Starting a small business is a big undertaking, and one of the first steps you should take is building a website. A website allows you to showcase your products or services, share information about your business, and make it easy for customers to contact you.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the thought of building a website, don’t worry!
In this blog post, we’ll walk you through the process of building a small business website on WordPress in just six easy steps.
Whether you’re new to website building or you’re a seasoned pro, this guide will help you get your website up and running in no time!
You’ll need these 5 things to build your website with WordPress:
This isn’t really a black-and-white answer.
There are many factors to consider when looking at the cost of a website.
A typical small business website can cost as low as $100 and can go as high as $50K or MORE.
It’s highly recommendation that you always start out small if going a DIY route, and gradually add more features to your website as your business grows.
However, in this guide, I’m going to show you how to build a website for less than $100.
There are plenty of website platforms available. We personally recommend using WordPress as your website platform.
WordPress is the most popular website platform in the world, it powers 43% of all websites on the internet, including CNN and Best Buy.
WordPress is FREE and comes with 1000’s of website themes and plugins. It’s flexible and adaptive to the needs of small businesses.
We use WordPress to build all websites, including our own.
In this step-by-step guide on how to create a website, we’ve divided this process into six steps and we’ll walk you through everything from start to finish.
Just follow along with us, and the end result will be a very professional looking website.
Let’s get started, shall we?
First, head over to the SiteGround website in a new browser window and click on the ‘View Plans’ button.
This will bring you to the pricing page where you’ll need to select a monthly pricing plan for your website. Startup and GrowBig plans are the most popular choices among our clients.
You’ll need select a plan that works best for your budget and goals.
On the next screen, you’ll be asked to Register a new domain or if you already have one, add your existing domain.
For most website builds, a .com is the best choice, since it’s what most internet users expect and is easiest to remember.
Need help choosing a domain name for your website?
The following tips and tools will help you in your website building journey for choosing the best domain name.
For BEST results, you’ll want to pick a domain name that matches some simple criteria:
TIME-SAVING TIP: Use Domain Wheel to simplify this process, it does the brainstorming for you and checks the domain name availability.
After choosing a domain name, click on the ‘Next‘ button to continue.
Now you’ll be asked to provide your account details such as name, address, email, etc.
At this screen, you will also see optional add-ons that you can purchase.
We generally don’t recommend purchasing these add-ons right away. You can always add any of these options to your plan later on.
Next, you will add your payment information to complete the transaction.
Once complete, you will receive an email with the exact details on how to login to your new web hosting control panel.
This is your Hosting dashboard, where you can manage everything like creating support tickets, add email accounts, etc.
More importantly, this is where you’ll install the WordPress website platform.
A new section would appear where you will be prompted to select the domain name that you want to use with your new WordPress installation.
Click the Continue button once you have the chosen the desired option to proceed to the next step.
On this next step you should select to Start a New Website or to Migrate an existing one. Click on Select under Start New Website.
Choose WordPress and enter the preferred login details for your new WordPress application. Once you are ready, click on Continue.
Next, choose what enhancements you wish to add to your website – if you want to add any. When you are ready with this step – click on Finish.
That’s it! Wasn’t that simple?
Now let’s move on to the next step and choose a design for your website.
The visual appearance of your WordPress website is controlled by a theme.
WordPress themes are professionally designed templates that you can install on your website to change its appearance.
By default, each WordPress website comes with a basic theme. If you visit your website, the default theme that is installed is Twenty Twenty-Three.
In order to fully customize the appearance of your website, you will need to install a theme.
At Level Up, we have over 100+ Website Themes for clients to choose from.
Download the Free Astra Theme by Brainstorm Force.
Astra is a fast and attractive WordPress theme with an elegant and stylish design. This lighting fast theme is built with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind. It’s also compatible with all popular web page builders and makes building a website even easier. It’s what we use for client websites.
Once you’ve downloaded Astra, head back in your WordPress Admin dashboard
To do that, type in ‘/wp-admin’ after your domain name. This will direct you to your default WordPress login page.
Type in the username and password you’ve previously entered during the WordPress installation process.
Next, go to Appearance » Themes.
Click on ‘Add New‘ theme.
Click on ‘Upload Theme‘
Then click on ‘Choose File’ and upload the Astra zip file you downloaded in the previous steps.
