The Complete Guide to Getting the Fundamentals of Your Website Right

This guide starts where any good guide does - right at the beginning. 🦖

It runs through how to breathe life into a website 💨, while laying the foundation for robust Website Intelligence.👨‍🔬🧪🧟‍♂️🔬

It’s divided into four main sections:

1. The Basics of Online Business - businesses with a sure legal footing are best able to sustain success in the long term. This section will run through what you need to do to reserve digital space for your website and to protect important intellectual property.
    
2. Shaping Your Identity - the competitive nature of the online world makes branding a key consideration during the website planning stage. This section will run through what businesses need to do to create their own identity and distinguish themselves from competitors.
    
3. Laying the Blueprint for Your Online Presence - businesses that have done the basics and shaped their identity are in a good position to begin designing their website. This section will explain how an effective online hub can be developed around these digital fundamentals.
    
4. Making the Website a Reality - the choice of software solutions has a real impact on Website Intelligence. This section will advise on how to animate this digital hub effectively.

After these four sections, you'll also find:

• Our hot take on building an effective website in 2023
• A list of related resources and useful external links
• A glossary of marketing terms relevent to each of the above sections

The website is the epicenter of a company’s digital presence. Develop it right and it will send shockwaves throughout all the channels and campaigns that feed into it. 🔨 🌊 💥

Most businesses have a single website, but some create multiple domains to target different audience types or to make it easier to distinguish between different product types or services. Mitsubishi sells cars, elevators, and cans of tuna, but you wouldn’t know that looking at their automotive website. 🐟 🚗

The localization of languages or country-specific content is another reason to build multiple websites, as is the potential sale of part of the business in the future.

"Most business's first goal is to figure out what their customers want. And that makes sense! You want to know what people are looking for so that you can deliver it to them. As a digital business, you have to explore the treasure trove of data at your fingertips. It's not just about your customers' preferences and demographics, it's about their needs and wants, too. If you're looking to build a customer base, then you need to know what they want before they even know it themselves! You can't do that if you don't have the data from day 1 of your business."

- Leon Gordon, Founder & CEO, Onyx Data

Everything needs a name. And that’s where any business starts in any real, legal sense.

The company name is your business in lights. It ultimately defines a business, gives shape to its identity online, and helps to impress investors, customers, and potential employees. 

It’s also the basis for trademark design and for all brand initiatives. So, you need to find something that really pops. 🙌 🏆 🥇

Business Name Best Practice

• Different from any competitors or well-known businesses
• Easy to remember, spell, and pronounce
• Aligns nicely with industry, brand, and general identity
• Equally available across all external digital marketing channels
• Complies with local and international company naming regulations

Domain name registrars are companies that have been authorized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to sell domain names. 

This makes them effectively the central broker of IP addresses. 🤵

They also control the domain name system and the internet's root servers, and are ultimately responsible for ensuring that users can visit a website and send an email - things that are easy take for granted, but happen because a group of skilled engineers keep their sleeves rolled up and their hands dirty. 🛠️ 🛠️

Domain extensions are the suffixes that follow the domain name in a web address. 

They’re like telephone country codes for the Internet Generation ☎️, with common examples being .com, .org, and .net. 

Domain choice will not affect the website’s search engine presence or wider performance, but it can impact the business’s reputation among internet users.

By now, you should have important elements of your business’ identity either on your desk or in the pipeline. However, you don’t technically own any of these ideas yet, and the future prosperity of the business demands that you protect it from being used and abused by others! 👤💰

Trademarking provides businesses with legal ownership over their name, logo, and other prioritized intellectual property, and you can trademark anything that distinguishes you and your products from competitors, with phrases, words, symbols, devices, and colors all eligible.

And to understand how far trademarking can go, Tiffany has trademarked a shade of blue, Mo Farah has trademarked his “mobot” celebration, and Facebook has trademarked the word “home”.  👮🏽‍♀️⛓️⚖️

Trademarks cost between $250 and $750 in the US before legal fees, and need to be renewed every five to fifteen years. They’re some of a startup’s most available assets, enabling it to:

• Increase faster its profitability and valuation
• Differentiate itself and its products or services from competitors
• Be instantly recognizable and communicate quality
• Leverage brand strength to expand into new markets and product offerings
• Attract talented workers
• Exist in perpetuity when renewed every decade

Failing to register trademarks may result in serious difficulties in the future.

Beyond unnecessary legal repercussions, businesses can suffer from brand confusion, loss of revenue, and substantial damage to their reputation. There’s also the potential to be infringing on the trademarks of other businesses, with the potential for fines and prison sentences.

Sustaining digital success is all about controlling a business’ image online, but this is impossible with key intellectual property left untrademarked.

