How to Make a Business Website

Write the guide that I’d want if starting a business website.

I tried to take a step back from being a professional web designer to ask myself – if I were just starting out with website design, specifically trying to make my own small business website, what kind of start up guide or course would I want sitting right there beside me.

What kinds of questions should it answer?….

What kinds of information should it have?…

A large part of the whole web design learning curve is just knowing where to get started, and where to find all types of information you need to just get your first website up and running, let alone prospering. That is why I went through the basics to try and really engrain in people’s heads WHAT a website is, WHAT they would need to get one up, and HOW exactly to go about doing it.

What hosting should I get?…

Where should I register a domain?…

What template should I use for my business site?…

What plugins work the best?…

Along with the more basic questions of technical details, I also dive in and really nail down WHAT exactly a website needs to do in order to become successful. The exact points and ideas to focus on that could end up making a huge difference in the website’s overall success.

In the end, I kept a few distinct people in mind while writing the content for How to Make a Business Website, and ideally, others will benefit as well. Please, I would love to hear your feedback on this site!

How to Make a Business Website

Kraft Insurance

This was a custom design project completed with BHW1 Advertising of Spokane for Kraft Insurance. This site was built upon the WordPress Platform, and offers extensive customization and control from the backend.

Insurance Spokane

Luke's Heating

This website was created for Luke’s Heating out of El Dorado, KS. Luke initially approached us about one of our HVAC Websites, and we helped get his company into a new and powerful website. Most of the design and styling was custom, and we were very pleased how the design came out!

Luke’s Heating

Geothermal North Carolina

Here is another client website we just completed for Earth Energy Solutions out of Raleigh, NC. This company was recently started by two veterans of the Geothermal Industry that we have worked with in the past. They realized the value in giving their company a strong web presence right from the beginning, so they came directly to us. We set them up with some sample logo designs, an awesome website that showcased their qualifications and past work experience, and helped them get off the ground with the Search Engine Optimization and Internet marketing.

They provide geothermal heating and cooling as well as regular HVAC, Radiant Heat, Geothermal Ground Loop Installation and Geothermal Conductivity Testing for the entire state of North Carolina.

Geothermal North Carolina

Yup. We’ve done it. We created a niche site completely about STD’s and STD testing, entitled – Do I Have a STD? It was meant to be a good educational resource for people who were questioning if they could have contracted an STD (NOT from a personal issue – just an interesting business opportunity).

Do I Have a STD

Continuing in our Niche Site production, we now have Best Spokane Massage up and online! This ranks the best Spokane Massage companies, Spokane Massage Therapy companies as well as Spokane Spas. The entire goal of this project is to help the people of Spokane pick out the best massage company for their next appointment, and not have to wade through all of the business listings presented by Google.

People don’t want to get 1,000 choices back, they just want to get the top 1 or 2 best ones. That’s what we’re here for.

Best Spokane Massage

Our newest Niche Directory website is now live! – Best Helena Dentist. This website was designed to rank the Top Dentists in Helena MT based off of user reviews and ratings on the dentist’s quality, pricing, cleanliness, etc.

We really wanted to give the people of Helena, MT a chance to really find the top service provider in a specific industry.

Best Helena Dentist

The Landscaping Website division of Hendricksen Design is another one of our industry web design specialities that is starting to gain in popularity.

Like our other industries, our Landscaper Websites focus on two different things:

Easy To Use

All of our landscape websites are setup to be as easy-to-use as possible. We have completely designed the back end from scratch to allow you to easily perform any task you like to your website, including but not limited to uploading images, changing text, adding news stories, adding testimonials and more!

More Customers

The second main thing that our Landscape Websites focus on is generating more customers for your landscaping business. We do this in two different ways:

Get More Traffic

Our websites are all designed to be Search Engine Optimized (SEO) to rank higher in search engines for the services that your company provides. This means more people will click on your listing and come through to your website. But that’s only the first half of the equation.

Convert Visitors to Customers

Once you have the visitors on your website, you need to make sure that you are converting a significant amount of those over to actual paying customers. Chances are they are looking for the services that you’re providing, so making it easy to facilitate that business is what the website is supposed to do. We make your contact information as prominent as possible, which encourages them to contact you. The design is very professional, which makes your company look extremely reputable and high-standing.

Landscape Websites

The Plumbing Website division of Hendricksen Design is one of our most popular industry website design sectors, and for good reason. We have worked with plumbers across the country to develop a Plumbing Website setup that successfully answers two of the most common complaints about Plumber Websites:

Easy To Use

The first major complaint about most Plumbing Websites is that they’re just plain hard to use. The company owners have no idea how to go into the site, add news items, change text, upload pictures, or anything without needing to have a degree in computer science!

We’ve changed all of that. We spent months customizing the backend of the website, specifically to make it as easy-to-use for you as possible. Want to upload a picture? No problem! We’ve put everything on the main dashboard, so all you have to do is click on the action you’d like to perform, upload your picture and viola! There is no coding or technical experience needed!

Get More Customers

The second major complaint that Plumbing companies had about their websites was definitely the lack of business they were generating from their website. It just seemed to sit there, doing nothing!

Our websites are designed to get more customers in two main ways:

Increased Traffic

All of our websites are completely Search Engine Optimized (SEO) to rank higher in search engines for the terms you need to be found for. For example, if you do a Google search for “plumbers [your area]“, what comes up? Usually it is your competitors who are the most tech savvy. Guess what? They are getting a majority of the online traffic looking for plumbing services! We create the websites so that you attract more visitors to your website.

Converting Traffic to Customers

Once you have those visitors, they do absolutely no good unless you can figure out a way to turn them into paying customers. Our websites are designed to initiate that initial contact, and push them to contact you, or enable you to contact them. That’s when the sales relationship can start. Until then they do you no good.

Learn More

If you’d like to learn more about our Plumbing Websites, please visit the link below.

Plumbing Websites

Hendricksen Design started off designing Geothermal Websites for local installers around the Bozeman, MT area, and we have grown from there to be one of the biggest geothermal web design companies in the nation. We have worked with clients all across the country, from small installers, to medium sized distributers, to large scale heat pump manufacturers.

With one of our side projects being Geothermal Help, we have acquired an in-depth knowledge about Geothermal Heating and Cooling, which comes through beautifully in our Geothermal Web Design.

We have created a full library of geothermal-specific information on exactly what customers are searching for. We have taken the time to create gorgeous 3D models of the different types of Geothermal Ground Loops, and include animations showing how they work. We have made it so your Geothermal Website is completely ready to fully educate potential clients, attract people looking for geothermal installers, and most importantly blow your competition out of the water!

Feel free to give us a call or shoot us an email to discuss your own Geothermal Website from Hendricksen Design!

Geothermal Websites