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WordPress powers half of the internet. It is not only easy to use but also simple to maintain. No coding, no designing, and no project management. Simply get a domain, a hosting solution, and launch your website. That’s it.
That’s why WordPress has become such an attractive option for beginners and experts alike. Now business owners are also moving to WordPress to launch their websites.
What Kind Of Business Websites Can You Make With WordPress?
Here is a list of business websites that you can create with WordPress.
- Simple one-pager business website
- Agency/services website
- Portfolio website
- Resume and individual introduction website
- Ecommerce website
- Dropshipping website
- Job boards
- Freelancing platforms
- Bulletin boards and forums
There are a lot of types; however, most business users stick with the first four types. That’s why, in this article, we will be discussing how to create simple business websites using WordPress.
Before we get to that, let’s learn a little about how many business users are using WordPress company websites.
Some Statistics About WordPress Business Websites
- WordPress is used by 35% of the websites available online. (Via Hosting Tribunal)
- Around 28% of websites on WordPress can be categorized as ecommerce sites.
- In the US alone, 22% of the websites are powered by WordPress. (vis WPBeginner)
- WordPress business themes can earn lucrative profits, and one theme has earned over $12 million in sales. (via Digital)
Why Use WordPress for Business Websites?
While this all sounds good, many of you will still say, ‘why create a business website on WordPress?’ or ‘How to use WordPress for business?’
Well, WordPress makes it easy for anyone to create and launch a website.
This is something they can’t do with other Content Management Systems (CMS) like Joomla, Drupal, or Moodle. WordPress alone has over 50,000 plugins and almost the same number of themes. Half of these themes are available for free, and business users can easily create their websites with these resources.
Here is an example of how much you will be saving with WordPress:
Cost of a Custom Business Website
A custom website development is around 200 to 400 hours of work. For that much time investment, a good developer will charge you about $30 to $100 for PHP development. Moreover, you will need a designer to create the design of the overall website.
The designer will charge $30 to $100 just for the design, which will again take around 100 hours to create.
Calculate the lump sum of these two figures:
400*30 (developer)
100*30 (designer)
That’s around $1500 for a simple business website development from scratch.
Now, you need to maintain this website. The developer will charge $30 for an hour for website maintenance. So, we can estimate the cost of one year would be around $2,000.
Cost of WordPress Business Website
Now let’s calculate how much a WordPress based website would cost you.
You can launch a WordPress website by yourself. So, there is no cost involved for that. However, you can also hire a developer for the site. The developer’s price can be around $30 to $100. But the developer will only need to customize your theme. This is a one-time thing, and you won’t need their service again and again. You can also find WordPress maintenance services that can take care of all your website maintenance needs for a couple of dollars.
So, a WordPress based website would cost you ~$100.
Now that we are aware of how much WordPress company websites cost. Let’s learn how you can create an attractive website with WordPress.
But first:
Choose a Domain Name (.com, .org, .net, or more)
You can easily select a domain name from Godaddy, Namecheap, or any other service. We prefer Namecheap for buying domain names. Its domain price is $9.99, which is around $2 less than Godaddy.
If you need a unique domain name, then use the Instant Domain Search functionality to search for a domain name. You can also select a .net or .org domain name if they suit you. Most business websites use the .com extension. There are other domain names available such as .tech, .business, .media, and many more. But the prices of these domain names are a little high. Moreover, they are not generally used for business websites.
Source: Hostgator
Choose a Hosting Provider – Shared, Dedicated, or Cloud
Next, select a hosting provider for your website. The right hosting provider is one that gives you the least worry. There are many hosting solutions available. We recommend that you should choose a cloud hosting solution. Shared hosting is slow, and your hosting provider will place you with 100 other websites on a single server. Dedicated hosting is costly, and managing it is also hard. You will have to get a server administrator to manage your dedicated servers, which doubles the cost.
On the other hand, a cloud solution is as low as $2.5 on Vultr. You will still need to manage it, though. So, a better solution is to get a managed hosting solution like BionicWP hosting service. With it, you will have WordPress experts managing your website 24/7 and providing qualiy maintenance including regular backups, hyper optimized sites for faster speeds and much more!
Launch WordPress Application
Once you have the domain and hosting available, launch your WordPress application. If you are using cPanel hosting, you can launch the WordPress application with Softaculous software.
Source: Softaculous
The process of installing WordPress is pretty straightforward. It will start the launch wizard that will guide you from the start to the end of the installation process using WordPress for a business website.
Source: Siteground
Softaculous cPanel hosting is available on shared hosting servers. Shared servers are cheap, but slow. And they can lower your site bandwidth and increase downtime.
If you are using a cloud, the process of installing WordPress would be a lot different because the server doesn’t have a GUI interface. To install WordPress on the cloud server, you will first have to install LAMP.
Use the SSH to install LAMP. You can see the complete tutorial here.
Once done, run the following command to install WordPress.
sudo nano /etc/Nginx/sites-available/wordpress
You will need to download the WordPress files with the following command:
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
Now extract the files, and WordPress will install successfully on your server.
Once WordPress is installed on your server, you can launch your website, add themes, and create pages.
Select a Theme That Fits Your Needs
Once your WordPress Business website has WordPress installed, you need to install a theme. Themes are the design of your website. Some of them are free. However, if you want paid themes, you can get them for as low as $49.
Themeisle: Themeisle is a WordPress theme and plugin website. It offers free and paid themes catering to multiple industries. You can get a good theme with page builder for around $50.