And, while the choice of what to trademark will depend on the type of website and content on offer, some intellectual property to consider trademarking includes:

• Domain, or website name
• Logo(s) or other key design elements
• Business slogans, taglines, or identifying sound effect
• Names for unique products, services, materials, or techniques
• Original videos, articles, or other content
• Social media handles

"Never before have we had so many brands out there. The barrier of entry to starting new businesses has never been lower. The more competition, the stronger the commitment to differentiation should be. But mostly the opposite is true. Constant comparison and benchmarking leads to conformity, and competitors become less differentiated over time. It’s not enough to be just a little bit different. The differentiation needs to be big enough to tilt the decision in your favor. You need to be really different. And that involves risk, change, and venturing into the unknown."

- Peep Laja, Founder & CEO, Wynter

A great business idea can change the world! 🌪  🌪 🌪

But businesses need to know who they are before building a public image if they are to be persuasive, and the first stage of developing an identity is defining their mission, vision, and values:

• Business mission - a short description of the business’ purpose, with reference to their guiding philosophy, technology, and customers as well the products or services themselves
   
• Business vision - a brief description of what the business will grow into in the future, and which aligns with any other business goals and aspirations
   
• Business values - the principles, beliefs, and standards of behavior that guide the company’s culture and approach to business

Ultimately, defining who you are means finding a way of reflecting your own personality and values, and there’s a lot of fun to be had here! But once in place, these elements will enable for better financial performance, customer and employee satisfaction, and grow faster.

A business’ USPs are the unique selling points that businesses use to advertise themselves online, and exist to answer that age-old question - why in tarnation should they buy from you??

USPs highlight how the business is different from competitors on the market, why customers should do business with them, and are the essence of what makes them better than others. 🏆 🏆 🏆

There are four types of USP:

• Product characteristics
• Pricing structure
• Placement strategy (location and distribution)
• Promotional strategy

USP-identification can be achieved by carrying out target audience, competitor, and wider market research. It will equally be influenced by the business’ mission and vision statements, which provide further opportunities to align marketing to the preferences, desires, and expectations of potential customers.

Done well, the USPs will clearly articulate the benefits of a business’ products, services, or brand to customers, and explain why they are superior to competitors.

Branding is the internal ethos of the company or organization that a business values, what it wants reflected in its external messaging, and underpins how they advertize and interact with audiences online. 

Done right, branding will align marketing with the vision statement, and enable the company to clearly communicate to people how their business, products, and services are better than competitors on the market.

The brand can be developed, and sustained later using a brand guidelines resource and brand automation tools. It will incorporate the business name and logo alongside their values, vision, and mission. It will also integrate messaging, tone of voice, and visual identity into a living public persona that reflects what their target audience wants.

Trust is a particularly important brand element, and is something that businesses can start building from the beginning by speaking with an authentic voice, establishing relationships though direct social media interactions.

Once the business has the legalities stamped and shaped an identity, the website itself can be addressed and the fun can begin! 👷

As the hub that connects a business’ online presence together, it’s worth investing time and energy in designing a website that can enable the company to reach its potential.

Websites have different webpage types that include the homepage, product or signup pages, and information resources that attract traffic and motivate internet users to take action. These need to be designed persuasively, and connected together in a way that’s easy to navigate. Pages need to load quickly, and be securely accessible by users across multiple devices.

This list of requirements isn’t difficult to achieve. Webpage types can be wireframed and connected together using any number of design tools. The online business’ messaging and wider brand is easily accommodated into a website blueprint, and then it can be fueled and fired into the world wide web! 🚀

At Heights, we think about product positioning and simplicity as our go to strategy. There's a lot of choice out there across every category so for us our entire plan has been based around building a company of very very few products but each one being niche and specific. We only have two products which when compared to competitors in the market seems crazy, but we're of the belief that you can go deep or broad but you can't do both well so we go deep and the evidence is there to back up that this is the right call for us. A highly sticky customer base with exceptionally high word of mouth means we know we're executing the right plan.

- Dan Murray-Serter, Co-Founder, Heights, and Co-Founder, Host Secret Leaders

A wireframe is a simple diagram or skeleton of each webpage (or app interface). It acts as a plan for all the elements to include, as well as their core functionality. The different wireframes are linked together into a rudimentary sitemap, illustrating the core website navigation structure you want in place. 

Once you’ve got this far, you’ll be able to really see what your website will look like! 🤩 🤩 🤩

Each webpage wireframe will develop into a detailed visualization of what the working webpage will look like, with best practice being to follow three key phases of fidelity. This starts with a rudimentary sketch of the webpage, before adding more detailed visualizations, and then finishing with a wireframe that is ready to be converted into a working prototype.

Recommended Wireframing Tools

• Adobe XD - best overall design tool for wireframing
• Balsamiq Mockups - best for low-fi wireframes
• Figma - Best collaborative tool for wireframing
• Pencil Project - best for free, open-source wireframing
• Sketch - complete design tool that specializes in UI

Messaging refers to how the branding ethos is portrayed to the outside world - the public face of their inner vision or how they choose to look, walk, and talk when they leave the house. 🚶🏽 🚶🏽 🚶🏽

And with website development, it also refers to the style, voice, and overall personality of content published across the website (as well as in any marketing and advertising once live).

