How to Create a Website for International Trade

Sharline Shaw

There are so many ways to start your international trade business.

Starting a shop on all B2B platforms such as Amazon, AliExpress, are all available for you to begin your own career.

Today we will introduce a different type for you-creating your own website for international trade.

We will dwell on how to make your own website for your own business in this blog.

How to Create a Website for International Trade 1

Get a domain name

What is a domain name? It is a digital address where online searchers can access your website. Generally speaking, it is your website name or website address. It is the key element for a website.

As a result, the key component to establishing a web presence for cross-border trade is choosing a website address, or a uniform resource locator (URL), which aims toward the domestic market. It should be short, simple, descriptive, and memorable to customers in the target market.

So, how can you select a successful domain name for your international business? There are some principles for your reference.

How to Create a Website for International Trade 2

1. Choose a unique name

Generally speaking, your domain name is associated with what you want to market. As a result, you have to choose a unique name to market what you want. Such a name will keep your domain memorable, and impressive. For example, if you want to market yourself, you can register your name as a domain. If you aim to market your business, you could make yourbusiness.com as your domain name.

In addition, you have to utilize search engines such as Google, Bing to search your proposed website name to check if there are any sites with the similar domain name. If you already find some sites with the similar name, please give up it and try a different one or reach out to the owner to buy it if possible. Besides, names that are plural or easily misspelled versions of the existing sites will easily cause confusion and misunderstanding for most people. Remember to stay away from them

2.Brainstorm

You can choose several words (ranging from 3 to 5) or short phrases that describe your website content. Jot them down, and mix, match them together to create a possible domain name. Remember to keep your domain name simple, descriptive, and memorable.

There is a rule that says when you prepare to launch a new product; you have to start by making a list of ten names. It will be very easy for you to come up with the first three ones. You may even make five or six at one go, but when you get to last one, you’ll be racking your brains for some ideas. Then you can ask some friends which one they like. And choose one from them according to their ideas.

3. Make it easy to type

Please keep your domain name easy to enter in the address bar or search field on different search engines. This is to prevent the misspellings that caused by possible visitors and direct them to your website to attract traffic.

Reasonably, no one wants their possible visitors to type a wrong website address and be forwarded to a different site. There is a classical example of this condition. The popular social media site, Flickr.com introduced in 2005, had to take Flicker.com over with a large sum of money to redirect visitors who misspelled their domain name. If you determine to have the oddly spelled name, you have to make sure that the common misspellings of your website address will have no impact on your international business.

4. Choose “.com” first

When you are selecting a domain name, you also have to consider what domain extension or Top Level Domain (TLD) extension to use. There are hundreds of top level domains in place for you. We will break down the most popular one for you.

The original domains extension include: .com, .net, .org, .int, .gov, .edu, and .mil. But only some of them are commonly used. While, .com is the most important one

Besides, there are many country code top level domains (ccTLDs) used as domain extensions. They are .au (Australia), .cn (China), .in (India), .jp (Japan), .ph (Philippines), and .uk (United Kingdom).

With the above TLDs, “.com” domain is the preferred one for the most business website.  Up to 75% of all websites are using it as the domain name extension.

How to Create a Website for International Trade 3

5. Make it brandable

Generally, your domain name is the name of your brand. Your domain name will speak for itself. When people hear the name, they will get to know the topic of your website.

6. Make it Short

As there is a saying goes, shorter is better. If you are not able to narrow your domain name down to a memorable word, then you can consider adding one or maximum two more words. Combinations of words work great for the memorable names. In addition, you have to avoid using an acronym. It will be useless as people will never remember these letters.

7. No numbers or hyphens

Keep your domain away from numbers and hyphens as they easily make people confused. Remember to keep your name clear in the description.

There are two costs associated with your owned domain name:

  • Cost for buying a domain name;
  • Cost for keeping your domain name registered each year.

The typical cost to buy a domain name is around $10 to $12, and the same price range for you to have it registered in your name each year.

Choose your web host provider

A “web host” is basically a server where store your website’s files on powerful Internet-connected computer systems, enabling them accessible to all internet searchers all over the world. When possible visitors want to view your page, they type your domain name into the search tab; the browser will connect to the server and direct to your website. There are a lot of such web host providers available for you. They offer a wide range of service include storage space size, server speed, and bandwidth, which means the traffic amount the server could deal with on your website. The performance of your website will highly depend on your hosting provider. You can shop around and compare the service they offer. A reliable hosting service will be the basic element to underpin your international trade business. As a result, choosing a good web host provider will be of great importance for you.

