Building a Website for Your Small Business? Here are 10 Website Terms Useful to Know…
Do You Need a Website?
Whether you want to make some extra money online, or are a small business that wishes to have an internet presence, the biggest obstacle is building a website. It does not have to be if you are willing to learn the basics of managing a small business website or blog…
It need not really be said that everyone is using the internet these days, and people are using their mobile phones more and more to find the information they want. Statistics from Google says that over 57% of search is currently from mobile phone users and increasing!
Whether its news, sharing information, or providing a service or selling something, you are going to need a small business website so that people can find what you are offering!
Costs of website design from internet designing experts can range from $5000 a website up to $50000+ per site which naturally puts it out of reach of average people and small businesses owners.
Sure you can use these instant website design and creation online WYSIWYG tools, but they are limited in what they can do and the end result does not always look very professional either.
When you want to make minor changes afterwards using these tools that is when the problems start to come in and your entire creation can end up going haywire.
It is pretty useful to have a basic knowledge of how HTML and also how CSS works if you want to be able to manage your own website the way YOU want, and not have to run after a web designer for their expensive services.
It can be a little tricky to get the hang of it but fortunately, there are tons of useful youtube videos that can help you unravel the secrets of solving these little hiccups.
Businesses whether large or small that want a proper website design should avoid these free website creators because firstly they have to be hosted on the specified domain they are provided on, which means your website will not have its own domain link…
Example if you were to use WIX, for example, the domain would be on the wix.com domain and when it comes to additional features that are when the costs start adding are. You would certainly rather prefer something like www.yourbusinessname.com…
More About Free Websites and Resources
There are dozens of free websites that give you some information on website design, but none have simple easy to understand information if you are not technically minded, and you can end up doing everything all wrong and making a complete hash up.
This is valuable time wasted, coupled with frustration and like most, you could probably end up throwing in the towel!
What about Website Design Templates and Blog Themes?
Getting your website templates is easy enough by doing a simple search on Google, but once you have downloaded one that looks stunning and just what you wanted, where do you go from there?
This is when you will need certain tools for editing, the software FTP file transfer protocol clients to upload it onto the internet, and of course a hosting company which is the internet real estate where your home is and where your visitors will come and see what you have…
These days with many people using their smartphones tabs and laptops to access the internet it is wise using templates that automatically resize according to the device.
These are called responsive templates and themes and while that is all good for a start you will need to keep in mind choosing templates that load fast to satisfy the short attention spans and impatience people have in our fast-paced technology lifestyles…
Your website should always load quickly and then be easy to navigate which means good link organization layouts and tabs while information of what your business is all about must be immediately evident as soon as the visitor lands on your website.
Lastly, SEO comes into play which is Search Engine Optimization a method of getting the big search engines to deliver your website to people seeking specific related keywords.
That means within the code of your website there must be keywords meta tags and good relevant content evident in your website design so that search engines can find it and deliver it to the right audience and for this reason, you will want to be listed in the first pages of the searches people make.
After a little while, you should have some idea on how to use your control panel in your hosting account and these differ between hosting providers so it is going to be a bit of a learning curve getting the hang of it all.
From within your control panels, you can access features, use scripts, create databases and blogs, access statistics and create email accounts which are just a few examples in most control panel areas. See Example below…
With the fast growth of the internet all over the world more and more people are getting internet access and most smartphone already has these features readily installed.
Considering this it is still strange is that there are still so few small business websites and personal blogs, probably because most people think it is extremely complex to design one, but actually, the opposite is true.
With your small business, you can be proud of owning your own piece of internet real estate, and there are so many things you can do with it where it concerns interacting with clients and buyers.
You need to begin somewhere and after a bit of practice, you will eventually become comfortable with working on your website making changes, beautifying it, making it interactive and user-friendly.
Below are some of the terms relating to websites that will help you understand what they mean…..
E-COMMERCE WEBSITES: These are websites created for buying and selling of products or services electronically, on websites. They can also be offering services related products as like training for example.
WEBSITE HOSTING: Every website needs this for the management and maintaining of a website. This is where your domain/s will be hosted on a computer server so that it can be shown on the WWW World Wide Web.
HTML: Stands for HyperText Markup Language which is the code used to modify a website. Used for changing font sizes, colors, images management and much more.
CSS: Stands for Cascading Style Sheets where one or multiple coded sheets automatically style the entire website design with one small change in code sections.
TEMPLATES: This is the basic layout of all web pages and most blanks come with Latin content which you can replace with your own and images etc. There are now beautiful website templates and themes for blog clients that you can download for free while others are for sale making them a little more exclusive.
CMS: This stands for Content Management System and is a set of tools and now even software which allows non-technical people to create and update web pages. (Blogs are a good example of this and simple to use too.)
SEO: Stands for Search Engine Optimization which is important for any website to get seen and listed in search engines which is what the internet runs off. There are lots of free tools that can be used to find keywords which will help you rank well but it is an ongoing art that few people or companies can truly master due to continuing evolving of the internet…
FTP: stands for file transfer protocol which is uploading of your website onto the server where it is hosted so that it is live on the internet. Every time you modify a page then you should overwrite that page by ftp so that the changes are evident. There are a many FTP software available for free that you can download off the internet
Cpanel: stands for control panel which is hosted by your hosting company and can be accessed securely to manage your website, scripts. There are different types of c0ontrol panels used by different hosting companies.
Domain: this is your websites ‘home’ which is hosted by the hosting company. South Africa domain names end with.co.za but you are not limited to this and can choose a .com; .org; .net; .co .uk and many other options too.
JavaScript; this is computer programming code that is used to simplify showing of flash images, banners, or other interactive objects.
If you need a website build or managed then contact us using the form on this website and we will be glad to help you with your small business website designs.
Make use of all the tools and videos online when you need help with website design and after some practice, you can manage your own small business website with ease.
