief
After deciding to build a website, you need to write a brief on what exactly you want. You need to document what you need the website to look like, so developers do not build what you do not want.
For example, you have to document that you want customers to be able to pay on your website, that you want an ‘About Us’ page, or you want email addresses displayed, etc. This is what the web developer looks at to give a cost.
After the brief, you need to create content. Problems arise here between website owners and web designers. Because the content for the website is not available, website designers get bogged down waiting on the owner to supply text, photos and other information that the owner wants on the website. It is wrong to assume that the web designer knows what goes on the website.
Get a website builder
The next step is to get a website builder. Naturally, you will look for recommendations from others and do due diligence on what works the recommendations have done before – taking into account their attention to detail, graphics, etc.
Agree on payment terms
The last point is agreeing on payment terms. A lot of times, you converse about the website building over the phone – the cost also. There is usually no way of documenting agreements reached.
Therefore, it is advisable to send a text message or email to the developer listing the agreements reached and points made and have them confirmed by the developer. It serves as a form of documentation, especially in case the project completion drags for a long time and the parties forget what agreements were reached.
Above are the things you should consider before you build a website for your business. These points prepare businesses or website owners on how to manage their websites to function properly as planned and intended.
In Start Your Business in 30 Days, I shared a template with the step-by-step guide to build a website for your business. Enrol today to learn how to build and grow a business from an expert. Click here to enrol.
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