The Pandemic Pivot to Online Sales: Here’s the Basic of Getting a New Domain Up and Running

January 26, 2021 Tommy Wyher

Many people still wrongly think that building a decent website is almost rocket science. However, the truth is completely different. In 2021, pretty much anyone can do it. You don’t need to be an IT expert or a programming genius to nail it. In fact, the majority of people with professional websites built their own sites without any previous knowledge about coding, web design, or development.

In the age of social media, having a website is more of a necessity than it is an option. If you plan on promoting your business on the internet, you’ll need a professional and fully-functional website. Here’s how to make sure you get exactly what you need.

Choose Your Domain Name

The first step toward building a professional website is choosing your domain name. It is the name of your web address and your website. Your web address is a vital part of your website. Potential visitors will use it to find your website via their web browsers.

The domain name can be pretty much anything, the name of your favorite food, pet, game, you get the picture. You should know that domain names come with a price. This price ranges from $10–$50 per year.

If you still haven’t chosen or registered a domain name, we talked to the experts at Saw, a business dealing with domains, about the importance of your domain and how businesses benefit from their services. According to their CEO, Jeffrey Gabriel, premium domains help businesses get the exposure they need.

“We have seen what a powerful, positive domain can do for a company, and envisioning and facilitating online branding success stories is what drives us! Through domain brokerage, appraisal, and portfolio management services that meet our high standards, we’ve helped entrepreneurs and businesses of every size get the impact they deserve.“

Your domain name is how people see your website. If you’re building a website for a business, the name of your company should be your domain name. Choose a generic domain name extension such as .org, .net, or .com if you want to attract people from all over the world, you can learn more about premium domains here: https://saw.com

Register Your Domain and Get Web Hosting

The next step is to register your domain and get a suitable web hosting service for your new website. Web hosting is essential to your efforts to get your name to be heard online. A web hosting service provider stores and hosts your important website content on a secure server, thus ensuring maximum uptime for your website.

Getting a top-class web hosting service is what ensures internet users can easily find and access your website across several preferred web browsers. When searching for the best web hosting company for your website, look for the following features:

Good customer support (24/7 live chat)
No traffic limitations and unlimited bandwidth
Custom email accounts
Free WordPress install
Free domain name with SSL

Set Up WordPress

Your website needs a platform to function, so the next step is to choose and set up a suitable platform. Our warmest recommendation is to choose WordPress.

Aside from being one of the most popular website platforms on the web, it’s really user-friendly and comes fully packed with amazing tools and excellent features.

Use free add-ons to make your website look fully professional by adding unique features. Installing WordPress is easy and mostly automated.

Customize Your Website

Now that your website is up and running, it’s time to give it the necessary makeover. Pick an attractive and modern design, customize it and add the elements of your brand. Start with choosing the right theme.

WordPress comes with a variety of great themes that you can fully customize according to the preferred looks of your website. More importantly, the themes are free and interchangeable, allowing you to change whenever you feel like it. If you’re running a business website, do some research on the themes that are currently trending in your industry to get some ideas.

Once you have your theme, install it and add your brand logo and have it transparently displayed. Website-running platforms like WordPress have a feature called the WordPress Customizer that allows you to edit different aspects of your website to make it look exactly the way you want.

Choose the right fonts and color scheme for your website, add a sidebar to make it easy to navigate, and free WordPress add-ons.

Add Content and Create Pages

Content and pages are the very essence of your website. WordPress allows you to create web pages easily and quickly. However, it’s more important what pages you need to create:

Home page – your landing page and the very first thing visitors see when they visit your website.
About page – a page that tells your story and everything visitors should know about you as an entity online.
Contact page – if you want visitors to contact you, they should have a way to do it.
Blog page – blog posts establish your brand as an authority in your industry or the things you do. Use blog pages to post news about you, announcements, and useful information.
Service page – if you’re selling any services, this page should explain everything your customers should know about it.
Shop page – if you’re running an e-commerce business, you should have a shop page.

Conclusion

Aside from these main points, there are a couple more things that will ensure your website is up and running, but these are the essentials you need to start building your online presence. Once you’re ready to launch, keep in mind that your website needs regular maintenance and improvement to make sure you drive traffic and monetize your website.