A website is important for anyone who is looking to create their own business, but a lot of individuals have a website as well. Whatever your reason for building a website is, you are not alone in this endeavor.

Some people prefer to find a website for sale and buy it, while others like to make a website from scratch. If you are one of those people who want to put in the hard work and create a new website, there are some things you should know about the process.

Register a domain name

You can’t have a running website if you don’t have a domain name. Most people know domain names as URLs. Think of it as your website’s address on the internet, and you don’t want your website to have a bad one.

A domain name is a very important aspect of website building, and it can make or break it. If you are building a website for business purposes, your domain name can even influence your success. While domain names often cost a lot to register, you can find a cheap domain name that will attract visitors.

Creating a domain name isn’t an exact science, but there are some characteristics all good domain names share. They include:

• The right domain name extension. The most popular and trustworthy extension is .com and 42.48% of all domains have it. If you can’t register the domain name you want with this extension, good alternatives would be .net or .org. Just make sure to avoid uncommon extensions such as .za, .be, and .pizza.
• The perfect number of characters. It’s possible to register a long domain name and maybe even tempting since a lot of short ones are already taken. But if you want to have a memorable name that improves user experience, keep it between 6 and 14 characters long.
• Keywords. If you want to get your website to the first page of Google, you need to apply SEO strategies, and using keywords is the best-known SEO strategy. Keywords also tell your visitors the purpose of your website, and people are more likely to visit a website that has a keyword they searched for in its domain name.

Think about web design

Web design is probably the most important factor of your website’s success as it greatly impacts user experience. No matter if you are designing it yourself, or you want to hire someone to design it for you, there are some aspects of design you can’t ignore.

Here are some characteristics of a well-designed website:

• Fast-loading. The time it takes for your website to load is a factor that can significantly influence user satisfaction. In the age where everything is fast-paced, nobody wants to wait for more than a couple of seconds for a website to load. If your website doesn’t have this characteristic, people will simply leave it.
• Easy-to-understand navigation. There’s no need to include multiple complex pages that will just confuse website visitors. People need to find what they are looking for in just two or three clicks. That means that your website design needs to be very easy to understand, but also modern.
• Visual cues. Apart from simple navigation, you need visual cues that will lead people to where they need to go. Some websites use arrows to navigate users, while others use people who are looking at where they want their users to click.
• Mobile-friendliness. Most people access the internet through their mobile devices, and nowadays it’s expected that all websites are optimized for mobile users. In fact, 83% of mobile users say that a seamless experience across all devices is very important

Use a knowledge base software

Anyone who has a business website needs a knowledge base software. Or at least those who want to provide their customers with an amazing customer support experience.

A knowledgebase allows you to help more customers without sacrificing the quality of content. The knowledgebase is also known as self-serve customer service or customer education, and it represents a library of information about your service or products. It allows the customers to solve whatever problem they have on their own.

When you have knowledge base software, you can analyze recurring questions, topics, and issues, and then create self-service customer support. Modern knowledge bases usually consist of various forms of content such as text articles, videos, images, and infographics, just to name a few.

You might think that it’s hard to find topics for a knowledge base article, but it’s actually an easy-to-do task. All you need to do is see what your website visitors are struggling with, which questions they keep asking, and then form a knowledge base around those topics.

Here are some tips on how to write a good knowledge base article:

• Write good and clear titles.Your website visitors need to understand what your article is about and how it can solve their issue just by reading the title. Don’t write clickbait titles as they won’t be read by those who actually need the information.
• Write descriptive content.If someone is reading your knowledge base article, they need to resolve an issue. If your article isn’t filled with descriptive and useful content, it won’t be able to help anyone.
• Link to external resources.Links have more than one use in knowledge base articles. The first one is to help expand on what you have already written and to provide the reader with a better explanation. The second one is boosting SEO.

Start a blog

Most successful business websites have blogs. They are a great way to educate your audience about your company and products, but they can also help you boost SEO and establish authority in your field.

Additionally, 68.5% of consumers say that a blog adds credibility to a website, so there is no denying a blog should be an essential part of your website.

The most important thing about writing for your blog is to write SEO-friendly content and in-depth articles. A blog with poorly-written articles won’t provide your audiences with the content they want and need. But if you write in-depth content, you will be able to form stronger relationships with your audience.

While it is important to have well-written and unique articles that will provide your readers with a plethora of useful information, your blog posts also need to be entertaining. People have really short attention spans, and you need to hold their attention until the end of the article.

And finally, make sure to include images in your blog posts. Visuals are a great way to break the monotony of written text, and people are more likely to read a blog post with images than one without them. While well-written content will draw people in, it won’t necessarily make them stay.

If you need reasons why visuals are an essential part of any blog post, here are some facts about visual content to convince you:

• 91% of people prefer visual content over written content.
• People’s desire to read content increases by 80% when they see colored visuals.
• Posts with images produce 180% more engagement.
• Human brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text.

Final thoughts

The road to building a great website is long, and it will take a lot of time and effort until you end up with the website you envisioned. But the journey will be worth it when the end result is a well-designed website with a good domain name and features that improve your SEO.

There’s no need to worry about whether or not your website will be a success because if you follow all of these simple tips, your success is almost guaranteed.