Website Building Basics for Small to Medium Businesses

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How Websites are Built

Websites may be custom coded or built on a templated platform or content management system (CMS). A custom website is necessary when the site requires unique functionality, beyond a brochure-type site or e-commerce site.

Most small business websites today are based on templates, like those offered by Weebly, Wix and Squarespace. Wordpress requires a higher degree of Web savvy, but it's great for those whose main business is publishing a blog. Shopify is one of the easiest ways to build a fully functional ecommerce site. We recommend these for businesses requiring little custom functionality. See our list of website builders, and give some of them a try. Many offer free trials before you need to sign up.

​Custom sites are expensive and time consuming to create, because they require designers, developers and coders. Unless you're familiar with putting websites together, the whole process can be challenging and you may not end up with what you want or need. You'll also need to keep hiring people to help you make changes and maintain the site.

Hosted Tools

Hosted means the host (where your website files live) and the builder are all in one. All of these builders mentioned here include hosting, the builder and a variety of other tools. They also make it relatively easy to add other marketing technology — email marketing is just one example.

Easy to Brand Website Templates

There are some amazing and beautifully designed templates available at very low cost. Templates, or sometimes called themes, can be customized visually with colors, fonts, headers, images and more. 

Website Builder Benefits

There are many benefits to using a hosted website builder rather than creating a site from scratch. You'll get your site built quickly without the need to know too much about the technology behind it. They all offer beautifully designed, mobile responsive and professional templates, which can be customized with your branded colors, fonts, headers, images and more. It's also a lot cheaper and faster to construct.

If you're not worried about flashy graphics or custom coding, these builders can do the job for the small business owner at an affordable price. Especially useful if you want to do your own maintenance (another cost savings).

Quick Tips

Host your site where you want to
You don't need to host your site where you registered your domain name. For example, if you register at Go Daddy, you don't need to build your website there. Just find the web builder you like and point your domain to the new host. The registrar and new host will help you with the technical details.

Get an email address with your domain name
To look professional, you'll want to set up email addresses with your own domain name, that is, yourname@yourcompanyname.com, or aliases like, info@yourdomainname. There was a time when these were included in the domain registration fee, but now you'll need to pay for it.

Google Apps for Business offers a low cost way to set up your email address using your domain name for about $5/user/month. It's a simple way to establish your brand, making it look more established and professional.

Manage Google Visibility
Sign up for Google's Search Console to monitor your website. You'll also want to make sure your website host analytics (or Google Analytics) are turned on, so you can track your visitors. This is incredibly important to determine the effectiveness of your website and your overall marketing activities.

​We can help you deal with the back-end technical issues with your website and make all these valuable connections for you with our Technical Launch and On-Site SEO service.

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What's Inside, Counts

Creating website content is a different story, yet where you should be spending most of your effort and/or resources. Getting the home page and remaining content right is what converts visitors into buyers, and ultimately helps build your brand.

Take a workshop to learn more about this topic, as well as how to increase website traffic.

See our list of website builders. Give some of them a try. Most offer free trials.

We can help you make the right choices when building your website. Check out our website services