6 min read
How do you make a website for a business?
Making a website has never been easier. In a single evening you can set up a site that looks respectable. The hard part is not setting it up, but making it do something for the business once it is live. Here is the order that saves the most, whether you do it yourself or get help.
Start with what the site is for
Write down one goal: bookings, enquiries, sales, or people finding your phone number and opening hours. Every page on the site should then lead to that goal. A site that tries to do everything usually does nothing well.
The domain in the company's name
.is domains are registered with ISNIC. Make sure your company is the registered holder of the domain, not whoever builds the site. It is common for businesses to find out years later that their domain is in the name of a former employee or a web agency.
Set up email on the domain too, name@yourcompany.is. It looks better than a free address, and it stays when you change websites.
Content before design
Write the text before you choose a design: what you do, for whom, what it costs and how to reach you. A design chosen before the content ends up with text squeezed into boxes made for something else.
Your own photos of the people, the place and the work say more than stock photos. A phone photo in good light beats a beautiful image that could be of any company at all.
Yourself or with help?
Platforms like Wix and Squarespace are quick and cheap to start with, and they suit a site that is a business card few people visit. The drawback comes later: you rent the site, speed is limited and it is hard to move the content elsewhere if you want to switch.
Help pays off when the site has to sell or take bookings, when it needs to talk to another system, or when Google matters to you. Then what is done on the first day decides whether the site gets found.
What must be in place the day it goes live
Every page has its own title and description for Google. The site is tested on a phone. Search Console is connected, so you can see what people search for. A Google Business Profile is set up with the same address and phone number as the site. If you use analytics or ad pixels, you need a cookie banner and a privacy policy.
Write down the site's one goal and put the domain in the company's name before you choose any platform. Everything else can be fixed later, but those two are hard to change.