10 Steps to Build a Green Business Website

/ Green Business / By /

This article provides a checklist of the steps to build a green business website. While building the website forms the core of the process, there are several things to do alongside it. This is to have an optimized website accessible on the web. Many articles are available online for the individual steps mentioned. Hence, this article will not delve deep into each step but will instead provide a comprehensive overview of the steps.

 

Individual business needs determine the selection of hosting provider, CMS and plugins. Hence, this article will not refer to a specific hosting provider, CMS or plugins, except as an example. Regardless of the hosting provider, CMS or plugins used, the steps to build a website are the same. Building a green business website will depend on the theme and template selected. But the steps are very much applicable to building any website.

 

Readers might already know some of the information provided in this article. Its inclusion is for the sake of comprehensiveness. These are the steps.

1. Selecting A Hosting Provider

The selection of a hosting provider is as per individual business needs. The plans offered by various hosting providers determine the selection of a provider. The factors determining the selection of a hosting plan are cost, number of websites hosted, estimated monthly traffic and so on. Some hosting plans provide a free domain for a year and free email. Consideration of all this is important to find a perfect hosting plan for the business.

2. Getting A Domain

Several hosting providers also have a domain registration service. Purchasing and registering a domain through a hosting provider will make maintenance easier. The Domain Name Server (DNS) records are then managed from within the hosting provider dashboard. Some hosting providers also have a free domain migration option. An existing domain purchased elsewhere can be transferred to the selected hosting provider.

3. Hosting Setup

The setup involves security, email and so on. There are hosting plans that provide free SSL / TLS, such as Let’s Encrypt TLS. Installing SSL / TLS makes the site secure by ensuring the safe transfer of data or information over the network. Also, redirecting HTTP to HTTPS will ensure all traffic to the site is through the secure protocol. If the hosting plan provides a free email service, the email can be set up through the hosting provider dashboard. One important step in email setup is DKIM. This ensures that the recipient servers know the emails sent are from an authorized source and hence will not mark them as spam.

4. Installing CMS

Many hosting plans come with managed WordPress, one of the most common CMS used for building websites. With one-click installation, the hosting plans make it quick and easy to install WordPress. A prompt to create a new website or migrate an existing website shows up while installing WordPress. If there is an existing WordPress site hosted elsewhere, it’s migrated using a WordPress migration plugin. If not, an empty website is created. The website is then linked to the domain purchased earlier. The required plugins are then installed from within the WordPress dashboard. Some of the plugins are mentioned in the steps below.

5. Selecting A Theme and A Template for the Website

Several nature themes are available on WordPress, to build the website. Selecting an appropriate theme would also depend on the editor used to build the website, as explained in the next step. There are themes meant for a particular editor that won’t be compatible with another editor. Along with a theme, a starter template can also be used to build the website. Aspects such as the header, footer and font style throughout the website are based on the selected theme. Whereas the selected template determines the layout of the web pages.

6. Building the Green Business Website

Block Editor and Elementor are two of the editors used in WordPress. The block editor is a WordPress editor, whereas Elementor is a plugin. Some might find Block Editor easier to use. But Elementor provides the flexibility and customizability not found in Block Editor. Websites built with Elementor are also tablet and mobile-friendly. Hence, there is no need to customize the website further for tablet and mobile devices.

 

The editor used for building the website is based on individual preferences. Balancing ease of use with customizability factors in the selection of the editor. There are nature-themes available for both editors. Hence a green business website can be built efficiently with either of those editors. Having a theme and using a starter template makes it more efficient to build the website. This also improves consistency across the website.

7. Optimizing Images for Page Load Speed

WordPress has a collection of free stock images, already optimized for page load. But usually, we prefer to upload and use our images. If the size of the images uploaded is over 1 MB, this will increase the image load time during page rendering. There are plugins to achieve lossless compression of the images. They reduce the size of the images without losing image quality. This improves page load speed significantly, without compromising the quality of the images. Besides the images used on the pages, the uploaded logo and icon images also need optimization. Since they too have an impact on page load times.

8. Setting Up Meta Data and Optimizing for SEO

Adding a meta title and description for each page, and alt text for images, are some of the steps to optimize the website for SEO. While the meta title and description can be added to all the pages, they are particularly important for the landing page. Since the landing page has to show up on search results. There are plugins for optimizing the website for SEO, along with plugins for analytics to monitor traffic to the website. Web traffic on a search engine can also be monitored from within the corresponding search console or webmaster tools. The search console and webmaster tools are mentioned further down in this article. Analytics and monitoring website traffic involve advanced SEO. This is outside the scope of the article and hence not covered here.

9. Configuring a CDN

A website built with a WordPress theme and template often has pages optimized for page load. But when we upload our images, the uploaded images can take longer to load during page rendering. This can happen even after the optimization mentioned in the previous step. Images in the page body get indexed by search engines, explained in the next step, and hence load fast. However, images on the page header are not indexed, resulting in a slower image load.


Configuring a Content Delivery Network (CDN) will reduce the image load times. A CDN serves the pages from an edge server located nearest to the user. It will also help to improve page load speed if pages take longer to load due to content such as videos on the pages.


A CDN such as Cloudflare provides several configuration settings to improve page load speed. Along with this, Cloudflare also provides security features. Details about the Cloudflare CDN can be found on the Cloudflare website.

10. Submitting Sitemaps to Search Engines

Search engines usually crawl the web for new websites, but this can take a while, even months. The website won’t show up on search results until then. To speed it up, sitemaps can be submitted to search engines through the corresponding search console or webmaster tools. A sitemap contains the website structure, including all the URLs of the website along with the URL structure. This allows search engines to know the website structure and linking between the pages. Once the sitemaps are submitted, indexing can be requested for the pages. It might take a day or so for the pages to get indexed and then the website will start showing up in search results.

Summary

The 10 steps provided above give a comprehensive overview of building a green business website. With these steps, we can efficiently build clean, secure, fast and responsive websites. Once built, a website can then be indexed into search engines to make it appear in search results. Several of the steps above also apply while changing hosting provider or domain or optimizing an existing site further for SEO. Some of the steps cover SEO setup, which is only to optimize the site for SEO. Ranking the site on search engines involves keyword research and keyword analysis. It is a topic in and of itself, hence not covered in this article.

About NNWS

I provide web-based software solutions for the environmental cause, through Nattoji Nature Web Solutions. My services are for clients involved in the conservation of nature and for sustainable businesses. I provide my services within their budget. Building nature-themed websites is one of the services provided.