Starting a new website is an exciting time, but it’s also a challenging one. There are a lot of little things that go into creating a successful website, many of which are easy to overlook your first time out. You need to think about the backend, how to design your site, how to market it, what sort of content goes on it and much more. If you overlook any of these, you’ll find it hard to achieve the success you imagined for your new site. To help you get started, here are 6 things that you’ll want to make sure your new website has from early on.

Good Hosting

The first thing you’ll need is a good hosting provider. The hosting provider is the service that stores all your website’s files and allows them to be accessed over the internet. Having a good hosting provider means you won’t have to worry about losing important data for your website and that users won’t experience any issues when trying to visit your site.

Before you start creating your website, you should take the time to explore different hosting providers. See what sort of reviews they have received from past customers, what features they provide and what their costs are. Many providers also offer both monthly hosting plans and yearly ones, so you can pick the option that works best for you. From there you should be able to pick a provider that fits your needs. To get started, you can check out this list of some of the best hosting providers.

A Simple Domain Name

Next, you’ll need to decide on a domain name. The domain name is what appears in the address bar of internet browsers and what users will type in to visit your site. When choosing a domain name, there are a few criteria that you’ll want to keep in mind.

For starters, you should try to pick something that’s simple. A domain name that is too long or complicated will be harder to remember and more difficult to type in. The simpler you can make it, the better.

Once you come up with a few ideas, it’s just a matter of seeing what’s available. A domain name can only be registered once, so if someone else has already registered the name you want, you’ll have to pick out something else. You can use the hosting provider you chose to see what domain names are available or use a domain name generator to help brainstorm ideas.

An Easy-To-Use Design

After getting the back-end of your website set up, now it’s time to think about what the website will actually look like. Every website, no matter the niche or purpose, should aim to be easy to use. If it’s hard to navigate around your website, or if things are difficult to find, it won’t be long before your target audience simply gives up and looks elsewhere.

Some elements of an easy-to-use design may include:

• A navigation menu
• Easy to read text
• Optimized for mobile devices
• Empty space to separate sections

When designing your website, you should always keep the viewers’ experience in mind. If you were visiting your website for the first time, how easy would it be to navigate around and find what you’re looking for? Designing a website that’s easy to use can take some trial and error, but it’s well worth the effort.

Strong Copy and Content

Of course, your website can’t be all about its visual appeal. You need to offer your audience something when they arrive. The key to this is strong copy and content. Every new website owner should spend plenty of time filling out their website with great copywriting so that visitors are enticed to stay and know exactly what you are offering.

Imagine you are visiting a website for the first time. Upon arriving you see a page that has some beautiful images and marketing videos, but doesn’t really describe well what they’re offering. Beyond that, the words they do have on the page are poorly written and even have spelling errors. Chances are, you wouldn’t come back to this website again any time soon. This demonstrates the importance of getting your content right.

If you don’t feel up to the task of writing great copy, hire someone to do it for you. This one-time expense will pay off in the long-run when your visitors are getting more out of your new website.

Social Media Integration

One of the hardest parts about starting a new website is getting people to visit it. Unfortunately, you can’t just create the site, then sit back and wait for the traffic to roll in. You need to market your new site and a key way to do this is through social media.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become essential marketing tools for all websites. With them, you can share your latest blog posts, let people know about sales you’re having on your e-commerce site, interact with other industry leaders in your niche and much more. With a proper social media marketing strategy, you can begin to grow your website’s traffic numbers steadily over time.

To make this easier, you should integrate your social media channels into your website. Some examples of this are showing your latest tweets on your website, automatically posting new blog posts to Facebook or giving linking to your Facebook page to gain new followers. Social media is a great way to not only bring in more viewers but to keep them coming back, so look for ways to integrate social media into your website from the very beginning.

Customer Service Options

Finally, your new website should have some customer service options. There will inevitably come a time when one of your visitors has a question about your products, wants to alert you to an issue or has a business opportunity to talk to you about. From the very beginning, it should be easy for your audience to get the help they need or get in contact with you.

A simple way to do this is by having a Contact Us page on the site, where users can fill out a form to send you a message. Another possibility is to include your email address or phone number on the site or encourage people to contact you via your social media channels. Finally, if you plan on getting a lot of requests, you should consider adding a live chat feature to your website. According to these live chat statistics, “live chat has the highest satisfaction level for any customer service channel”, and it’s a relatively affordable option especially when you’re first starting out.

Whatever method you choose, just be sure it’s easy for your audience to get in contact with you and that you make it a priority to answer them as quickly as possible. Strong customer support will help you to build a solid brand image, so it’s important that you start doing this as early as possible.

Start Your New Website Off Right

By including the 6 things above, you can start your new website off right. This will make it easier for you to grow your audience, as you won’t have to worry about these things later. A solid foundation is the key to any successful website, so take your time and don’t rush through the items above for the best chance at success.