SINGAPORE – In a small city-state driven by innovation and technology, brands or businesses would not leave their digital footprint empty. Such as not having any website, SEO, SEM, or advertising presence. However, being exposed to a digital realm maybe daunting and overwhelmed with overloaded web information in making strategic decision on building the best website that suit your industry and prospect base.
Resonating to such statement on website creation, no worries! We’ve got you covered whether you’re looking to create your own digital footprint and have a simple or advance website design or looking for an agency to streamline your website creation and digital footprint process in a cost-efficient manner.
Let’s break down into small steps on providing you the necessary tools to propel you with website building. A step-by-step guide on how to create your own business website in Singapore. Nothing fancy, nothing selling, just pure education and guides on creating your own website in Singapore.
How to Create Your Own Business Website in Singapore
- Choosing A Website Name
- Web Hosting
- Start of With A WordPress Website
- Build Compelling Content
- Basic Implementation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Digital Marketing
- Finalize Your Digital Website
Choosing A Website Name
Select the best name
First thing first would be decision to a domain name. This is critical as it would be your web front and the main domain name that people would search and land on. It represents your business. We would always recommend having the name short and sweet. For example, if you are looking to start a florist store. Pick domain names that resonate best to florist such as, bestflowersingapore.com or probably we can go with an even shorter domain name. Try to avoid hyphens or special characters or fanciful naming. They may look cool but hard for users to remember vividly. Do consider that certain names are costing a bomb due to the nature of naming popularity. An example we would always mention if you were to pick DavidBeckham.com it would always be costly due to a high demand and popularity of the naming convention.
Availability of domain name
Do not be dishearten if the domain name has been taken, we can always run other top level domain names such as com.sg or .sg or any other extensions depending on availability. Consult a domain expert to help source for most cost-effective options available for naming convention. P.S. We, at Adssential Marketing, do provide you with available options if you are looking for a domain name with no obligations. Just an option for you to make better decisions.
Boost domain name with SEO
Get a good booster for your domain name with incorporation of high search keywords. In the case of florist, we would say “best”, “top” or “cheap” for example. These would help with the necessary effort to better boost your SEO ranking at a faster speed.
Of course, make sure this doesn’t sacrifice the length, originality, or brand integrity of your website or company name, but if there are keywords that would play well with another short, unique word or two, consider adding them to your domain name.
Web Hosting
An important aspect of a blazing fast website loading speed and highest uptime rate. Purchasing a web hosting should not be taken lightly as these are key aspect to having a smooth operational website/ email running 24/7 without any disruption. Apart from speed, website uptime, we have to consider the security aspect and location aspect of such hosting.
Web Hosting Cost
There are a wide range of web hosting services available, ranging from shared hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, managed hosting dedicated hosting. These are some hosting options available when you create your own business website in Singapore. Cost starts from as low as SGD$3 per month to as high as SGD$2000 per month. Depending on the resources and needs you would require. Let us break it down further with the types of hosting and allow you to make better informed decisions.
Shared Hosting
A shared hosting plan provides you with minimum needs for the best cost-effective website as the name intended, it will be a shared server where your resources are gate walled however the server resources are shared between users. In the case of a computer, your resources are example or a user where each user will have their own access and neither of the users are able to gain visibility. However, resources such as ram, CPU are shared to provide best optimum cost saving.
VPS Hosting
When it comes to hosting, a VPS or Virtual Private Server hosting is somewhat similar to shared hosting. Each client is given their own virtual partition, a faster and more reliable option with superuser (root) access to your server with minimum fluctuation in available resources.
Cloud Hosting
Unlike server hosting, cloud hosting do not use a single server but rather a cluster of web servers that runs in the cloud. Each cloud server stores up to date copy of your website. When one of cloud server is experiencing technical or high traffic, your traffic is immediately routed to a more available cloud server or hosting resulting in no downtime and always available to be serve to any visitor.
