Set Up Your Business Website
A website is an essential part of your business. Acting as a shop window, it provides a platform for you to showcase your products and services to a worldwide audience. Here we take you through the simple steps required to set up your business website.
Find a Suitable Website Hosting Company
There are countless website hosting companies, offering different packages and a range of price options. As a new business I would recommend choosing one of the starter or business packages for your business. You can upgrade your package as your business grows.
The majority of these packages will offer a free domain as part of your package, however as discussed below registering elsewhere may provide greater flexibility in the future.
I recommend choosing a website hosting company that offers localised hosting servers. If your business is located in the United Kingdom, make sure your website is hosted there (typically London). If your servers are located in the United States and your customers are in the UK, this could have negative impact on your websites loading times.
Recommended Domain Registration Companies:
The following website companies offer website hosting solutions based in the UK
Register Your Business Website Domain Name
In many cases you can register a domain name for free as part of your website hosting package. However for greater flexibility, you may want to setup your domain through a designated domain name provider. Once you have registered your domain name, you must change the DNS settings so website traffic is directed towards the servers where your website is hosted.
By using a separate domain name provider, you can easily move across to another hosting company and point the domain to the new servers.
Using a domain name provider is also beneficial if there are a number of domains that you want to register for your business. This may be the case if your offer unique products and brands, that you want to secure the domain names for. All these domains can then be pointed towards your main website hosting.
A Domain name provider may also be required if your website hosting can’t offer you the exact domain name you want. For example most hosting companies will offer the common .com and .net addresses, but not the more obscure domains.
Recommended Domain Registration Companies:
What’s Best For Me?
The most straightforward approach is to register your website hosting and domain name with the same company. If you don’t want to mess around with settings and don’t have access to technical support choose this method.
The separate website hosting and domain name provider approach involves some technical knowledge. The domain name DNS settings must be changed so they point to the web hosting server. However, it does provide additional flexibility to change your hosting provider in the future
Cost of Setting Up Your Business Website
Your website is one of the best value and cheapest investments your business will ever make . A business hosting package will typically cost less than £100.00 a year including a domain name. Additional domain names can be purchased from as little as £0.99 to thousands of pounds.
Building Your Business Website
Having purchased your website domain and hosting, you are now ready to start building your business website. This is the part where you begin to build your business’ online identity. We recommend employing a professional to design and build your website, speak to us if your business requires website design and build support.
