Whether you are an independent entrepreneur, freelancer, photographer, hardware store, or any other small or large business, a well-designed and professionally promoted website is a vital element of your project’s success.
Today, it’s no longer enough to launch a website that would feature some content and include basic web design elements. The web development process and planning should be carefully thought out.
One of the best time-saving approaches to promoting businesses online is through website construction based on ready-made website templates.
Besides learning how to create a website with website templates for free or at a fee, you need to learn how to promote a website to make your project stand out from the competition and appeal to your target audience.
If you need foolproof tips on building a new website or making your current web design project more effective, here are ten time-tested methods to help your business compete successfully in the market.
Set clear goals
If you launch a new website, it’s vital to clearly define the goals of your project and stick to them during the website development and business promotion stages.
In fact, a business website may follow any goal, from purely educational to a fully promotional campaign. Specifying your project’s goals is the fundamental step that decides how you will move next.
Do you want to promote your business via a blog? Would you like to sell anything? Do you look forward to creating a remarkable portfolio showcasing your most impressive projects? These are some of the questions that should help you set the main goals of your business project.
Choose the best CMS
If you launch an online project that would let you promote and manage all kinds of digital content, then building a website using a content management system (CMS) should be the right move.
A good CMS should help you maintain your website professionally without requiring too much technical knowledge.
It’s important to choose a CMS based on your unique needs. If you hesitate about the goals your website would follow, the functionality you wish your website to include, and (more importantly) your budget, you should never lose when you use WordPress.
Millions of people prefer this CMS for its user-friendliness and the availability of millions of website templates, plugins, and third-party page builders letting you launch literally any website for any business need.
Choose a reliable eCommerce platform
If you plan to sell your products and/or services through your website, then you need to build your website on an eCommerce platform.
Shopify is the absolute leader in the eCommerce world today. WooCommerce is also in big demand, enabling you to launch online stores for different purposes and needs.
Choose the eCommerce platform based on your business model and the skills that you have for managing your store. If you are not a tech-savvy person, building an eCommerce website with WooCommerce website templates should be a good choice.
Find a great website template
As we’ve already mentioned, building business projects using website templates is a popular strategy among beginners and expert webmasters. No matter what CMS or eCommerce platform you choose, you can always find stunning website templates for it.
Besides, you may consider using such services as MonsterONE that offer comprehensive sets of ready-to-go designs, graphics, marketing tools, and functional elements, enabling you to launch your business project right out of the box.
Such services can be useful for web developers, freelancers, designers, marketing specialists, and experts of other professions looking for effective methods how to promote a website for maximum efficiency and with minimum spending.
Choose a good domain name
The domain name is your website’s address. It’s vital to pay special attention to the choice of the domain name because it will make your business findable and outstanding.
Besides, it’s good for SEO and overall business promotion through marketing channels, ads, and other means.
Some of the fundamental tips on how to choose a good domain name are:
- Make it easy to spell;
- Keep it as short and simple as possible;
- Use a proper domain extension (it’s preferably to use a .com domain name);
- Don’t use number and hyphens;
- Keep it memorable;
- Make it SEO-friendly by featuring a relevant keyword and geolocation in the domain name (like “www.LasVegasElectrician.com”).
Before making the final decision, check the strength of the chosen domain with looks like Ahrefs.
Select a secure hosting
A website host is a company that offers services and technology needed for a website to be viewed online. You can connect your domain name to your hosting provider so that when they open your URL they are shown the website that is stored on your hosting account.
On average, hosting services can cost between $2-$100 per month, depending on the kind of technology and support you choose. When you purchase a yearly subscription plan, you commonly get a discount instead of a monthly one.
There are different types of hosting plans available. Here are some quick guidelines on how to choose the best option for your website.
- You can get a shared hosting plan for as little as $2 per month. A shared server means that you share a server and its resources with other customers, making your website’s security more vulnerable and one of the reasons your website’s performance suffers.
- A dedicated hosting plan is the most expensive option, costing from $100 to $2000 per month. Running a website on a dedicated server means that the web host’s server machine is entirely dedicated to your web project, and all its resources are yours. It lets you launch a high-performing website resistant to security issues and performance vulnerabilities.
Other considerations that you should consider when choosing a hosting plan for your website include the availability of reliable support that can come for help whenever you need to resolve any problem immediately.
A good web host should also have a user interface like cPanel to access and view your server contents and make changes. Also, ensure that you check what kind of server security is in place on the web host you are considering.
There should be daily backups, a one or two-click method to install Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, and regular security maintenance, among many other things.
Reveal a clear business description
It is important to let people know what your business does and what is offers so that users don’t feel confused when they visit your website. Ensure the main homepage banner and subsequent banners are visual representations of your business.
You can also put an introductory text near the top of the page, describing who you are and what you do.
Additionally, put the About Us page links in the main and footer navigation menus on your website. Make the business description easy to access for your customers, welcoming them read more details about your brand whenever they want to.
Create an engaging UI
When building a website template-based website or creating your project from scratch, you need to ensure the user interface leaves a positive impression on your audience, thus driving positive results for your brand.
Consider using the following recommendations while working on your website’s user interface.
- Use readable fonts and beautiful graphics optimized for fast loading.
- Research the market and see how your competitors have designed their websites. Get inspired by the components used in their website UI and pick the options that should work best for your business project.
- Learn about your customers’ preferences. You should know what users expect to find on your website.
- Stay consistently on your brand throughout your website UI.
- Design an intuitive navigation system that allows users to find the content they wish easily.
- Add obvious CTAs.
SEO
SEO is a set of practices needed to apply to your website to make it rank high in search engines. When search engines crawl your website, they compare it with other websites with similar content.
The better content and design your website features, the higher your website will rank on search engine result pages. Check out the following SEO recommendations on how to promote a website without any additional investments:
- Optimize your website for mobile devices and speed;
- Ensure that your website is secure and has an SSL certificate installed;
- Use keywords that are relevant to your business;
- Use high-quality backlinks that lead to your website;
- Use internal links throughout your website to keep people on your website for longer;
- Put social media links to your website on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Regularly create and publish quality content
The quality of your content and the frequency at which it’s published on your website and external resources are important to search engines.
If you want your website to rank high in search engines and make people keep visiting your website as frequently as possible, make it a rule of thumb to publish new high-quality articles on relevant web resources as often as possible.
Besides publishing static page content and articles, share user testimonials on your website. Adding testimonials on your website is a great way to post unique, topic-specific, and high-quality content that makes your business more appealing to your audience.
Final words
Every modern-day business should be present online. There are many ways to launch a professional business website and promote your brand in search engines and popular online marketing channels.
Using website templates is one of the most effective ways of launching versatile and feature-rich websites. When used together with the most effective tips on how to promote a website listed above, your project can achieve impressive results in your market.
Author’s bio
Frank Hamilton is a blogger and translator from Manchester. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and SEO. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.