Click ‘Install Now‘ to complete the theme installation process.
In order to fully customize the pages of your website, you will need to install a web page builder (plugin).
Elementor is a powerful FREE drag-and-drop webpage builder for WordPress.
Elementor doesn’t require any special knowledge or “coding skills.” Everything can be done through a true, but simple What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. This Webpage Builder opens up endless possibilities — especially if you’re on a budget but still want your company website to look attractive.
Go to ‘Plugins‘ in the WordPress dashboard.
Click on ‘Add new.’
Type in the keywords ‘Elementor’ in the search bar.
Then click the ‘Install’ button.
Once installation is complete, you’ll activate the Elementor plugin.
Click ‘Activate‘
Elementor lets you add a complete professional page design template in one-click, using the template library.
Click on ‘Page’ > ‘Add New’
Provide a ‘Title‘ of your Home page, and click the ‘Edit with Elementor‘ button.
Here, you can see the Elementor Editor panel, where you can design and preview your website in real-time.
Click: ‘Add Template’ icon.
Now, you can choose from the 100+ pre-designed webpage templates available in the Elementor.
Then click ‘Insert‘ button.
You can review/edit all of the typical sections you get with an Elementor template:
From here you can customize each and every section of this page, to make it truly unique to your brand.
Now that you have created some content on your website, lets customize a few things.
Start by setting your static front page.
You need to visit the Settings » Reading page in your WordPress dashboard.
Under the ‘Your homepage displays’ option, click on the ‘A static page‘ and then select a page that you created in the previous step for your ‘Homepage.’
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page.
Let’s add a ‘Site Title’ and ‘Tagline’ to the website website in the Settings » General page of your WordPress dashboard.
Your ‘Site Title‘ will be the name of your website. The ‘Tagline‘ is usually a single line that briefly describes what your website is about. You can also leave Tagline field blank.
Click on the ‘Save Changes‘ button.
WordPress comes with a built-in commenting system to allow your website visitors to leave comments on your Blog posts. This is great for user engagement, and useful for spammers as well.
To police this, you’ll want to enable comment moderation on your website.
Visit Settings » Discussions page in your WordPress dashboard and scroll down to ‘Before a comment appears’ section. Check the box next to ‘Comment must be manually approved’ option.
Click on the ‘Save Changes‘ button.
A navigation menu allows your users to browse different webpages or sections on your website. WordPress comes with a built-in navigational menu system, and your WordPress theme (Astra) utilizes this system to display the menus you create.
Let’s add a navigation menu to your website.
First, you need to visit Appearance » Menus page in your WordPress dashboard. Enter a name for your navigation menu and click on the ‘Create Menu‘ button.
WordPress will now create your navigation menu. But it will be empty at the moment.
Next, you want to choose the pages to display in your menu and then click on ‘Add to Menu‘ button.
After adding your pages to your navigation menu, you can easily rearrange the page positions up or down in the menu.
Now you need to select a Display Location. These locations are defined by your WordPress theme. Most WordPress themes have the Primary Menu appear at the top.
Click the ‘Save Menu‘ button to set your navigation menu to Active.
WordPress Plugins are applications for your WordPress website. They allow the capability to add new features to your website. Think of these as analytics dashboards, contact forms, portfolio galleries, etc.
There are more than 50,000+ plugins available for a WordPress website. Most plugins are FREE and others are Premium ($$$) versions.
With so many plugins available, which one do you choose? Thankfully, we put together a must-have list of WordPress plugins below that will help you in your journey online.
Here are the essential plugins to get you started.
Building a small business website on WordPress is a simple and straightforward process that can be completed in just six easy steps. By following these steps, you can create a professional and functional website that will help you to grow and promote your business online.
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced web developer, WordPress provides all the tools and resources you need to create a successful website that meets your business needs.
By taking the time to carefully plan and design your site, you can create a website that will help you to attract and engage customers, and ultimately drive business growth.
If you should get stuck in the process, we can help! Schedule your risk-free strategy call now.
Level Up is a leading edge digital marketing company in Rockwood, Michigan. We deliver revenue-generating results for clients with our customized marketing solutions. Our team of web designers, SEO specialists, content writers and social media experts want to help you create a Next Level marketing strategy to help GROW your local business online. Give us a call today at (888) 754-5164 to speak with a marketing strategist.