Source: Themeisle
Envato: Similarly, you can get free themes from Envato. Envato offers themes for as low as $35 to as high as $500. All themes come with support from their developers.
Source: Envato
WordPress Theme Directory: One can’t forget the WordPress theme directory when discussing the themes available. WordPress offers all the free themes in its theme directory. This is a plus for all those who would like to get started fast without paying money.
If you are installing a theme from the WordPress directory, then use the WordPress dashboard > Appearance > Theme > Install New Theme > WordPress directory.
Now, search for a theme that suits your needs. Here we are installing the Twenty Twenty WordPress theme for demo purposes.
Similarly, you can install the theme on your website from external sources. But you will have to upload the theme on the website through the ‘Upload’ theme option.
Source: WordPress
You can customize the theme according to your needs. Almost all themes allow you to add banners at the top of your website. Similarly, they allow you to add widgets on the side and at the bottom. These widgets can be used to display your services, posts, blogs, and even banners.
Create Pages
Now that you have a theme available for your website, you need to create a page. All your website data is available on website pages. A business website has these nine pages naturally. You can add more depending on your needs. The pages are:
- Home page
- About Us page
- Contact Us page
- Services Page
- Portfolio/Gallery page
- Client/Case study page
- Privacy Policy/ Terms and Conditions page
- Blog
- Disclaimer page
You can separate some of these pages. Or, you can add more pages if your site has enough data. Some websites even have a checkout page for bookings and payments.
To create a page in WordPress, go to Dashboard > Pages > New page.
Once the page is selected, add your content to it. You can also add shortcodes like the one available in our image below. Once the page has the right type of content available, click on ‘Publish.’ If the page has already been published once, you can update the page by clicking on ‘Update.’
Source: WordPress
Using a Page Builder
You can also use page builders on your business website to alter the design of your site pages. Most users get page builders like Divi, Beaver Builder, and Elementor plugins to create attractive layouts using page builders.
Source: Elegant Themes
Create a Blog on WordPress
Next, you need to create a blog for your business website. A blog is necessary to get the word out about your business. Blogs also rank higher in search engines because of the amount of content you can add to them.
The blog is a page where all your blog posts will show.
Source: Misha Rudratysh
However, to connect the blog to your page, you will need to connect it from the WordPress dashboard settings menu.
Set up WordPress Menu
Once you have the pages setup, the blogs setup, the next thing you need to do is to create a menu that connects all of them on a single page. The good news is that WordPress provides an easy way to set up menus. Here is how to do that.
Source: YouTube
You can create a menu in WordPress by going to Dashboard > Appearance > Menu > New Menu
Once you have the menus created, you can put the menu bar on the home page.
Here is what the menu will look like on the home page. Note how we have added four pages to the menu on the home page of Twenty Twenty theme.
Add Widgets on WordPress
Now that your website is ready with the pages, blogs, and menu options. The next thing you need to do is to add widgets. You may not need widgets for all business websites because if you are using page builders, they take care of most of the things.
The WordPress widgets can help you:
- Add more links on the side of the page
- Add a footer menu for your website
- Add HTML code on the side or footer of the website
- Show banners on the website pages
- Do anything else that has a plugin available. You can get the widget plugins from the WordPress plugin directory
Branding Your Website
Now it is time to brand your website so that it can stand out. Almost all WordPress themes have an option to add banners, logos, and background images. With branding, you add uniformity to your website. Branding also gives your business a perception, an image, and an identity.
In Twenty Twenty theme, you can easily add images, logos, and background images that match your site theme.
Adding Sharing Buttons
While you may not need sharing buttons on all pages of the website. But your blog pages, services pages, and portfolio should have sharing buttons available.
Source: WordPress
You can easily add sharing buttons to your website with the ‘Shared Counts’ plugin. The plugin comes with multiple designs to add social icons on your website. Take a look at the variety of social button designs available on Shared Count plugin in the image below.
Source: WordPress Shared Count Plugin
SEO Optimize Your Website
Your business website can only get traffic when it ranks higher in search engines. You can download an SEO optimization plugin to help you optimize your website content. We recommend two SEO plugins to our users: Yoast SEO and All in One SEO.
Source: WordPress
Both plugins are easy to use and you can use them to optimize your site pages and posts easily.
Here is an example of how to optimize the content of your website with Yoast SEO.
Source: Yoast SEO
Optimize Website for Speed
You also need to optimize your website performance. Websites that have a slow speed usually don’t get the top ranks on search engines, nor do people like to visit them. Moreover, people have a short attention span. They can leave a website if it doesn’t load in less than 3 seconds, this is not us making it up, it’s what Google has been heavily prioritizing on!
Slower websites have the chance of losing website visitors AKA your potential customers. So, if you want to stop people from avoiding your WordPress business website, you need to optimize its performance.
As a newbie, the fastest way to optimize your website is with cache plugins like WP Rocket (paid), WP Total Cache, and many others.
You can download the top plugins available on WordPress directory because these plugins usually have a higher rating.
With these plugins:
- Minify JS and CSS
- Add SSL
- Add a CDN
- Enable AMP pages
- Enable lazy loading
These will help you improve the performance of your website. If for some reason, you are not able to improve your site performance, then you should get help from The WPHelp WordPress site maintenance experts.
And that’s all you need to know about creating your business WordPress website from scratch. We hope that we can clear the doubts you had about launching a business website. If you have any questions or if you want to share your ideas regarding building business websites, comment below and let us know 
One Response
Hi Great job putting this together! I question what AI will do in this space over the next five years.