The 4 steps to create a Website

We will explain in this post the basics that you need to know about developing a website and its costs associated. There are 4 steps that need to be taken in sequence.

1. Find a Name

The very first step is to decide which name your website will have. To check if your desired name is taken or not, we can do it through google domains

Google domains is a search engine that checks if your preferred name is already taken. All exports recommend to go for “.com” websites. They are favoured by search engines in results ranking. Google domains will also provide you with the price information for a specific domain name. Regular domains cost around 12 USD per year. You can purchase the domain name directly in the google domains platform.

2. Open a Google Workspace account

The next step is to register in Google Workspace (WS). Google WS is a package offered by Google to small businesses which include many features. Its highlights are:

• Dedicated email address for your business or web. example: hi@mynewbusiness.com

• Data storage in the google cloud (from 30 GB to 5 TB depending on Plan)

• 100+ Video meetings participants

• Security & management controls

• Standard support

Additionally you get access to a package of more than 25 tools to be used by your business. From spreadsheets to Web analytics tools. The web analytics tools will be crucial to understand your web visitors behaviour, SEO and technical characteristics. The most important ones are Google Analytics (visitors analysis), Google Search Console (Technical score of the Web) and Google Adds (platform to invest in paid search)

Google Workspace has different Plans, starting at 6 USD / month

3. You need a Webhost

Great, we got the first 2 steps done, we bought our domain name and we also signed in Google WS to have all the tools needed to run our website.

Now we need a physical space for our website. That’s right, websites need to be hosted in Servers, to be able to work. The reason for it is that a website contains bytes of information (code, pictures, text, everything). Bytes cost money unless they are in your computer. If the website was hosted in your computer, the performance would be very slow for a visitor for example living miles away. The server host allow for a good performance speed and they deal with holding the website bytes size.

There are many web host providers.The most common are Bluehost, Hostgator, GoDaddy… Do not worry about finding the best webhost, since most probably you will be creating the website with Wix or Wordpress (most common platforms, next step). Any of those platforms that help you create your web, already help you to host the web in a server.

The web hosting can vary a lot cross different options. What influences the price is the type of web hosting and the provider. But just as a reference, when you are building a simple website you can consider a web hosting price between [4 USD - 8 USD] / month

4. The last step: Develop a website

The last step is to start building the website. As mentioned, there are 2 very popular providers of website development: Wix and Wordpress. They have different characteristics, that will be detailed in a future Blog post. However just as a summary, Wordpress is very powerful and flexible but need more knowledge. On the other side Wix has a User interfase that allow to build a website almost without previous experience, however it is more limited.

My personal suggestion would be to start with Wix if you are in a hurry and have no previous experience. Using Wordpress or Wix to develop a website is for free. You only need to pay if advanced features (plugins) are needed in your website.

Summary of the costs

We can see that having a decent website does not cost a fortune. Lets wrap up:

• Buying a domain: 12 USD / year

• Registering in Google Workspace: 6 USD / month

• Webhosting: 4 USD / month

• Develop the website: free

Total cost per year at 132 USD, when the benefits of positioning your business online in a serious manner clearly exceed that price.