Having a high-quality website is essential to maximizing your company’s performance. After all, you can’t expect to optimize your sales numbers if your audience is unable to find you online.

Although many entrepreneurs may not want to admit it, not every business owner understands how to build a website. Web design company in San Francisco helps with the design and development of your business website. Fortunately, we put together a quick guide that has everything you need to know.

Let’s dive in.

1. Choose a Web Hosting Service

Before you can move forward, you’ll need to choose a web hosting service.

For those who are unaware, a web hosting service provider will store the data on your website on a server. This allows users to access your site’s content on the Internet.

In exchange for this service, they charge a monthly rate and offer a multitude of different plans depending on your needs. Although it can be overwhelming to choose the one that’s best for you, it’s often simpler than most people think.

Your hosting provider will help determine what plan is most suitable. If your needs change in the future, you’ll be able to scale your level of service and accommodate the growth of your business.

2. Choose a Relevant Domain Name

Once you’ve chosen a hosting service provider, it’s time to come up with the domain name. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind when making a decision.

First, your domain name should be relevant to your business. Although it doesn’t have to be your business name, the name of the product, etc., your audience should be able to make a connection.

It’s important to note that although you have the opportunity to use website suffixes other than the conventional .com, .net, or .org, it’s highly recommended that you choose one of the three.

This helps give your website more authenticity. If you’re unable to find a domain name that you want with any of the above suffixes, consider choosing a different domain name instead.

3. Choose the Right Platform

Selecting the right platform for your website is essential. This will dictate how easily you can edit your site within your domain, something that can streamline necessary changes and save you plenty of money.

For example, you can easily customize layouts, publish content, and optimize your settings. There’s a handful of platforms that you can choose from, but one stands out among the rest — WordPress.

WordPress is renowned for its intuitive design, something that allows even brand-new users to quickly take the actions they need. Additionally, WordPress supports tens of thousands of plug-ins that you can utilize to handle other obligations.

To elaborate, there are various plug-ins centered on customer relationship management, productivity, etc. You can visit this resource to learn more about what this hosting platform has to offer.

4. Develop the Perfect Design

After you’ve chosen your domain and platform, you need to begin designing your site. This can seem intimidating for those who are inexperienced in this area, but it’s not as difficult as you might expect.

To begin, you’ll need to install something called a ‘theme.’ These serve as the foundation for the entirety of your website’s design. Many of these are free, but you may have to budget for a specific theme that can fit all of your needs.

Once you’ve found one that suitable for your brand, you can then begin to focus on details like color, font, layout, etc. Be sure, though, that your site maintains a level of functionality that your users will be comfortable with.

5. Add Necessary Content and Pages

It should come as no surprise that an empty website won’t do you much good. Fortunately, creating pages for your site is a simple process in most cases.

At this point, you’ll need to consider what pages are most important for your business. For example, most companies prioritize creating a homepage, contact page, about page, etc. You might also want to include a page dedicated to your product or service.

As previously mentioned, WordPress allows you to accomplish this effortlessly, so you shouldn’t experience much trouble in doing so.

At this point in the process, you should also consider creating something called a ‘child theme.’ This is essentially a file that stores your website information in a separate location from the rest of your theme’s files.

Not only does this protect your site, but it can help you make changes and updates to your current theme.

6. Create a Navigation Menu

After you’ve made the necessary pages for your website, you need to create a navigation menu. This term refers to the menu that your audience will use in order to browse your site.

Not only will this help your website feel more cohesive, but it will also ensure that your users can find what they’re looking for.

If you plan on integrating an online store into your website, this is also the point where you would do so. For those who are using WordPress, this can be achieved through a plug-in known as ‘WooCommerce.’

This plug-in is top-tier and is widely regarded as the best method for e-commerce integration on this platform.

Understanding How to Build a Website Might Seem Difficult

Fortunately, the above information will ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible. From here, you understand exactly how to build a website and optimize your customer satisfaction.

Want to learn more info you should keep in mind? Be sure to explore what the rest of our blog has to offer.