How to Get Your Business Online? The Complete Guide

If you have not taken your business online in 2022, you are missing out on so much potential. In 2019, Google reported that 96.5% of the Canadian population went online and Statista recorded 4.9 billion internet users across the world. So, there is a good chance that getting online will help boost your businesses visibility.  

In this blog post, we are going to outline what needs to be done in order to get your business online. This will be a blog series and a video series that can be found on YouTube. We will follow up this blog post with the first step so be sure to bookmark this page. You can watch the full YouTube video below.

Step 1: Choose the Right Domain

The first step is to choose the right domain name.  Before you commit to it, do some brainstorming to see how you like it. Does it have your business’ name? Is it easy to remember? 

You should also ask yourself whether it should be a .com or a .ca domain name.  We will go over the difference between them and more tips in a follow up blog post. For now, the main thing to remember is that you want a name that is unique and is easily identifiable with your business.  

Step 2: Plan Your Website

Your next step is to create a plan for your website. Here, you want to ask yourself what is the purpose of your website. Are you bringing awareness to your brand? Do you want to inspire people? Or are you trying to generate leads? Really zone in on what the website will do. It is also here where you will need to start thinking of the different pages you need, payment options, theme and overall look of the website. 

Step 3: Design Your Website

Now, it is time to design your website! There are many ways to go about this. You can start off by doing things yourself. Fortunately, there are lots of website builder tools available that are fairly simple to use with an easy drag-and-drop interface, such as Weebly and WordPress. 

Alternatively, you may look for a professional website designer if your website design is a bit more complex. This is why you will want to plan out your website and flesh out your idea in step 2. You will also need to look for a web hosting provider. Some things to consider is their customer support, reputation and the location of their servers.

Step 4: Create Valuable Content

Once your website is up and running, you have to fill it with content that is valuable. The more value your website can provide to your visitors, the more you will see the success translate into revenue and profit. If you can keep users engaged on your website for longer, the better it will be for the SEO of the website as well, which is the key component of the next step.  

Step 5: Make Your Website Easy to Find

In step 5, the focus is on making it easy to find your website. In other words, making sure your SEO is on point. SEO is search engine optimization, and the end goal is to make it easy for internet users to find your website on different search engines such as Google and Bing. To improve your website’s SEO, perform a keyword analysis, website analysis, add reviews and make your website user friendly and mobile friendly. 

Step 6: Create Social Media Profiles

Remember how we talked about choosing a good domain name in the beginning? this is when it will become useful because now you will have to create social media accounts. It is very important to keep the social media profiles’ usernames consistent with your domain. 

There are plenty of social media platforms to use such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, WeChat, Twitter, TikTok and more. Some platforms will work better for your specific industry. For example, a B2B business will likely see the best results on LinkedIn as it is meant for business professionals.

Social media can help build a community for your customers and a loyal customer base. Down the line, you can begin to reap the benefits of having a strong social media presence by advertising your new products to your followers 

Step 7: Drive Traffic to Website

The previous steps should work together to help drive traffic to your website, but this is when you can begin to publicize your website more. To drive more traffic, you can send people to your website by posting on your social media accounts, running ads and email campaigns. By increasing your traffic, you will be able to generate more revenue and sales from your website.  

Step 8: Generate Leads

Once you’ve got traffic flowing to your website, it is time to start generating leads. One of the best ways to do this is by building an email marketing list. With this list, you can send out newsletters with different promotions, stories and content to entice subscribers to buy.  

Step 9: Measure, Monitor and Improve

The final step in getting your business online is to measure and monitor your online performance. This applies to your website and social media accounts. Remember: these two are meant to work in tandem. By keeping an eye on how each one is performing, you can make adjustments and updates to get the most out of your website.  

Overview

And that is how you get your business online! We will release a blog post for each step and go in depth with all the information and tools you need to easily transition your business online. See you next time!