Create a face for your business
Displaying your business via a website is a great way to gain traction with potential customers by defining the products and services that your company provides. Within the few minutes that you may speak to someone and deliver an "elevator speech", you cannot always portray the entirety of your business. Therefore, having a website that enables customers to browse your content at their leisure can be an important facet for your organization.
Preferring watching a video on this content instead? See this video tutorial: https://youtu.be/zBk4qJPmywo.
Listed below are four important pieces to consider before purchasing a website.
1. Website design
- Description: In which industry do you service your customers? Restaurants, accounting, manufacturing? The design should cater to your services, so that your customers understand your organization quickly at a glance. There are many website builders on the internet that come with pre-built templates, so that you don't have to worry about being a professional designer. The template can do the heavy lifting for you.
- Benefits:
- Customized content for your organization.
- The ability to add products, services, shopping carts, appointments, surveys, logins, etc. is limitless.
- Price: This could range you typically from $70 to $480 a year depending on your website provider.
2. Domain
- Description: This is important for establishing the independence of your organization. This is essentially the 'www.yourbusiness.com' of your organization. In my case, it is 'www.bloomingnamutc.com'. There are free ways to attain this by piggybacking off of other specific website providers, thus receiving 'www.yourbusiness.otherprovider.com', however I will let you decide how your business might feel about that.
- Benefits:
- Easier to find your organization on the web.
- Especially important for setting up a business email, such as 'john.doe@yourbusiness.com'.
- Price: This typically ranges from $22 to $45 a year depending on if you choose .ca or .com.
3. Email
- Description: This is pretty self-explanatory as it is your business email account. These do not come free and depending on the email provider you choose, you will gain specific benefits for file storage, security, and the software platform used to send your emails.
- Benefits:
- Using 'john.doe@yourbusiness.com' will look more professional than 'john.doe141@gmail.com'.
- As your team grows, you will be able to add additional email security and permissions for your team.
- Customers will be able to readily identify your team members by the business name in their email addresses.
- Price: This typically ranges from $45 to $132 a year depending on your email provider.
4. Website hosting
- Description: What does this even mean you might ask? Your website has to 'live' somewhere so that it can be accessible on the web. Therefore, your website must be hosted (have a home) on the web. Depending on your website builder, it may already have the website hosting built in so that you don't have to worry about this step. However, depending on your business needs, you will be able to find businesses that can host your website for much cheaper than others. Blooming Namu may be able to reduce your yearly website costs by hosting your website. Simply inquire. 😀
- Benefits:
- Essential for "turning on" your website and putting it on the internet.
- Many website builders offer this service automatically, while others require your business to find a website host.
- Price: This typically ranges from $100 to $250 a year, though if you subscribe to a popular (and expensive) website builder then this fee will already be included (without you knowing).
How can Blooming Namu help?
- Our professionals will provide a customized website with one-on-one guidance to ensure your business is ready for the web!
- We offer feature-rich website solutions at an affordable rate. We can help with website design, domains, emails, and website hosting.
- Need a tech guy? Allow our team to support your business with IT assistance throughout the life of your business.