You've decided you want to make a company website.
You may wish to sell products, advertise your services or provide information about your company that will allow customers to contact you.
Your first steps toward setting up a business website should first make a plan of what you wish the website to achieve.
This will help you focus on the most important aspects of your site and: 1.
give a web development company the best information to provide a proposal and quotation with schedules or 2.
give you an outline for building this yourself.
Your plan should consist of a list of goals - You may find it productive to use questions as your goal heading, as the examples show: 1.
What is my website for? Providing contact information? Sell your products online? List your upcoming events or training programs? Examples: * My website will sell my products online.
* My website will inform customers of my services and contact details.
* My website will promote my nightclub events.
* My website will update my customers with news and blog articles.
2.
Who will be your target audience? Will they already be customers or are you looking for new business or both? Will they know the product(s) or services you offer or will your content need to be tailed to provide simple english descriptions? Who will write this content? What is their age range? Will they be comfortable purchasing products or services online or will they contact you and you phone them to discuss purchase? Knowing your target audience is crucial in how you present your website's information.
3.
How much time can you devote to my website? Be honest.
Good websites may require consistent updates and content - especially if the site includes a.
Are you able to provide the time for this? Can you delegate? Can you out-source? If you feel is will take too much of your time, complete these steps and then present to a web development company.
4.
Project budget How much can I afford to spend? Would I need to build in phases? Be realistic.
Your website goal may be to ultimate pay for itself or become an additional revenue stream for your business.
However, processing payments costs money - you will require a merchant bank account for example which usually has monthly minimum costs.
(speak to some banks to get a competitive rate) A brochure style site - for example 4 to 5 pages with a contact form - could cost in the region of £1,000 to design and build by a web development company while a full e-commerce site could cost £5,000 upwards depending on features required.
5.
How do you sell your products online? Do you have shipping rules based on weight or type of product purchased? You made need a bespoke e-commerce platform.
6.
What will I initially require for my site? You will need a domain name.
Ideally one containing your company name.
You will need webspace - an area online where your content and images will be accessed.
Note: If you are going to be working with a web development company, they may offer to set up these services as part of the project - be sure to discuss this with them at the beginning.
Your website will require content to be written.
Who will write this - you, the web design company, a copywriter? Will you need product images or photos of premises or staff? Planning this list of requirements in advance will hep you focus on the important information.
7.
How will people find my site? The basic rules are:

• have a relevant keyword or phrase in the page title, website address and top level page headings.
  
• try to think from the perspective of a site visitor - what words would they use to find your products?

Insider tip 1: If you're selling online, keep these two things in mind:

1. Try to avoid paypal for your transactions.
   It is fine for ebay payments or non commercial activity but the ability to dispute a paypal payment months after the transaction has occurred is an unnecessary business risk.
   Use a card payment processor.
   A secure, user-friendly process to use in the UK is SagePay - initial costs can be £25 per month if you already have a merchant account or a per transaction rate if you require a merchant account also.
   (link) In the US, you can use services like Stripe or Authorize.
   net.
   
2. If you use a payment processor, you will have on-going monthly costs to consider as well as your own business security as your bank may insist on PCI Compliance.
   (link: what is PCI Compliance aside with external link to website) For example, you will need to display contact information on the checkout page, terms and conditions and refund policies need to be prominent in the checkout process.
   You will be required to display your registered address and Company Number.
   

Insider tip 2: Most of Search Engine marketing techniques and companies you find on the web are wasting your money.
There is no secret formula to getting visitors to your site, you need to have good content and reputable third-party links.
Planning ahead with regards to the content your website requires while also considering how people will find your page will safe you time and money in the future.
Be sure to structure your content with titles and sub-title containing the search term or keyword related to the content.