How to Launch a Successful Website for Your Small Business

successful business website launch

Running a business, online or offline, can be very difficult. This is because a large amount of competition is out to defeat you and your website. Therefore, you need to be sure that your business website is as good as it gets.

When it comes to laying the groundwork to launch a successful website, there are many key factors that you must keep in mind at all times. To begin with, you’ll need to have the best possible design for your website before you start with your successful website launch. This website should be equipped with the latest features, including an instant messenger, shopping cart, and online web store. Without these essential features, you won’t have much of a chance to get the instant visibility and recognition essential for building your brand.

This means that it should have all of the essential features that people look for when shopping online. You should take some time to study the other sites that are in your industry. Look at what your competitors are doing. This will give you an excellent idea of how your website will take to succeed.

Here are some examples of features that you should be sure your website has.

1. What is The Purpose of Your Business Website?

The first thing you need to ask yourself before you start working on your website is: What is the purpose of your business website or web presentation of your business?

If the purpose of your business website is one of the following, then you need to go to a level where your website shouldn’t be as “simple” brochure:

  • Increase visitors to the website.
  • Increase conversion of an occasionally visitor to a regular visitor.
  • Or, increase conversion from a regular visitor to a potential customer.
  • Increase conversion from a potential customer to a real customer who spend money in your company.
  • Increase conversion from a real customer to a regular customer who will come back to shop on your website.
  • Also, to increase interaction with potential customers.
  • Strengthening the business brand.
  • Generating more sales.
  • Increasing the ability to you as an entrepreneur and your business to be found easily (more on this is covered in Inbound Marketing – Marketing for Today and Future).

2. Domain name

What’s in a name? Why does getting the right domain name matter?

When it comes time to do a domain search, it’s vital to ensure that the name you are considering isn’t too close to one that already exists. This is the entire purpose of doing such a search in the first place: To ensure that you aren’t accidentally infringing on the intellectual property of someone else and thus exposing yourself to a nasty lawsuit and court battle.

You will save yourself a great deal of time, trouble, and cold hard cash by doing the proper preliminary work. In such a way, you will be prepared for your successful website launch.

Beyond these basic considerations, there is another reason why it’s crucial to the success and survival of your business to get your domain name right. This has to do with how your business will be perceived once it’s out there in the public eye. If you choose a name that is hard to pronounce or hard to understand the concept behind, you’ll be doing yourself a serious disservice. No one wants to stop and stare at a name to make sure they are pronouncing it correctly. It’s simply easier to move on to the next result in the search listings.

3. Hosting

One more thing that you will need to enable for your business website is hosting. Hosting is a place where you will store the files of your website like HTML, images, databases, and everything else. It makes all of these files available for visitors in some organized form regarding the front-end design of your business website.

Be careful when you select the hosting company. Remember, we talk here about your business website. So, don’t try to select the cheaper option. You will need more premium options. This is important because the speed and performance of your website, in large part, will be based on the quality of hosting services you use.

4. Content Marketing

What is the website, and what is the brochure? Are they the same? Does your business website need to be an online brochure?

At the beginning of the Internet as a place where you as an entrepreneur and your business can be found from potential customers, all business websites were brochures. This process was a copy of the brochures into an online document available on the Internet.

However, today I think your business website at least should not be in the form of a brochure. If it’s in the form of a simple brochure, your business can’t employ all benefits that a website can bring.

What is a Web Brochure?

A solid brochure usually contains:

  • Home Page. The front page should indicate the reader to read the other pages of the brochure where the reader can see the presentation of your offer.
  • Your Offer. Here you give a brief description of your products and/or services.
  • Urgency. The brochure is intended to cause the urgency for action that will bring buying decision.
  • The last page is with contact information.

Let’s see what content the website compared with the brochure now:

  • Home page of the brochure = Home page of your business website
  • Your offer of a brochure = Products as pages  on your business website
  • Urgency of the brochure = Special Promotion as part of your business website or which will have some elements that will attract attention of the visitors to take some action
  • Contact information = About Us pages of your business website or Contact Us page.

Now you can understand why over 95% of business websites look like simple web brochures? I say “simple” because they do not utilize the full potential of the online presence of their business.