It will be specific and requires approving words for specific characteristics, specific phrases to push, and specific colors and design for any graphic design elements. The messaging needs to be consistent and standardized across the website, and the more consistent it is the better!

Webpage wireframes will include placeholders for messaging in copy, CTAs, videos, and other design elements. These are all opportunities to push key straplines and other branding, to push USP priorities, and to inform visitors about the brand, products, and wider business.

User Experience (UX) refers to how individual users interact with and navigate through the website. Think of it as the invisible hand that guides website design, and which will solve common problems that they run into. 🕵️ 🧐

Page loading and wider website performance feed into the overall user experience, as does the capacity of all its incorporated elements to function as they would expect. Another influence is the ease of navigation, and the provision of short paths to purchase or other key information that users will need.

Mobile functionality is another component of UX, as is cross-device compatibility. While people still prefer to use desktops and laptops for long website browsing sessions, smartphones now account for the majority of online traffic. The combined number of active devices is also twice the global population - people switch devices throughout the day, and websites need to anticipate this.

Integrating UX design into the wireframing and wider planning stage will mitigate user pain points and lay the foundation for robust website growth. But once the website is live, website intelligence solutions enable for UX optimization that is guided by real visitor behavioral data - giving you the power to shape it in their image! ✂️ 📋 👌

There’s not much more exciting for us marketers than seeing our websites working for the first time! 🎉 🎉 🎉

But for this to happen, you’ll need to first secure a web host and build the website itself. 

And once live, it also needs to be consistently maintained and secure in a fast developing security environment. This can be achieved with various technology solutions that enable for intuitive website development without the need for experts.

Robust Website Intelligence means laying the groundwork for future growth. This requires choosing the right web host from the companies available, choosing a suitable website builder or developer, and ensuring that maintenance and security are addressed from the beginning.

Data privacy compliance is another key aspect of Website Intelligence, and regulatory frameworks now require privacy by design. Practically, this means prioritizing privacy requirements when selecting software solutions, and developing a cookie policy that returns documented, explicit, and opt-in consent from website visitors for cookie practices.

"There's literally never been a better time on earth to set up a new business. New AI tools are launching every day that can do 3x as much as any employee you used to have to hire just to get off the ground. Now, without knowing how to code, you can set up a website, have an army of assistants and use chatgpt as a strategic consultant and sparring partner to 10x your ideas every day. The only thing standing between you and future success is the limit to your curiosity, so go learn."

- Dan Murray-Serter, Co-Founder, Heights, and Co-Founder, Host Secret Leaders

Once live, the website needs to be regularly maintained, updated, and protected against the cyberattacks that grow in number and sophistication every day.

These elements can be handled by the web host or website builder - human or platform. But services vary, making it important to plan maintenance and security measures from the outside, and to ensure that they continue to be carried out effectively.

Maintenance

Site maintenance is the work of keeping a website updated and running smoothly, and at a speed that doesn’t put off its visitors. It also includes more general housekeeping tasks such as regularly backing up the website and monitoring its performance, with common maintenance services being:

• Domain name registry and management
• Server maintenance 
• Database maintenance
• Site file maintenance
• Content and graphics updating
• Search engine optimization
• File encryption
• Software updates
• Web vulnerability scanning
• Plug-in compatibility planning
• Site backups
• 404 error and server redirect checking
• Spam removal
• Webpage speed testing

The cost of website maintenance can vary greatly depending on whether it's included in website hosting or building platforms, the size of the website, and level of sophistication. Monthly prices start from approximately $5, but can go up to $5,000 for top-level service provision. Huge, high-traffic websites can cost significantly more.

And within this, the most common maintenance costs are the renewal of software and website hosting subscriptions, as well as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certification. Other main costs to consider in the future include buying additional domain extensions and investing in a major website redesign or migrating from a website building platform to a fully coded alternative.

We've tried to condense this Guide down to information and advice that is essential if your website is to reach its full potential. 

But if you want to go deeper into any of the sections, we've also written a series of blogs that provides further advice on what we've found to be a common issue in our community of website owners:

• 3 Simple Steps to Starting Your Online Business from Home in 2023: A Beginner's Guide
• Defining Your Corporate Identity: Tips on How to Create Your Company's Brand
• 3 Important Things to Know Before Building a Website in 2023
• Best 20 Website Builders for Your Business: The Free and Paid Options of 2023

Top Domain Name Registrars

• Bluehost
• BuyDomains
• Domain.com
• DreamHost
• GoDaddy
• HostGator
• Hostinger
• Namecheap
• Network Solutions 

Top Web Building Platforms

• BigCommerce
• Dreamhost Website Builder
• Hostinger Website Builder
• Gator by HostGator
• GoDaddy Website Builder
• Shopify
• Squarespace
• Web.com
• Weebly
• Wix
• WordPress.org

Top Web Hosts

• A2 Hosting
• Hostinger
• InMotion Hosting
• InterServer
• Nexcess
• SiteGround
• WP Engine