5 Things To Consider Before Building Your First Website

In the competitive business environment of today, a website could mean the difference between growth and decline of your venture. “Building” a website might seem like a huge technical ordeal, but it does not have to be that way. Read on below to go through the process of turning your web presence plans into reality!

A website has two main aspects: the domain name and the hosting service. Both are different and can be provided by different service providers.

Domain name

Getting a domain name is an obvious thing to do when you are making a website, isn’t it? Think again – certain things are not that obvious. You must consider what kind of domain you get for your website. This will depend on various factors, for example:

Location: Are you operating in just one country? Do most of your potential visitors belong to one country in particular? In that case, you may consider getting a domain that does not end with “.com”. For instance, “Example.co.in” for an Indian business or Example.co.uk for a business based in the United Kingdom.

Nature of website: If your website represents an organization or a non-profit, you should get an “.org” extension.

The default: The default extension of choice should be “.com”. Search engines will typically favor content that comes from a website with a “.com” extension.

The above being said, you must remember that the name of your website should be memorable, contains preferably no punctuations and is relevant to your service, product or brand name. Also, avoid having domain names that closely resemble established websites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. This can look manipulative and spammy, something which not only turns off potential visitors, but search engines as well.

Hosting Plan

Selecting the right kind of hosting is extremely important to make your website load fast and provide a smooth experience to users. Here are a few points to note:

CDN: CDN services or Content Delivery Network, as the name suggests, provides content delivery at extremely high speed. If your website has a lot of high-resolution images (large portfolio with a local search engine) or serves files that are large in size (>1 MB), you need a CDN service that can deliver multimedia/scripts and take the load off your primary host.

Videos: If you want to attach videos to posts, a third party site is the best option. For example, YouTube. You can easily embed videos while driving traffic from YouTube also. Directly hosting videos from your website requires high server specifications and is expensive.

Hosting bandwidth: Hosting services are often priced according to the bandwidth of data they serve for you in a month. Sometimes the maximum speed of serving is limited. If you are just starting out, a monthly bandwidth of 2-3GB should be sufficient for light websites. However, these days, many hosts such as HostGator and GoDaddy offer unlimited bandwidth for a reasonable price.

Web Development Strategy

What will be your strategy to turn your website into what you always wanted for your business? When planning on how you will get your website up and running, there are various things that you need to consider:

Design time: If you need your website up and running in little time but your website requires features that are complex in nature, it is best to consult professionals and get your website designed by web developers. Note that this is usually the most expensive way to get your website up and running.

Your skills: Your skills will matter a lot when you plan to design the whole website yourself. For a good-looking, neat website, you need to be very good at HTML, CSS and JavaScript. If you believe you know the languages well enough to tweak the code but not good enough to actually write it, a CMS (content management service) like WordPress is your best friend.

Flexibility: If you are willing to have a website that can be changed in looks and organization overnight, it is again highly recommended that you use popular content management software like WordPress to manage and run your website. Plugin-based platforms make it extremely easy to create a versatile websites. Software like Dreamweaver and CoffeeCup website designer are also some extremely popular tools when it comes down to making flexible websites.

Maintenance: Do you need to frequently review your security status or create/modify website content? What about backups?

To carry out all these tasks, you need someone to help you out if you are not used to coding and web designing. If a lot depends on your website and uptime is critical, it is best to hire a professional.

However, if your website uses a CMS like WordPress, you can backup and update your website components with little technical skills.

Extras

There are certain additional aspects of a website that do not usually come with a domain name purchase or a standard hosting plan. For example, secure connection (https) and premium webmail services. You should find out if your hosting plan provides you with webmail facilities, i.e. the ability to have email addresses associated with your domain name ([email protected]).

A secure connection is also extremely important if you are letting your users log in to various sections of your website or if you are collecting personal information from your visitors through forms. A securely connected website will use “https” and not the conventional http protocol. This protects your users’ information and also makes your website rank higher in search results. Do note that secure connection can be expensive and usually costs higher than a hosting plan in case of small websites.

Website Content

The content on your website determines how well your website performs. Well written articles and blogs that are over or around 500 words long and are properly illustrated with photos or screenshots help place the website higher. To get content for your website, you can hire freelancers or write content yourself. For images, backgrounds and illustrations, it is recommended that you use stock photo websites that provide good quality content. On stock photo sites such as Dreamstime, you can find high quality images at a low cost – especially when you are purchasing a large quantity of images to illustrate a regular blog (such as a blog posting one recipe a day).

For a portfolio website or artist website, all images and illustrations should be your own original work. It is important that you read and respect copyright laws to have your website in good standing.

Creating a great website is all about getting every little thing right. It is important that the tools you are using do not get between you and your creativity. By taking care of the above 5 points, rest assured that you have taken your first big step towards having a great website for yourself!
Images via Dreamstime.com.