If feasible, most online exporters would likely to use a web host in their target market to utilize the localized services. Although the location of the website host does not affect the accessibility of the site, you should ensure that the host servers are in a stable infrastructure and optimal reliability for your website performance.

Besides, you also have to consider if the server store private information of EU citizens, or citizens of other nations that restrict exporting personal data. Most western countries value personal information. People are especially sensitive to their private info. It will violate the law if your neglect relevant regulations.

In addition to the basic host server’s service – storage limits, bandwidth, and cost, you should also consider the software options that the hosting company provides, for example, WordPress. If you want more freedom to manage your server, you can choose one of the Windows-based hosting options. This way, you can do everything easily, as almost everyone is familiar with the Windows user interface and the operating system in general.

When you determined to choose the server provider, keep your agreements clear and enforceable in terms of the ownership of performance specifications, intellectual property, warranties, security, privacy, the right to transfer the site to a different host, and contract termination.

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How to Create a Website for International Trade 4

Build your website

Your website should include several different pages that describe the different aspects of your business. Pages such as detailed products catalog, a blog page, company info, and a contact page should be taken into account when you start to design your website. For your designing part, you have to consider how many sections should be included on your website to support your primary goal of the website. If you’re unfamiliar with web design, consulting with the best Webflow agency can provide invaluable insights and ensure a professional look.  Have a clear purpose in mind and include a call to action (such as, learn more, sign up, contact us or buy this) on the page.

Besides, a log is a must for your business. You have to come up with one with a graphic designer on your website, social media profiles to help possible visitors identify your business easily.

In addition to the above basic sections of your website, you have to follow below principles to create an impressive website.

1. Keep a clear navigation

A clear and concise navigation will help visitors understand your business and where to go to learn about your products or services, find pricing, and contact a representative instantly when they land on your website. Remember to use well-written pages instead of poorly written ones.

2.Use calls to action strategy

The call-to-action strategy will place possible visitors into their desired info page to get what they want to know.  Buttons with clear actions will immediately attract the user’s eye on your website to take your desired action.

3. Ensure a quick loading of your website

Remember to minimize the loading time when people hit your website, and enable visitors to browse your side more quickly. As we know, people are easy to get upset and will give up their first intention to visit your site if it loads slowly. As a result, please make sure your web host provider has a short load time.

4. Keep it minimal

You do not have to cover every square inch with info or a design, or a picture on your website. Keep the look minimal, you can focus attention on the things that you want people to really pay attention to.

How to Create a Website for International Trade 5

Test and publish your website

Test your website before you announcing it live on the web. This step is to make sure your website is accessible on all major browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Bing, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, etc. You need to check each page and feature on each browser and make sure all images, links, and the format looks good. Although it seems boring and time-exhausting, the effort you put in here will save future complaints from visitors who can’t access certain features.

Besides, you have to incorporate analytics program from the beginning to monitor page performance and make coordinated changes through analysis of the performance data. It should be setting it up to resolve possible issues, and make relevant efforts to step up your website performance.

Being aware of what it takes to troubleshoot common problems, such as how to fix the ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED error, is also useful at this stage. That way you are prepared to act swiftly when a real issue afflicts your site.

Market your website

Marketing your website is a vital step to increase your audience reach and let people know your business. Social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest, is one of the most effective ways to market your website. You can post your website on your social media outlets without any promotional engagement to expand your website presence and gain more traffic.

Another way to market your website is to submit your website to major search engines and utilize search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to increase the possibility that can be searched by potential visitors. The defining title, relevant keywords, meta-descriptions are relevant to the ranks of your website in certain search engines. Adding links to your other pages or other partner’s website and following effective link building strategies will help visitors find your website and your business.

How to Create a Website for International Trade 6

Maintain your website

To maintain your website, you have to update your website frequently including blogs of your industry news, new products, latest offers, and photo. You also need to delete pages that are no longer applicable.  You also have to ensure your software and all add-ons are up to date to prevent being hacked.

Getting here, you will find it’s no big deal to build a website to start your own business. It is a low-cost investment and will help you establish credibility and reach a wide customer base. An updated website with impressive, current content will always attract visitors’ attention. Keep it in mind; you will never worry about the traffic, conversation rate of your website. It’s the right time to build your website and maintain it in an effective way.

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Sharline

Article by:

Sharline Shaw

Hey I'm Sharline, the founder of Leeline Sourcing. With 10 years of experience in the field of sourcing in China, we help 2000+ clients import from China,Alibaba,1688 to Amazon FBA or shopify. If you have any questions about sourcing , pls feel free to contact us.

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