Managed Hosting
As the name suggest, a managed hosting is operated by organization that owns the server and provide technical support in managing your hosting resources and issues. A top of the chart hosting solution if you are looking for a more technical approach and ensure all operational and technical aspect are well covered. However, with a managing team, it comes with a higher cost to be purchasing such hosting.
Dedicated Hosting
The least cost-efficient servers available, as the name suggests, are dedicated. Meaning you own the entire server yourself. Suitable for large organizations that requires full reign of capabilities from managing high traffic to internal processes and data. It is ranging from visit of thousands a week without crashing or throttled. However, such hosting would require a dedicated technician to better manage all data and requirements within the server as you are able to open and close certain ports or have these routed or throttled depending on organization processes and needs.
Start Of With A WordPress Website
The easiest go to option for unlimited option and functionality on website UI/UX designing when it comes to creating your own business website in Singapore. There are other available options such as WIX which we would not recommend as adding of functions are not limitless and there might have additional add on and charges as more options and tools are added in. However, Wix is also an option to consider if you are looking for a very basic and minimum approach with little or no customization.
UI/UX Of Website
Always explore similar website design you would love. Understand the color scheme and design framework of the website. Apply these frameworks into your current design you are planning to create. An easiest method would be to select themes within your WordPress and choose the closest by and similar structure of a website you love. These would help you reduce the customization work yet achieve a closely similar UI/UX design of your current website you are creating.
Website Mobile Responsiveness
Gone were the days mobile friendly were mentioned, as there are thousands different mobile sizes some would close by fit a tablet and yet called a mobile. We are looking at website mobile responsiveness, where it should respond and adjust according to a user device screen size and not disrupt the overall look and feel. As accounted, in Singapore, mobile phones account for 62% of web traffic, with 93% Singaporean internet users having used some kind of mobile phone to access the internet. Thus, ensuring it is mobile responsive would cater to all mobile device sizes.
Sitemap
Having a well thought out sitemap would help you build a perfect website structure. A good digestible sitemap with homepage, services, inner services, about us, contact us would be a good to go plan. These help you to plan the basic design and structure you would like to deploy within your website from a similar point of view homepage design to be duplicated onto the other pages yet delivering different messages with an add on flare of click to action journey such as a lead submission after understand your overall company, your services, the intended services your searcher might be looking for and lastly submitting an enquiry. Always invest in good photograph, and thoughtfully laid out CTA (call-to-action) buttons with concise text font.
Website Navigation
Be crystal clear on user journey, it might be hard to plan out the perfect navigation for users without having any past used cased or heatmap to better validate your options. If you are running an informative sites, always ensure services are mentioned within your home page with click to action button to have them digest more into specific service detail page with a contact options. If you are running an e-commerce website, look into offering products and sales or highly purchased products to be displayed within your home page. Having a clear and easy way for visitors to access all pages can be the real the deciding factor between someone making an enquiry or someone leaving your page in frustration. The key to good website navigation is to make everything as clear as possible.
WhatsApp button or floating buttons
We have all heard of always applying detectable call to action buttons with contrasting color or animation to entice user to click and act. However with the rise of floating buttons within the webpage such as the bottom left or right of a webpage across all different pages helps to attract user to consult. With increasing demand for understand and information overload, users tend to google to understand a service or product more or they could simply click a floating WhatsApp button to have a chat and understand in detail of the product or services you are providing.
Always keep your floating buttons versatile across all pages – such as within viewable area not hindering any information within your page.
Link To Trustable Sources
These days, having an active sources alongside your main website is a sign of trustworthiness and legitimacy. Such as, as seen on mothership, or as seen in “Singapore top rated business”. Your visitors might want to keep up with your brand and look into these sources to better have a decision to make a purchase. Apart from social media, which is common nowadays, they no longer take the biggest sentiment within a user process as these should be a must have within a company.
