How to build a website (business, personal, portfolio, blog)

Getting Started

With over 90% of Americans using the internet in some way, shape or form (Statista), and 97% of those users visiting a business’s web presence before visiting that business (Webfx), it is essential to have a website for your business, products, blogs, YouTube, ext. built.

Before you get started, we strongly suggest you brainstorm what you hope to achieve with your website before you move forward. By doing some research on your competition, targeted keywords, and local SEO, you will be able to better understand what might work for your business. We suggest using Ahrefs to help you figure out what might work for you! They provide entire courses that can help you focus on SEO and getting your target customer to visit your site!

Once you have your target audience in mind, we made a 4 step process so you can nail your first website build!

Register your domain name

Your domain name should be like the products or business name that you have created, whether that is for social media, business, or something else.

For example, we used www.limitlessdevs.com as our website name while our business name is Limitless Web Developers, LLC. We did this because we know our customers expect out domain name to be similar to our business name.

You should also use your domain name for your email address because it creates the image of professionalism, authority, and brand identity.

To register your domain, you need to find an accredited registrar and pay a fee. We prefer Google. All of these companies can help you change your domain name, register a new one, or make changes to your domain name records.

Find a web hosting company or website builder (if you do not know how to code)

You will need to find a web hosting company or website builder to get your domain name up and running. Google does offer partner companies that have website builders. However, if you are custom coding, we suggest using Netlify, or Heroku.

While Google is a great company that offers a bazillion services, we find that its web hosting is rather difficult to navigate, especially for newer coders. (Hint: You must know how to use docker).

Web hosting companies also provide you with multiple email addresses. Their monthly fees are dependent on the size of the website that you are planning on building.

Compile your content

We suggest getting started by thinking about what you want your audience to be able to do on your site and building from there. It is easier to start knowing you need a home, blog, products, contact, about, and reviews page than it is to just amass content without a structure. So, we definitely suggest you get started with figuring out your overall structure and pages.

Your objective in the structuring portion of your project is to make it as easy as possible for your guests to find what they are looking for and do the things they need.

As you might consider hiring a website designer such as Limitless to design, build, and structure your website for you, you might want to consider hiring a professional to write and structure your content.

A well designed and structured website that displays content that is in line with the overall purpose and easy to use, will help your business stand out from the crowd. Having appropriate content will help customers understand your products and services and will make help them feel confident in their purchase.

Building your website

You can build your website or have professionals do it for you. We strongly suggest having someone on your team maintenance and update your website constantly.

If you are going to build out your website, we suggest using Wix, for smaller informational websites, up to small e-commerce websites, Shopify for large e-commerce, or WordPress for your builds. All these companies have plenty of documentation to help you with your build so that you can create the website that you need.

Having a professional build your website for you is a great idea if you are new to online business or not computer savvy. For the most part, you should be able to get away with building your own with a rudimentary knowledge of how to use Google’s search engine.

While you are building, you need to make sure that your website is completely responsive. This means that your website displays beautifully regardless of what device it is being displayed on. Having responsive design helps your customers that are out and about find you!

Tips and Tricks for creating a website:

• Think about what your customers want to know and help them find it on your site.

• Use professionals to help you. Unprofessional websites can push your customers away.

• Update your website constantly! Write articles, blogs, social media, ext. to keep your customers up to date.

• Make sure your contact details are correct and easy for your customers to find.

• Promote your website in your marketing material and include it on your business cards.

• Find out how you can make your website easy for search engines, such as Google, to find. This is called search engine optimisation (SEO). A web developer can help you with SEO for your website.