5 Steps to Get Your Business Online
Starting a business online opens up a world of opportunities, giving you the ability to reach a wider audience, operate 24/7, and benefit from lower start-up costs. Embracing the digital landscape can help your business thrive in today’s competitive marketplace.
But with so many options and opportunities, where do you begin?
Here are a few simple steps that will not only put your business online, but will also help you ensure it is a success.
Plan aheadThe more time you devote to thoroughly preparing and designing your site, the fewer obstacles you will encounter as the project progresses:
- Think of which pages you need (sitemap) and what features or content will be displayed on those pages.
- Create a requirements document that explains how each page will work (don’t produce “War and Peace” though!)
Put your ideas to paper.
- Find websites that inspire you. Award winning websites are always a good place to start.
- Choose a premade template if your budget is limited. You can always choose a good template that conveys the vision of your company’s values. Themeforest is the biggest and most reliable source of high-quality themes. Think of a template as providing the base for your site. You can then customize it as you wish; for example, you can change colours and layout, add new pages and so on. Most templates have been purposely designed to be responsive so if you use a pre-made template you can be sure that your site will look great on every device.
- Think about what information you want users to find on your website. This will help you to ensure your website is logical and easy to navigate.
- Prepare wireframes and mockups. There are a few great tools that can come in handy for doing this. Check out Balsamiq Mockups or Online Vector Based Mockup, for example.
- Find the dedicated development team to implement your ideas and bring them to life. You can read more about how to find the best team for your project here.
- Make sure that the product is thoroughly tested and is bug-free. The first impression is hard to beat so make sure that the team you’ve chosen is familiar with onsite SEO and is capable of delivering a high-quality product.
There’s no limit to perfection, so after launching your project you’re likely to be eager for more: either you’ll want to add more features to your existing website or you will want to build additional projects. There’s one thing to keep in mind though — the right choice of a platform and a web-development team will inspire you to plunge deeper into online exploration, while a negative experience can bury your future aspirations.
The choice is always yours of course.
Ready to take the plunge?! Get in touch with A2 Design today.
