Site design in Malaga

Whether you are a freelance photographer, own a hardware store, or have another type of small business, a great website is essential for your company’s success. As a digital marketing agency who has worked on building or marketing over 100 small business websites, I know what it takes to create great and engaging business websites.

If you are looking to build a new Site design in Malaga or make your current site more effective, here are 7 key steps to getting started and helping your small business website compete effectively in the online marketplace.

1. Determine the primary purpose of your website.
   A business website generally serves as a space to provide general information about your company or a direct platform for e-commerce. Whether you create a simple website that tells a little about your company or a more complex e-commerce site, the most important thing you must do is say what your company does – on the homepage in plain terms. Don’t make customers root around to discover if your company can do what they need.

2. Decide your domain name.
Your domain name is one of the most important features of your website. It’s the URL you’ll share with your current and potential clients and promote on social media. Therefore, you want it to be descriptive and easy to remember and type in. Try to keep it short, and steer clear of abbreviations, acronyms, and numbers, if possible, to avoid customer confusion.

You also need to decide your top-level domain, or TLD. This is the suffix at the end of your domain name, such as .com, .net or .biz. However, nontraditional TLD names have grown in recent years. These TLDs can be based on location, such as .nyc, or type of business, like .marketing, .agency or .law. While these can be descriptive, .com is still the main go-to. Read our article on choosing a nontraditional TLD for more information.

Once you’ve selected your domain name, you’ll need to confirm its availability and purchase it through a domain registrar. These are some popular domain registrars:

Domain.com
Wix
GoDaddy
Squarespace

As you select your new domain name, check copyrights to make sure you’re not infringing on anyone else’s protected name. If your preferred URL is already taken, you can call the company using it and ask to buy it from them or use a domain buying service from a company like GoDaddy, which will reach out to the owners of your desired domain name. This service costs around $70 per domain.

3. Purchase secure, scalable website hosting with good tech support

A website host (or sometimes referred to as a website hosting provider) is a company that offers the technology and services necessary for a website to be viewed on the internet. You connect your domain name to your hosting provider so that when users visit your website address, they are shown your website that you store on your hosting account.

Hosting services can cost anywhere between $2 to $100+ per month, depending on the kind of technology and support you choose. You can usually get a discount if you purchase a yearly plan as opposed to a monthly plan.

4. Implement the best content management system
A content management system (CMS) is a software program or application that is used to create and manage digital content. A good CMS will help you maintain your site, and you don’t need much technical knowledge to use it. You should choose a CMS that is designed for your unique needs; different systems are used for different reasons, such as user-friendliness, extensibility, and budget.

The following are some popular systems with descriptions of their strengths and weaknesses.

WordPress: WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS. It has a vast, active support community and many useful plugins to extend the functionality of your site. (And if you cannot find a plugin that does what you want, it is easy to find a WordPress developer who can make one for you!) WordPress is also free and relatively simple to install. Most website developers are familiar with it so it is not hard to find an individual or agency that can work on your site. I normally recommend that small businesses use WordPress to create their websites, due to its flexibility and extensibility.

Joomla!: Another popular CMS is Joomla! Out of the box, it has better SEO, security, and multilingual capabilities than WordPress; however, with the help of a few plugins, WordPress surpasses Joomla!’s capabilities.

5. Choose a Template (or Theme) for your Site design in Malaga
Whether you go with a website builder or WordPress, you will have to choose a template or theme for your small business website. Site builders like Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly break down templates into categories with premade designs that already have many of the tools and features your site is likely to need.

6. Customize Your Site
The next step in small business website design is to customize your chosen template. This includes editing its pages, adding additional pages you need, and deleting pages that aren’t needed as well as configuring the site-wide header and footer. Each platform has its own tools for site design, and some are more intuitive than others. For example, Wix is known for providing the most customization and design freedom, so much so that it’s a top WordPress alternative.

7. Optimize Your Small Business Website for Search

It’s essential to make your small business website search engine-friendly to be easily found in online searches. While search engine optimization, or SEO, sounds technical, many SEO tactics that help your site rank higher on Google are simple to perform.

For example, optimize each page of your website for a unique, specific keyword. Top keywords can be identified using cheap and free keyword research tools to discover which words and phrases your target audience is searching for when looking for a business like yours. Learn more here about our Search Engine Optimization

Contact us now for a free meeting where we can talk more about your Site design in Malaga