How to Create a Business Website (for Total Beginners)

Your online presence plays a major role in your business success, with some studies suggesting that up to 97% of potential customers check it before deciding to engage with your company. While posting on social media platforms can help, the most effective way to increase your visibility is by having a business website.

You might think that creating business websites from scratch is challenging, but that doesn’t have to be the case, especially if you’re using a modern website builder. This guide walks you through how to create a business website step by step, from coming up with a design to launching it to the masses.

Choosing Your Path: DIY vs No-Code vs Hiring

Your very first step is to choose how you want to build your website. Three of the most common options include:

• Website builders
• WordPress and hosting
• Hiring a developer or agency

Many user-friendly website builders let you create a professional-looking website, even if you don’t have any technical background. They often feature drag-and-drop interfaces and offer themes and business website templates. However, they generally lack customization options and may not integrate with some third-party tools you want to use.

The cost varies depending on the platform and plan you choose, ranging from approximately $15 per month to over $300 per month for advanced plans. Website builders are ideal for individuals without technical knowledge who want a streamlined way to create a visually appealing website quickly and easily.

If you want unlimited customization and easy integration, consider creating a WordPress website and managing your own hosting. While still relatively easy, it’s not as straightforward as a website builder, but it gives you more freedom to tailor your website exactly how you want it.

Taking the WordPress route is an inexpensive option, but it may require a little more technical knowledge than a website builder, so it’s often better for those who are comfortable building and managing a site manually.

If you’d rather someone else build your site, you can hire a developer or agency to handle everything. You’ll still provide input as to how you want things to look and function, but they’ll take the reins on actually building and designing the site.

This is generally an expensive option, and can run into the thousands. It’s best suited for those who want a custom-made and incredibly polished site, but lack the technical skills to do it themselves.

Defining Your Purpose and Audience

Before you create a site, you also need to define its purpose and goal. For instance, are you:

• Selling a product or service
• Educating potential customers about a product or service
• Increasing brand visibility
• Generating leads
• Building your credibility

In addition to defining your purpose, you must identify your target audience. These are the users who you believe are most likely to visit and engage with the site. Consider their demographics, interests, pain points, purchasing habits, and online behavior so you can tailor your website content and market your product specifically to them.

Additionally, determine the features your site needs, such as live chat, a newsletter form, testimonials, and a knowledge base, as well as its appearance, i.e. how you want your potential customers to perceive your brand. This could be anything, from elevated and elegant to minimalist and down-to-earth.

Planning Your Site Structure

When planning the structure of your site and its content, start with the basics. These include a detailed homepage, an “about” page, a contact form, an updated blog, and pages that detail your products and/or services.

You can also include a frequently asked questions (FAQs) section to answer common customer questions, a portfolio page that details your past work, or even testimonials to give potential customers more confidence in your business. In fact, 72% of customers trust a business more after reading testimonials or customer reviews.

To ensure you’re clear about your website layout, it’s worth drafting a basic sitemap or wireframe to act as a blueprint. It’ll let you see the outline of the site and how it may look and flow, before you begin creating it.

Platform Selection and Setup

Once you know how you want the site to look, it’s time to put that plan into action. This begins by choosing your platform. If you’re going with a website builder, some of the most common options include Squarespace, Wix and Shopify.

If you go the WordPress route, you’ll need to choose a theme for the site and decide which plugins you need. These are pieces of software that “plug into” your site to extend its functionality or features. Common plugins that many believe are essential include Yoast SEO, UpdraftPlus and WP Rocket.

When selecting a platform, consider the scalability it offers, the search engine optimization (SEO) features it includes, whether it supports ecommerce and its level of security. If you’re working with an individual or agency to build the site, these are factors you must bring up with them, too.

In addition to that, ask about how they plan to maintain the site, how long it may take to build and the cost, as well as the tools they’ll use for building and managing your site.

Choosing a Domain Name and Hosting

Next up, it’s time to choose your domain name. This is a crucial step, as it helps to establish your online presence and is directly tied to your business and brand. For best results, choose a domain name that’s memorable and easy to spell.

Your domain name should also match your brand or business name. In fact, 77% of consumers consider exact match domain names important for businesses.