How Can You Replace Your Web Brochure?

The replacement of your web brochure for a highly effective and efficient website can be done simply by replacing your static website with a dynamic one. This means a complete change of strategy to your business web presence.

The presentation of your products and services remain the same and also contact details. Still, you can add a new blog element, regularly updating with different and valuable content. For the importance of blogs to businesses, HubSpot has presented a study of business websites that have a blog and those without an incorporated blog in them. The results presented are following:

Companies that use a blog with content have far better marketing results. The average company that uses a blog also have:

  • 55% more visitors
  • 97% more inbound links
  • 434% more indexed pages.

These figures are sufficient indications for you as an entrepreneur to start changing your thinking about your business website.

Contnious Improvement of Your Business Website

After you replace the brochure, you’ll be able to start with continuous improvement of your website. The purpose of these improvements is to ensure that your potential customers can easy to find your business when they search for a solution to their problems that you can solve.

The following items should always be the subject of improvement:

  • Content – always publish quality content that will attract your potential customers and will add high value for them.
  • Use Keywords that will be covered in this content. Think about your primary and secondary keywords.
  • Use internal links. Internet world is built on links, so you need to properly optimize your internal links on your business website.
  • Meta Tags elements on each page. These are elements that are not visible to visitors, but visible to search engines.

This continuous improvement will bring more and more outbound links and improve your business website’s visibility.

The Wrong Domain Name Can Alienate Customers Without Even Trying

Another critical mistake many first-time business owners make is to name their domain after a currently popular TV show or fashion fad. The trouble with this approach is that, sooner or later, this fad will pass, and you will be left with a domain name that either confuses people who don’t remember the meaning or annoys people who would rather forget it ever existed. This is an excellent way to alienate potential customers right off the bat without even intending to.

Remember that the domain name is vital for your successful website launch.

Give Yourself The Time To Let Inspiration Do Its Work to Have Successful Website Launch

It’s a far better approach to think of a domain name that represents all the positive aspects of your business without pinning you down to any one specific theme. Meanwhile, you should avoid all references to pop culture or juvenile humor, such as puns and the like. Try to think of a name that is timeless, descriptive, expressive, and memorable.

This may seem like a tall order at first, but the more you muse over it, the more you’ll eventually get closer and closer to the essence of what you are trying to communicate. Give it enough time, and inspiration is bound to come through for you. The sooner you come up with an effective domain name, the sooner you can get on to the Internet and start fulfilling your dream of being a full-time business owner.

5. Online Chat Feature

You need to install an online chat feature on your business website to give your customers another way to get in touch with you.

You will find that many different types of businesses are now offering online chat for their customers. It is not hard to see why. Online chat is a very convenient way for people to reach out to your business without picking up the phone.

Some people might be at work or a coffee shop. Therefore, they might not want their conversation with you to be overheard. The online chat on your business website will give these people the ability to have direct contact with one of your customer service reps without any danger of someone overhearing the conversation. You will find that your customers appreciate having such a service available for them to utilize on your site.

6. Call Center for Customer Support on Your Business Website

Hiring a call center will allow you to answer calls from your customers much faster.

It is no secret that people do not want to sit on hold for a long time when they call a company. Therefore, you need to be sure that you can answer all of the questions from your customers very quickly. Otherwise, you will only succeed in annoying the people you depend on to do business with you. You might be receiving more calls from business website visitors daily than you can answer on your own. If this is the case, a call center will be the answer to your problems.

What is a call center? It is an office filled with customer service reps under the control of a different company. You will hire this outside company to run the call center for you. Each of the operators will have access to the info from all of your customers. This will allow the operators to assist them with any problem they are having at that time. Call center services will enable your customers to be taken care of without waiting a long time.

7. Use Videos on Your Business Website

Include videos on your business website that will demonstrate some of your products and services to your customers.

Most people would rather watch a video than read the same info in text form. This should not come as a surprise. This is why you should always equip your site with many videos that will serve as ads for the products and services that you are trying to sell.

You would be wise to hire a company to produce the videos for you. It is essential to make the videos look as professional as possible. This will entice more people to watch it all the way through.