Build Compelling Content
In the vast digital landscape in Singapore, writing a compelling content maybe challenging. it’s easy for your message to get lost in the noise. The challenge lies in capturing and maintaining your audience’s attention whenever they are visiting your website. To stand out, your content needs to be not just informative but also engaging and relevant.
Know Your Audience
Before any content creation, understand your target audience. Why are they reaching out to your website? What are their pain points, interests, and preferences? Further tailor your content to address to their needs in an effective method.
Define Your Content Message
Define key message you would like to convey. Whether it’s promoting a product, sharing industry insights, or telling your brand story, having a coherent content throughout your website to keep user laser focus aligning their thoughts with your brand and product you are providing. Enable them to resonate to the needs of your services or products within your pages. These are some ways to consider on how to create your own website in Singapore.
Create Valuable Pages
Home – Have short story and snippet of what your brand or company provides and the value proposition to keep them entice to understand more.
About Us – A bragging space where you mentioned your unique selling point and why it sets you apart from the rest. What are your past achievement and skills.
FAQ – A commonly asked space where users would be able to get firsthand answers to your services/products without having queries on your business
Services – Most business would showcase their expertise and offerings in a more detailed manner in hope to attract enquiry/
Contact Us – A must have page to ensure your company information is properly address if a user would like to understand on your location, numbers and way to reach out to you. You should always display detailed contact information. If you are running a business that requires financial records or UEN number, do provide your UEN number for users to conduct their due diligence. This would increase your credibility of your business.
Track and Analyze
Always conduct A/B testing to understand your content performance and digital records. Identify what works well and what doesn’t. Analyze key metrics such as engagement, click-through rates, and conversion rates to help you improve your content and increase your conversion rate. Move heavily click elements to the top of your page as it represents some form of engagement and you would not want to miss out such users.
Basic implementation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A website serve as an informative section to users, however you would want robots to better digest these micro bite size information and have them easily found by users through organic searchers. For example, a business selling flower would want to attract potential users looking for flowers. These users would probably search “blue engagement flower”, these words should suit your website and you should appear within the top few searchers. These searchers would therefore increase your conversion rate as information is of high relevance to them.
SEO for website is a long-term strategy that requires time to see results, you would love to start early by ensuring the basic to be implemented. Ensure your title tags and meta tags are well embedded within your website, in the long run at least some SEO works are done and google would preferably favor your website.
SEO Copywriting
You should ensure synonyms of keyword within your page when it comes to SEO. Do not stuff keywords as google has grown over the years and would be able to detect such writings. A web copy should be well-written with high ratio of human touch containing latent symmetric keywords to help boost your search engine rankings.
Digital Marketing
Lastly, take advantage of available digital platform to help boost your business into the market. Creating your first website is essential to success of your business, however with an add on of digital marketing tools such as SEM, SEO which we have mentioned above, or social media would give an extra boost.
Always look for organic method, as we understand that being a business owner, digital marketing cost are high and you would better utilize organic methods. Thus, a best bet would be to look into improving your SEO rankings as these are “free” technically with the right skillsets and method deployed. You could expect a movement and ranking within your website.
Apart from creating your website, performing SEO works, there are other avenues such as email newsletter which you could conduct organically as these are some tools you can gain more traffic to your website. When conducting such campaign, always ensure you are tracking, you may look into setting up campaign tracking through here, website campaign builder. A tool created by google to assist you in doing tracking and measuring your digital success.
Finalize Your Digital Website
There are many components you need to consider in order to create a successful business website. You may look into taking up some courses to have a better grapes of creating a website. These are some idea for you to create a business website in Singapore. Scale as it grows and it will ultimately pay off! If you are worried about the micro details, you may reach out to Adssential Marketing. No hard selling promise, we would like to provide best options and advise to help propel you to run a successful business in Singapore leveraging the use of digital marketing media. We are happy to assist and provide you recommendations free of charge.