How to Build a Website from Scratch
It is essential for small businesses to have their own website, but it seems like a complicated project for those without website experience. Good news, you don’t need to know how to code to build a website!
Here, we’ll walk you through the initial steps to take for building a website from scratch. We’ve included tips and have outlined the process of driving traffic to your website to make a profit.
As you’ll see, there are a lot of different tools to use and factors that go into building and managing a successful website from scratch. It takes a lot of time, and for beginners, it takes a lot of research. Small business owners are busy and can benefit from outsourcing contract marketers.
1..Buy a Domain Name
A domain name is the main part of your future website’s URL. The domain name of this website is “carsonandelle.com” and yours should reflect the name of your small business.
The price of a domain name is between $2.99 and $20 per year. Make sure to set up automatic renewal if you have long-term plans for the website.
GoDaddy.com offers domain names for $2,99 for the first year, then renews at $19.99 per year moving forward. There are many other places to buy a domain name from (Google offers domain names for $7/year). Some sites will offer you a free domain but keep in mind that most free domain registrars will not allow you to customize your domain. Custom domains give visitors more reasons to trust your site and improve your search engine ranking. When choosing a domain name, keep these things in mind.
We recommend purchasing the domain name from the site host that you choose in the next step.
Regardless of where you purchase your domain name from, the web host needs to be linked to it, which can sometimes take 1-3 days when transferring to a new web host.
2. Pick a Website Host
Website hosts are also called website builders or CMS (content management systems). Website hosts, builders, and CMS platforms are amazing. They essentially allow you to create and manage your website without writing any code.
They walk you through every step of the way while you create your website, and have copious amounts of helpful information available if you run into a problem.
There are a lot of website builders out there, and it’s important to consider multiple hosts before deciding which one is right for your business. They all have different packages and monthly fees, so pick one that offers the features that your business needs and will also fit your budget.
Website hosts typically cost $15-25 per month. Make sure to choose a website host that keeps your website secure and provides room for growth should your business expand.
Here’s a quick explanation of the website builders that we recommend:
We used Squarespace to create this site and found it to be very intuitive. Squarespace is content-oriented and offers many customization features while making it simple to create your website. If you are creating a blog from scratch, we recommend using Squarespace.
Squarespace offers e-commerce capabilities and makes it easy to connect a Shopify Lite plug-in if you prefer that for e-commerce.
Shopify is a great, simple website host for small business e-commerce, but offers less content-driven functionality. It depends on your business goals.
We don’t recommend WordPress for beginners in the website world. WordPress sites can be incredible and are entirely customizable, but you need some background knowledge to install WordPress plug-ins which often pair with added monthly fees.
3. Take Time to Build the Website
As you create your website, take time to be thorough. The goal is to display the content you already have and create new content that elevates your brand.
You can edit your site at any time in the future so there is no need for it to be perfect on the first try.
Start by creating the following pages, and be sure to keep website accessibility in mind while you build your website.
Make sure You Design Your Website in an Accessible way
1 in 4 internet users has an impairment that impacts the way they browse the web. Motor impairments, for example, cause users to navigate websites using a keyboard. Visually impaired users will rely on a screen reader.
There are many impairments to account for, and some CMS platforms, like Wix, add accessibility features automatically for you as you design your site.
Unfortunately, not all CMS platforms automatically create accessible websites for you. Sometimes, additional coding is required.
Here’s more information and how to make sure everyone can access your website.
Home page
Visually, the home page should feature information about your brand, and anything that you want your customers to know or see first.
Once someone visits your home page, the goal is to lead them to other pages through calls-to-action and/or internal linking. Be sure to add a menu bar with internal links as well as buttons or linked text throughout the page.
Adding a video to your homepage will help improve your search engine ranking.
About page
Include your mission statement and general information about your company. This is a great place to include a story about how or why the business was formed, and what your business has been able to accomplish since then.
Contact Page
Keep it short and sweet, making it easy for people to reach you. Don’t forget to include contact forms.
Shop Page
It’s time to list your products! Your web host will walk you through the steps of setting up payment options, shipping costs, etc.
Customers have high expectations for shopping online, so take your time with the intention of creating a seamless experience.
The goal is to make it easy for customers to purchase your product.
Blog (optional)
Consider adding a page for blogs, because blog posts can do a tremendous amount of good for your website.
Any information you have about your products, or something a customer experiences before or after using the product, can (and should) be on your website in blog format.
