Whether you are in the process of creating a whole new website for your startup, or just tinkering with the old website you have, it is very important to give it a professional and inviting look. At this early stage in the game you just can’t afford to have potential customers getting turned away by an unprofessional and sloppy website experience.
It doesn’t have to be expensive either if you know what to do.
Don’t Wait – Do It Now.
You should have already bought all of the domain names that you think you will use in the future; the longer you wait, the higher the chance is that someone else will come along and take the domain names you wanted.
This can be heartbreaking if you just missed out on a great domain because you were putting it off until later, and they’re very cheap so there is no reason to postpone the purchase.
Get a website up on that domain name fairly quick too; you don’t have to wait until you have a perfectly polished website before going live with it. That doesn’t mean you should put just any old website up there that will look unprofessional though. At the very least you can upload a placeholder website with the bare minimum information about you and your startup, and some contact details.
Don’t wait to register your social media accounts until you’re ready to start promoting. It is important to try to grab social names such as “MyStartup” instead of “MyStartup9122” on websites such as Twitter and Instagram so register them early, before anyone else has a chance to take them from you.
Your Website Needs a Content Management System (CMS).
The content management system that you choose will basically be the engine that powers your website. As the name implies, a CMS helps you to manage content – such as images, blog posts, and just about everything your visitors see – and allows your website to store and retrieve all such information whenever needed.
WordPress is overwhelmingly the most popular CMS in use at the moment, and it’s free so there is nothing to stop you from giving it a try. When you start to make a WordPress website it may be a little confusing at first, although most of the basic features you need are very easy to understand. One of the major reasons to use WordPress is the amount of help and plugins that are readily available online, and they’re free too.
Don’t Try to Do Everything Yourself.
Even the best writers in the world rarely take the photographs and draw the illustrations for their books, because they can’t do everything. They understand that while they are good at one part of the business, other parts need to be outsourced to professionals in those fields. The same concept applies to creating an online presence for your startup, because nobody is perfect and nobody is good at everything.
Now that you have some idea of what you’re in for, you should get started right now. Buy your domain names, get a hosting account, register your socials, and then take it from there. You can always work on your website behind the scenes while your placeholder site at least lets people know that you exist.
