Your business's website is the home of your online presence. In this article, we outline the first steps to getting your business professionally presented online.
The internet is like a spider web. A series of connections. At the center of the spider web is your website. It’s your business's online home base. Your own corner of the internet where you build your house just how you like it. A polished website is essential for building out and organizing your business online. It’s also a great place to get started with marketing.
Before hopping on the computer, we recommend grabbing a pen and some sticky notes. We’re going to brainstorm what pages would be involved in your business's website. A great question to ask yourself is - “what lines of business does my company operate in.”
Let’s pretend you own an HVAC company servicing residential homes in West Michigan. Your answer to the above question might be the following - “heating repair, heating replacement, cooling repair, cooling replacement, and new construction installation.”
Each line of business is going to become a web page, so write those down on separate sticky notes. We’re going to want these pages accessible from the navigation bar. If your lines of business are more than two, group them up. These groups are going to become drop-down menus in the navigation bar.
Back to our HVAC example, the navigation bar might be the following - Home, Heating (hover over it, and a list appears showing - heating repair, heating replacement, heating tune-up), Cooling (dropdown menu), Additional Services (dropdown menu), About, Resources (dropdown menu), Contact.
You'll notice we added an additional dropdown called Resources. This is a great place to put your comment management system (CMS) pages, such as your blog, portfolio, and job listings. Adding content to these systems is an essential piece to building your search engine optimization. One step at a time, though; if you're curious to learn more about SEO - check out this article here. For now, we’re going to stay focused on the basics.
You’ve now created your sitemap. This is going to be the blueprint you follow in building your site. The next step is gathering your branding elements.
These are the essential branding elements that will be used to create a consistent theme for your website. If you don’t have these elements handy, check out our brand development offerings here for a great solution.
With an understanding of your sitemap and your brand elements handy, you’re ready to hop online and find the right website-building solution/tool.
Good - Squarespace - DIY
For businesses looking to build their website themselves at the lowest cost possible, we recommend using Squarespace. Their interface is friendly and has the capability of getting you off the ground.
Better - Launch Kit Business Pro - $275/mo.
If you’re looking for professional help, Launch Kit’s Business Pro plan is a great way to get a search-engine-optimized, mobile-friendly, polished website at a reasonable cost. We’re here to design, develop, host, and update your website. This includes adding new pages, articles, and content. All for $275/mo.
Best - Full-Time Web Designer - starting at $50,000/year
For larger businesses, it might make sense to hire a full-time in-house team member to manage this project. If you’re looking to hire a web designer, we recommend looking for the following skill sets:
We hope you found this article insightful. Presenting your business online is an essential part of a ten-year success plan. We see the website as the foundation of a sustainable marketing plan. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message, and I’d be happy to talk - kevin@launchkitdesign.com.
Thank you for your time. Have a great day.
Each year, we take a fresh look at the various marketing efforts a small business can make. We've built this framework to get started optimizing your business's online presence.
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