If you’re interested in learning how and why blog posts can help your website perform well and drive traffic, here’s our guide to creating and optimizing content for search engines.
Overall Site Navigation
Regardless of the pages you choose for your site, make sure that the site is easy to navigate. There are two ways to do this:
Navigation Menu
Most websites include a navigation menu at the top which makes it easy for users to find the content/pages that they are looking for. Be sure to create the navigation menu in a way that is intuitive and as simple as possible.
Internal Links
Each page, in theory, should lead to another. Create a Call-to-Action (CTA) on each page that entices users to continue exploring other pages on your website. CTAs can be in the form of a button or hyperlink and will work best when an accurate description of the page is provided before a user clicks on it.
Poor navigation will result in users leaving your website before they find what they are looking for.
Privacy Policy
Privacy policies are legally mandatory for any website. It is critical that privacy policies let users know what type of data your site collects, and how it is used, stored, and protected.
If you plan to use third-party services like Google Analytics (which we highly recommend and will talk about further down the page), they may require a privacy policy as well.
Most websites have their Privacy Policy located on a separate page that is usually linked in the footer of the website and referenced again during checkout if the site has e-commerce features.
4. Customize Search and social Settings
Once you’ve set up, designed, and added content to the pages of your site, there are off-page settings to take advantage of.
These settings will be automatically generated if left unchanged, which usually yields poor results and awkward transitions in terms of the user experience.
Add Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Settings for each page
Be thorough by customizing SERP settings to show Google exactly how you want your website to be displayed on its results page.
Title Tag
Google will limit the title tag of your page to 60 characters. Keep it short. Include keywords that are relevant to the content. Make sure the title tags for each of the pages on your site are different and explain exactly what the page is about.
Meta description
Google displays 155-160 characters of the meta tag. Make sure to include any secondary or long-tail keywords. Just like your title tags, no two meta descriptions should be the same on your website.
A well-written title and meta description will increase your click-through rate from SERPs.
Always write your title and meta tags with the intention that people will be the ones reading it, not the search engine. Avoid keyword “stuffing” or adding as many keywords as possible to your title and meta tags.
Set up a free Google My Business profile to capture organic traffic from local searches.
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add Social Images
When users share a link on social media platforms, like Facebook or LinkedIn, an image will appear above the link.
This gives your website the opportunity to make a visual impression on social media, with the goal of getting as many people to click on that link as possible. The link will automatically generate a title and show the URL below the page’s social image.
Prepare for others to share your website on social media by adding social images to each page. That way, when the URL is shared, it will let the receiver know what to expect when clicking on the URL via an image. Make it easier for visitors to share your website on social media by adding social links to your products and blogs.
How to Monetize Your Traffic
Making money off your website is easy with Google AdSense. There are no page view requirements. AdSense gives even smaller sites and blogs an opportunity to make money.
Google will automatically place ads on your website. The ads that get placed will be relevant to your users and based on their internet activity.
The more traffic your site gets, the more money you will make. If your users are engaged in your content and clicking on your ads, you will make even more.
Learn more about adding Google AdSense to your website.
5. Get ready to measure traffic
It’s important to know where your traffic is coming from because that tells you which area of promotion is working the best.
It’s also important to know what your traffic is doing on your website, so you know how well the site is performing and which areas need to improve.
Some web hosts collect this information for you automatically.
Google Analytics is free to use and will help to track website performance with a lot of analytics features that web hosts don’t offer. It’s best to set up Google Analytics right away so that you capture all of the traffic data that you can.
We also recommend using Google Search Console. It is a free service that Google offers and will show you: which keywords your website visitors used to find you, where you rank for keywords, and if you have any broken links on your website.
Then, submit a website map through Google Search Console and index all URLs on your website. This will help Google to find each page and use your pages more accurately when ranking your site.
6. Promote, promote, promote!
Once your website is published and ready to go, it’s time to drive website traffic.
Tell everyone and their mother that you just launched a new website. Push for people to give you feedback. When you feel comfortable, share it with your followers on social media.
Promote further by creating more content, on both your website and on social media.
Paid advertising is a great way to gain more traffic as well. The more traffic you get, the more chances for a conversion. Promote accurately so you’ll get the right traffic that is ready to purchase your product.
We created our business and website to help small businesses shine online. It starts with creating a website, which we understand can be complicated and time-consuming. If you need help along the way, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. That’s what we’re here for!
Thanks for reading. Please drop a comment below if you have any additional website creation tips to share!