Beyond the domain, you’ll have to choose your hosting, which is what makes your website accessible on the internet. Generally, there are a few hosting tiers, including:

• Shared hosting: A budget-friendly option where you share server resources with other sites.
• VPS/cloud hosting: This option strikes a balance between cost and performance, providing more resources and control than shared hosting.
• Managed WordPress hosting: Where your hosting provider manages your WordPress website hosting and maintenance.
• Dedicated hosting: Provides exclusive use of an entire server, offering optimal resources and control, but often comes with a higher price tag.

Designing for Users and SEO

The site should be easy to navigate, include plenty of calls to action for your visitors, and feature a strong and prominent visual element that appears under your site’s menu and navigation bar. This is called a hero section and is designed to grab attention, make a good first impression and communicate the value your site offers.

In 2025, over 63% of global website traffic comes from mobile devices, so ensure your site looks and performs well on any device. You should also prioritize accessibility in general. This includes using contrasting colors and alt text so that people using screen readers can understand the meaning of your website visuals.

To ensure the site is optimized for search engines, include relevant keywords in your site copy and content, use proper headings, add meta titles and descriptions, and utilize internal linking. You should also use SEO tools to analyze your site and see if there are any pages or sections you can improve.

Adding Content and Features

When adding copy to your site, make sure it’s benefit-led and focuses on the value your products or services can provide to potential customers. It should also be action-focused, aiming to entice readers to take a desired action, such as purchasing a product, sending a message, joining an email list or following your social media accounts.

Speaking of social media, use social media integrations to display posts directly on your website to encourage visitors to follow you.

Visuals are also a major part of your website, as they can help improve engagement and keep people interested as they browse. However, ensure all visuals are properly optimized, so they don’t slow down your site. Research shows that a site that loads in a second has a three times higher conversion rate than a site that loads in five seconds.

If your website doubles as an ecommerce store, it should have a secure checkout, clear product descriptions and images, and detailed information about your shipping and return policies.

Testing and Pre-Launch Checks

When the site is built, the next step is to test it. You should test the website on multiple devices and browsers to ensure it functions properly. It should look good and work well, load quickly, and not lag while scrolling a page or navigating to a new one.

Some other pre-launch tasks include:

• Proofreading all aspects of the site to ensure there are no spelling or grammar errors
• Using crawling tools to perform an SEO audit, like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb
• Creating backups
• Checking that security features and functionalities are in place and working properly
• Ensuring it complies with any relevant laws, such as GDPR and/or CCPA

Launch and Promotion

If all your tests and checks go well, you’ve set up your analytics and tracking tools and have submitted your sitemap to search engines like Google, you’re ready to launch the site.

Unfortunately, people aren’t just going to flock to your site now that it’s live, so you’ll need to promote it to attract visitors.

There are many options for advertising your site, including using marketing tools (like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign), spreading the word on social media, paying for ads, and creating a Google Business Profile. You can also update your site frequently with SEO-optimized blog content to help it rank higher on search engines.

In addition, encourage reviews and testimonials from your customers or clients. This is incredibly important as it can drastically improve your chances of making a sale in the future. For example, research shows that a product with five reviews has a 270% higher purchase likelihood than an item with zero reviews.

Ongoing Maintenance and Optimization

However, the work isn’t done when you launch. You still need to schedule updates for all your platforms, themes and plugins, and track ongoing site performance with analytics tools.

You also need to think about content management, making sure you’re updating the site’s blog, listing new products when you launch them and adding new FAQs. In addition, it is important that you perform frequent security monitoring to identify and address any vulnerabilities on the site.

Budgeting for the annual costs of hosting, plugins, the platform you use and any other website-related costs is also a necessary task. The exact amount varies, but it’s often hundreds of dollars every year, or more.

When To Level Up

As your site grows and scales, you may want to incorporate features such as membership, a client portal or custom forms. These are important since they can help you build a stronger community, boost engagement, and enhance the interactivity of your website.

In addition to offering extra functions to your visitors, there may also come a time when managing the site becomes too much to handle. For instance, your customization needs grow, you can no longer keep up with the maintenance yourself or you’re struggling with performance issues. In cases like these, you may want to consider reaching out for professional help.

As you grow, it’s also essential to perform regular technical audits to ensure the site continues to function smoothly. A content delivery network (CDN) can speed up your site, keeping the user experience streamlined during periods of heavy traffic.