Starting a Business All-In-One For Dummies

Chapter 5

Creating a Website for Your Business

In This Chapter

• Establishing your business presence(s)
• Organizing an easy-to-navigate business website
• Optimizing type and images to build a graphic identity
• Promoting trust with concise, well-designed web page content
• Inviting interaction through forms, email, and more

No matter what you sell or where you sell it — on the web, in a brick-and-mortar store, or even on Facebook — you need to have a home base on the web, a presence. Not so long ago, a “home base” on the web automatically meant a website. A website is important, but you can sell online without one. Hence, the term presence.

It's a subtle but significant difference. A presence can include a blog, ads on Craigslist, exposure for your app on iTunes, or storefronts on a variety of marketplaces.

Wherever you do business, the same basic principles work on the web just as well as they do in the brick-and-mortar world. Attracting customers is important, but real success comes from establishing relationships with customers who come to trust you and rely on you for providing excellent products and services.

This chapter focuses on creating an organized website as part of an overall presence to attract not only first-time but also return customers. In this chapter, you explore ways to achieve these goals, including making your site easy to navigate, creating compelling content, optimizing your images so they appear quickly, and building interactivity into your site so customers ...