This is a guest post by Jude Kriwald. He is co-founder of Tech Relief, a UK startup closing the digital skills gap by providing friendly and empathetic support for people left frustrated by their computers.
Here’s Jude’s no-nonsense guide to setting up business operations for your online company, quickly and easily on a shoestring budget…
Business Operations, The Off-The-Shelf Solution
There are sites like Wix and Squarespace which offer combined domain, hosting and website design features. For a monthly fee, they allow you to get your business online quickly and easily. However, they have restrictions and can become expensive if you need to pay for their additional e-commerce features. These platforms are best suited for simple, content-based sites. If you’re planning to sell products or services at scale, or require more sophisticated features, you’re probably better off doing it yourself.
Business Operations, The Do-It-Yourself Solution
1) Hack It With Upwork
Upwork is a hack to be aware of before you start. If any of the below feels beyond your skill level, or you don’t have the time, consider paying someone to do it on Upwork. If you know what you want but don’t have the time to do it yourself, open it up to a worldwide audience of freelancers who will do most basic tech tasks for under £20. The caveat, at that low price point, is to make sure your task and deliverables are clear and precise, to increase the chances of your freelancer completing it the way you want.
Alternatively, if you’re not sure what you want, I recommend paying a bit more and going for a freelancer with strong experience – as demonstrated by Upwork ratings.
2) Domain Name
I like to think of this a bit like real estate. For example, older or less tech-savvy people aren’t used to .co or .tech domains and will feel unfamiliar visiting your site there, just like visiting new parts of town.
There are myriad domain providers to choose from. GoDaddy often starts cheapest but then gets expensive on renewal. Companies like Namecheap strike the right balance of good customer service and prices.
3) Website Hosting
I always start with Freehostia as they have genuinely free plans. You can always upgrade to their reasonably priced paid plans if required. Alternatively, just about any top-ranking domain provider will offer affordable hosting for only a couple of quid per month.
4) Website Design
If you want to design your website yourself, the first key step is sitting down with pencil and paper and sketching out the layout before you see any templates. Templates are useful later, but as soon as you see a template with a certain layout you lose all objectivity. It’s better to start from the perspective of what makes most sense for your users. Once you have a rough idea of layout, have a look at other websites in your industry. Which of them look particularly enticing and tempt you to click on their CTAs (Call To Action)?
You may prefer to engage a freelancer to design your website. This can pay for itself quite quickly, if your website is key to converting leads into sales. With so many DIY tools out there, it’s easy to think anyone can knock a good site together. Remember, there’s a big difference between an OK website and one that drives significant revenue! Either use a recommended freelancer, or business, or post the task to Upwork. Either way, be sure to request a portfolio and ask them what conversion rates their sites are getting. After all, what you’re paying for is a higher conversion rate than you could get yourself.
5) Website Building
Platforms like Wix, Squarespace and Shopify give you drag-and-drop ease, which is ideal for simple sites.
WordPress is the most common tool used to build websites on the internet – apparently 43% of all websites are built using WordPress and it’s free to use. Don’t be drawn into WordPress.com which is a subscription service. WordPress.org is where it’s at. However, WordPress is so vast that even once you’ve installed it, you’ll probably need to download a number of free or paid plug-ins to avoid coding and make it an easy-to-use website editor.
I recommend Elementor. It’s a great balance: drag-and-drop simplicity, but also huge customisation potential and thousands of front-end developers ready to help you if you get stuck (although it doesn’t require any coding).
If you get stuck with any of this, get someone from Upwork to do the installation for you so it’s all working and you can focus on the drag-and-drop design. Even if you don’t use them often, it pays to have a reliable developer on your side when you really need one.
6) Payment Processing
There are three main platforms you can embed into your website, with almost no coding required. If you want fully fledged customisation, beyond your product names and logo, get your Upwork developer on the case!
Paypal – Familiar to your customers, higher fees for you.
Stripe – Best rates, great service. The most white-label option.
Amazon – Slowly catching up in popularity and easy for customers.
Note: all-in-one hosts like Shopify and Wix often take an extra cut of each transaction.
7) Email Automation
Hubspot starts free but quickly becomes very expensive. ActiveCampaign is a good all-rounder at £12/month, taking care of all your email marketing and nurturing leads.
8) Website Analytics
Just get Google Analytics set up for now. It only requires one line of code to install, then check back once you’ve got some traffic! It’s invaluable to see the impact of your marketing efforts. Lucky Orange is also free to use and lets you playback any visitor’s experience on your site, as if you were sat in front of their screen. It’s super useful to see how people use your site (hint: it’s not what you think!), and also realise how your design appears differently in different browsers.