How to Launch a Website for Your Pet Business

Who doesn’t love pets? We treat them like our children and part of the family. As the saying goes, we work hard so our pets can live a good life. Though we know that’s a common joke in paw-parenthood, we can’t deny that we spend a lot of time and money taking care of our pets to make sure they are in terrific condition. 

So you have decided to start a business to serve pet owners and their pets. With the growing number of paw-rents, the opportunities for your business are endless. The pet industry has grown from $51 billion to over $100 billion. With the demand for pets and the services needed by pet owners, new products and services continue to emerge in the market.

How do you cope with marketing with the increasing demand and the growing presence of competition? Online presence is the key! This article will help you understand why you need a website for your pet business and how to get started.

Why do you need a website in the first place?

The number one instinct of people when looking to hire for local services is to search online with the phrase “near me” or “close by”. Google searches using this term have increased significantly in recent years by 80% due to the pandemic. 

While you can register your business on platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, or Instagram which are the most common places business owners will go to, that doesn’t mean you are establishing your online presence already.

Here are a few reasons why:

1. These platforms are loaded with competition and unless you boost a post or start a costly ad campaign that pushes your ads to almost everywhere, you won’t show up in front of the right people versus having your website.

2. The algorithm of most of these platforms prevents your post from showing up when you encourage people to leave their platforms.

3. You cannot design these platforms the way you want them leaving your brand exposure to be limited.

How do you build a website then?

Here are six steps on how to put up your website.

1. Choose a domain name for your business.

It’s a fun activity to brainstorm for a creative domain name. Keep in mind that it helps to include keywords related to your business. It’s also important to use your business name as the domain name or part of it if it’s short enough. This will help Google associate your business name with the service you offer. Also, make sure it’s easy to remember.

2. Pick a platform where you want to build your website.

There are a lot of DIY site-builder platforms available online that do not require coding at all but you build your website using drag and drop elements. Some are plug and play where you just need to put in your text and images. 

The most common platforms with drag and drop features are Wix and Webflow. Squarespace and Shopify are plug and play which also offer drag-and-drop features. WordPress, on the other hand, would allow you the utmost flexibility if you have very custom features that you want to add, which will require a web developer of course to get it up and running. Squarespace has e-commerce features but the ultimate choice to run an online shop would be Shopify and WordPress.

3. Gather keywords related to your business.

Keywords are what make your website show up on Google. They need to be part of your copywriting, the alt tags of your images, the meta tags of your page, the hashtags of your articles and social media posts, and every material you publish online. 

The most important part is making sure that these keywords are part of your content. Google needs to be able to crawl them on the pages of your website so they can index your pet business and display them in search results.

4.Add great visuals and imagery.

While Google relies on text for you to be found, people rely on images to be convinced to read what they see on your pet business website. Compelling visuals like great images, cool and relevant artwork, videos and others attract the attention of your target audience. What words cannot describe, visuals can supply. 

There are a bunch of image banks online both free and paid. A few of the free ones are Unsplash and Pexels. The paid ones are available in subscription or pay-as-you-go models. And of course, having your photos and videos taken is the best option. It is very custom to your needs and you can do whatever you want.

5. Review and launch!

Just like with everything, before publishing something online, it pays to review what you have done before launching your pet services website. Building a website can be daunting and repetitive. Feel free to move away from the computer to give your eyes and mind a fresh view and perspective. The best ideas after all take place in the most inappropriate times. Funny but true!

6. Share it with your network.

Of course, the website won’t be visited if you just rely on simply showing on Google. So you have to share the website in every way you can. Add your domain name to your Google My Business, Facebook page, Instagram account, social media posts, and directory platforms related to the pet industry. 

We’ll talk more about this on the next article. So stick around!

It may or may not be your jam to build websites, but you could at least get started and put something together. The only way to start is to start. 

We’re happy to offer a 1-on-1 consultation for 30 minutes, for FREE. Reach out to us and let’s talk about the next best pet services website that the internet will ever see.