More than a trend, creating a website has become essential for all informed entrepreneurs and businesses. Whether it is a start-up, a company in a growth phase or even a large organisation, the site is becoming more and more important in the development of brands and companies. However, to create an effective site, certain steps must be followed. We have created this blog on website and e-commerce website creation to bring you all the knowledge and tips you need. From development to communication, we cover all the topics related to the implementation of an online site. Before you get started and discover our many articles, here are the key steps to create a website and get off to a good start :

Define a budget

Although investing on the internet is very profitable when you have an effective marketing strategy, launching a site nevertheless requires some expenses. You should therefore know that creating a site, just like creating a business, requires the implementation of a business plan in order to be aware of the different expenses. To do this, here’s how you can allocate your budget for the design of an online site:

• The creation of the site or the development which generally corresponds to a fixed cost,
• Accommodation fees can be monthly or yearly depending on the formula you choose,
• Maintenance or upgrade costs, often monthly,
• The expenses related to the referencing can be monthly or annual,
• Costs related to the promotion of the website.

By defining your budget in advance and anticipating possible expenses, you will be able to optimize the organization and management of your online activities. You manage your cash flow as well as possible in order to further optimize your resources.

Know the targets

You must know that to create a site, knowledge of your targets is crucial. By knowing your audience, you will be able to adapt both the design and the content so that they respond perfectly to your prospects. The graphic charter is also a key criterion of visibility on the internet, that’s why we have created a graphic category dedicated to the visual aspect. It is obvious that you cannot address individuals and professionals in the same way. The same goes for each age group or professional category. Also think about the location of your target: is your target concentrated only in a specific country or region or is it an international target? Ask yourself the right questions to help you create a site that meets the requirements of your business and your market.

Studying the market

How for the creation of a company, creating a site must also go through the “market research” box. This phase is crucial because it allows you to better situate yourself in your sector. To do this, here are two essential analyses to carry out:

• The analysis of the competition to determine the current state of your market and check the positioning and strategy of your competitors.
• The analysis of traffic to have an estimate of the market share that you can acquire online through the study of keywords related to your industry.

Choose the domain name

This part is very important because it is irreversible. Once you have reserved and registered your domain name, you will not be able to change it. So, take some time to think about your brand name and make sure that it is both :

Easy to remember
Easy to identify
Concise and fairly representative of your business
Easy to reference (try entering the keyword)
Available with the different extensions required: .fr or .com or multilingual.

As far as the extensions are concerned, even if it is a local site, French-French for example, always remember to reserve both the .fr and .com extensions to prevent malicious individuals from taking advantage of your notoriety to develop their business.

Choosing the host

To be able to put your website online, you must choose a host. In this case, you have the choice between internalizing it and externalizing it depending on the resources you have at your disposal. Also, think about your hosting modality which can be monthly or yearly. To help you in the different steps of website creation such as domain name or hosting, I invite you to go to the Development category.

Write the specifications

L’élaboration d’un cahier des charges The elaboration of specifications is essential to create an online site. Indeed, as many actors are involved in your web visibility project (developer, graphic designer, integrator…), it is important to clearly and explicitly specify your needs and expectations. The specifications allow you to formalize them and ensure that each actor is on the same wavelength. Also, this type of document serves to better define your project and to quantify it, from which the professional will draw up an estimate for the design of your website.

Create a site: outsource or internalize

As with hosting your site online, you have the choice between internalization and outsourcing to create a site. Again, it all depends on the resources you have, knowing that you will basically need a :

• Developer,
• HTML integrator,
• Graphic designer,
• SEO.

In any case, each mode of treatment has its advantages and disadvantages. It is up to you to decide which one suits you best and especially what you need most for your website. You should know that the tools will not be the same at all if you want to create a showcase site or an e-commerce site. We have dissociated e-commerce in our blog.

Establish a referencing strategy

To create a site is to know how to take care of it in order to guarantee the success of your activity. And SEO is the essential key to success on the web. It is moreover essential to all websites wishing to impose themselves on its market. It must then start from the design of your site, both when choosing the domain name and during the creation. If you need to recruit an SEO specialist to position your site effectively in the search engines, consider choosing a professional whose techniques and skills in SEO are proven! Referencing represents only a web lever. In our webmarketing category, you will learn more about the different web supports you can use on the internet.

Using a tracking tool

In order to analyze the visits to your site and to adapt your conversion strategy to your objectives, it is important to have a tool to track and study your traffic. Called “web analytics” tool, the device must allow you to :

• Quantify your visits
• Analyze visitor behavior
• Indicate the origin of your traffic
• Quantify the actions carried out

Using webmarketing levers

The promotion of a site is not negligible. It can be physical or online, but generally both supports intervene to improve the visibility of a site. For the first case, the concept is quite simple and less expensive, because it consists in mentioning your address a little bit everywhere, notably on your written (business card, call for tender in newspapers, invoice…) and commercial supports, with the aim of inciting people to go there. For the second case, the practice can be paid or not and generally involves a more or less complex strategy. For example, you can use Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, affiliation, marketplaces, e-mailing or even blog and social networks… Many levers that Absolut Créations puts forward in its blog about website creation.