TMCnet Feature Free eNews Subscription
May 01, 2020

The basic steps to building your own website: a guideline for starters



Pretty much every company wants to be visible online. So if you’ve just started your own business, you probably won’t be an exception to this. If you want to create your own website, you can outsource it to professionals, but that might not be in your budget yet. So, for all the starters who want to create their own website, we made a small guideline. In this article, we’ll tell you what things you need (besides patience and time) to get your basic website up and running. Follow the steps below and get inspired! Good luck!



1. Create a plan and stick to it
Sure, you’re going to experience some bumps in the road while creating your website. Don’t worry, it’s completely normal and it won’t be something you can’t handle. Of course you don’t want to get frustrated and to prevent this, it’s important to have a plan you can stick to. So first things first: create a plan you want to follow for the next period of time. Think about the purpose of your website, what information you do and don’t want to share and what you want your website to look like. Write all this down, so that when you experience some bad luck during the process, you can look at it and see why you’re doing this and what the initial plan was.
 

2. Pick a good domain name
The fun part: picking a domain name. The domain name of your website is also called the internet address or url. Most of the time, the domain name is related to the brand name and shows what kind of website visitors are entering. It’s wise to pick a domain name that shows whether you’re a business in, for example, fashion, IT or marketing.

Imagine you’ve got a collection agency in The Netherlands, called e-Legal. Your brand name already kind of shows what kind of business you’re in. You can use your brand name as domain name, so when people are struggling with collection (Dutch: incasso) and want to hire a debt collection agency (Dutch: incassobureau inschakelen) of a bailiff (Dutch: deurwaarder), they might find the answers of needed help through your website. 
 

3. Register your domain name
Once you’ve picked a domain name, you still need to check if it’s still available. As you can imagine, many domain name are already in use. So check if the domain name you want to use is still available. Is this the case? Then it’s time to register it. A registrar can do this for you; they can also arrange a hosting package (check out step 6).
 

4. Choose a content management system (CMS)
If you want to create your own website, you need to pick a content management system, also known as a CMS. With a CMS (which is a software application) you can easily manage and adapt your website anytime and anywhere you want. There are different kinds of content management systems. If you don’t have any experience with website development or management, we advise you to pick one of the well-known content management systems like WordPress or Magento.
 

5. Start designing and fill your website with content
Have you selected a CMS and created an account? Then it’s time to start building your website. This is the exciting part, because you can now pick/create a nice layout, decide which colours you want to use and fill your website with content. Talking about content: it’s not only important that the content provides the right information. It’s also of great importance that the pages contain good quality texts, so the content helps you rank well on keywords. Of course, you should also keep other aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. Without it, your new website won’t rank in the search engines and that’s not what you want!
 

6. The last step: the hosting of your website
Once you’ve created your website in the content management system, the last thing you need to fix, is the hosting. With a hosting package, you buy yourself a spot on the server. This will cost you some money, but don’t worry: it doesn’t have to be a lot. The price depends on the size of hosting your website needs, but the costs start at a few euros a month. Nothing you can’t afford, right? There are a lot of companies where you can purchase a hosting package, so check a few of them out and make a wise decision!

Once you’ve launched your new website, it’s important to check out its performance and keep working on stuff like SEO, content and advertisement. Creating a website is an ongoing process, but it’s fun once you understand the basic steps. We wish you a lot of luck!



» More TMCnet Feature Articles
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]
SHARE THIS ARTICLE

LATEST TMCNET ARTICLES

» More TMCnet Feature Articles