Creating a successful business website doesn’t have to be overwhelming. A thoughtful plan, clear content, and the right platform will help you launch a site that looks great, loads fast, and earns trust.
Competitor Website Assessment
Review a few top-ranked sites in your industry for inspiration. Build and design considerations will typically include layout, content, navigation, features, and styling. We’ll use what you like as reference points and rewrite everything in your voice so it’s unique to your business.
- Design & usability: Is it easy to navigate? What does the style convey?
- Content: How is information structured and presented?
- Features: Booking, e-commerce, downloads, video, etc.
- Performance: Pages should load quickly.
- SEO signals: What keywords and topics are they targeting?
Choosing the Right Web Platform
The platform shapes how your site works and how easy it is to maintain.
- Traditional HTML5: Best for simpler sites with infrequent updates—lightweight and very secure.
- WordPress (CMS): Ideal for blogs, portfolios, e-commerce, and frequent updates; requires routine maintenance for security and performance.
We’ll recommend the best fit based on your goals, budget, and update needs.
Selecting a Domain Name
Your domain is your online identity—keep it short, descriptive, and memorable. Avoid numbers and hyphens when possible. It’s generally best to choose the .com extension for most businesses (with .net or other popular industry options as alternatives). Register the domain in your name with a trusted registrar (e.g., GoDaddy, Namecheap, Domain.com).
Hosting That Works for You
Hosting impacts reliability, speed, and SEO. Choose Linux hosting (needed for WordPress and best for HTML), with fast servers, free SSL, and cPanel integration. Reputable mid-tier shared hosting providers include Bluehost, HostGator, and InMotion Hosting. Keep both hosting and domain registered to you. We do not recommend GoDaddy for hosting since their shared servers are frequently slow (especially on the backend) and they charge additional for SSL certificates.
Mobile-First, Always
Many of your visitors will view your site on their phones. Every site we build is fully responsive so it looks and works great on all device resolutions—something search engines reward. As you review competitor websites, it’s a good practice to resize the screen to get a sense of how the page layout changes as the viewport resolution resizes.
Writing Engaging, SEO-Ready Copy
Clear, useful content beats fluff. We’ll help plan your sitemap and craft pages that are easy to read and optimized for search.
- Headlines: Specific and helpful.
- Keywords: Researched and used naturally.
- Meta descriptions: Compelling and accurate.
- Calls-to-action: Guide visitors to contact, request a quote, or book.
Quality Business Images
Good visuals build trust. Provide images you own or have licensed for commercial use (products, services, team). We’ll optimize them best visual quality and resize and crop as needed.
Essential Legal & Trust Pages
Include a Privacy Policy (required by CA), Terms of Service for e-commerce or membership sites, where applicable. We’ll advise based on your needs.
Professional Business Email
Use a domain-based address (e.g., you@yourbusiness.com) for credibility. We recommend Google Workspace for its reliability, security, and spam protection. It’s also relatively easy to authenticate with SPF and DKIM (hosting security measures); and OAuth verification, used in SMTP verification plugins, can be done quickly with Google Cloud. While Microsoft 365 is also a popular option, at present it’s very difficult to authenticate, which can hinder form submission reliability.
Social Media for Business
Start with one or two platforms where your audience is active, then expand. We recommend Facebook and LinkedIn to start, and YouTube and Instagram when you have visual content to share. We’ll help with setup, branding, posting guidance, and integration with your website.
Reviews, Testimonials & Case Studies
Social proof matters. We can integrate Google and Yelp Reviews as stand-alone pages, or as select inclusions on key pages; and we recommending case studies where portfolio work is relevant—especially powerful for construction and service industries.
Security & Ongoing Maintenance
Websites will typically require ongoing changes to keep content fresh and address SEO changes in the industry. We offer affordable content and administrative updates.
Website Tracking
We’ll set up Google Analytics and Search Console so you can see what’s working—traffic, top pages, search queries, and conversions. This content will be useful for data driven improvements.
What to Do Next
- Contact us and provide an overview of what you’re looking to have developed.
- List your pages and needed features (forms, galleries, portfolios, etc.).
- Gather your text and quality business images (organized by page).
- Once your project has been scheduled, content can be provided by email, Dropbox, or Google Drive.