If you are reading this, you likely do not have a website but are looking to get one, hopefully a custom made website. But where do you start? Luckily, your local IT and web company in Daytona Beach is here to help!

Domain

The first step is to get a domain. A domain is a website’s address (aka “URL”). For example, our domain is “csidb.com”. If your business’s name is Gregory Dental Services, a domain idea would be “gregorydental.com”.

When picking a domain, we recommend choosing one between 5 to 14 letters (not including the .com, .net, etc). Any longer and it will be harder to remember and the possibility of a visitor mistyping your URL is increased.

Additionally, we recommend that you have a strong keyword in your domain name. This way, you will be more likely to rank highly on Google. “Gregorydental.com” is a good domain name because it has the word “dental” in it. This website is more likely to pop up in searches like “dental services daytona beach” or “dentists in daytona beach”.

Where do you purchase a domain? Where ever domains are sold. Many web hosting companies sell domains, such as GoDaddy, Bluehost, and HostGator. You can also go with a service that exclusively sells domains, such as Whois. If you need help purchasing a domain, contact us and we can help you.

Web hosting

A domain is simply your website’s address. Now you need space on the internet to upload your website files. We refer to this as “web hosting”. There are many different web hosting services. Popular ones that you may have heard of are GoDaddy, Dreamhost, and HostGator. We also offer web hosting services as well.

If you go with a premade website builder, such as Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace, they will provide hosting. We strongly recommend not going with a website builder service for a variety of reasons:

• Each business is different. If you want to get the most out of your website, you must get a custom website built specifically with your business and unique goals in mind.
• These websites are not transferable, meaning if you choose to move from, for example, Wix to another host, you will need to have your website built from scratch.

For more information on why we recommend against website builder services, please read this helpful article.

Next steps

If you choose to go with a website builder service, then they will walk you through the next steps. If you purchase web hosting on your own, you must decide if you want to design and build your website on your own or if you want to hire a professional web design company.

Bad design vs good design

Unless you are a professional designer and have a basic understanding of coding languages, we recommend leaving this step to the professionals. Design is a very specific skill that most people do not possess unless they study, practice, and live it.

Additionally, you must know how to develop a website which means knowing how to code in HTML, CSS, and sometimes PHP. If this is all Greek to you, that means you need to hire a professional web designer to create a custom website to fit your unique needs.

Conclusion

We hope that this article has given you a starting point for getting a website for your business. We love everything-web so if you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact us and we will lead you in the right direction.