If you want to set up a company website, there are a few steps that you may want to take to ensure that you end up with a website you are happy with and which accurately represents your company.
Here is a guide to the basic steps that you may wish to take in order to get your company website up and running.
Decide on your objectives
The first stage is to sit down with your team and decide what it is that you want from your website. Do you want it to be a website alone, or would you like to turn it into an e-commerce store so that people can purchase your products directly?
You may also want to consider whether you want to build a blog as well to try and turn your website into a valuable information resource.
Find a hosting company
Before you can get your website online, you have to decide upon a domain name and sort out your web hosting plan. There are many companies offering web hosting, and some of them may provide domain registrations as well, so look into a few companies and try to find one that offers what you require.
It is a good idea to get this decision right because although you can change your hosting company in the future it can be a hassle to do so.
Find a design company
The most important stage of getting your website up and running is finding a website design and development company to design your site for you.
Once you find one you like the look of, talk to them and ask lots of questions to ensure that you are on the same wavelength. There needs to be a lot of interaction in the design process, so make sure they are easy to reach so that you feel comfortable that they are going to listen to your ideas and put them into action.
Work with your designer
The designer may then come up with a few designs for your website based on what you have told them. It may be a good idea to show them various other websites that you like the look of so that they have a better idea of what you want.
It may also be a good idea to provide them with some content for the main pages so that they are able to use this to influence their design. Web designers like to use content when designing websites so this may make the process easier.
Launch the website
After the designer has shown you some designs and you have agreed to one of them, the website can then be launched. Once it is up and running, make sure that you check over the whole site to make sure everything is working properly, and check for any broken links. If everything is fine then you now have your new website on the internet for the world to see.
About Jason Hulott
