One of our clients, Dr. Muibat Adeniran, is a certified Obstetrician and Gynaecologist in Ogbomosho who deeply cares about women’s health and well-being.
Before she started using WordPress, her practice relied heavily on phone calls and in-person consultations, which often meant patients had to wait for responses or struggled to reach her team during busy periods. At times, delayed replies led to misunderstandings or patients deciding to look elsewhere for help.
The turning point came when she missed following up with a patient who had requested timely advice about an important medical check-up. This situation affected their long-standing relationship and made her realize she needed a better way to stay connected.
At an industry event, she spoke with a colleague about the challenge, expressing concern that building a professional website might be too costly — imagining it would run into hundreds of thousands of naira. But the colleague introduced her to Pixels Digitals where show her how affordable and accessible it could be, even for individual practitioners.
Encouraged, Dr. Muibat discovered she could launch her own website without breaking the banks. Within a short time, we built a clean, professional site that shares trusted women’s health content, allows patients to book appointments online, and makes it easy to get in touch with Paystack gateway integration.
This simple step transformed her practice: her patients now get information faster, feel more supported, and she can focus more on what matters most — providing exceptional care.
In this blog post, you’ll learn how you too can have your own website with WordPress, the essential steps to get started, and what it really costs as a Nigerian business owner.
WHAT YOU NEED, TO BUILD A WORDPRESS WEBSITE
As a business owner, you need to be business-oriented. It starts from building a reputable name for your brand, getting acknowledged, and doing the little possible to achieve that.
Irrespective of your business brand, you need a website, and WordPress site is the best for you. To set it up, below are the most important things.
1- A Domain For Your Brand. Your domain simply means your website address; people will fill in the web search bar to access you. An example is (www.yourdomain.com.). You can quickly get a domain from a registrar like WhoGoHost, DomainKing.ng, or Truehost Nigeria. Mostly affordable, it with the least of 14000 naira, less or more. Also, in the process of creating a domain, ensure the following takes place:
- Keep it simple
- Avoid fluffy words, difficult to spell or pronounce
- Avoids the use of company names and content used by others
- Before you claim to own a domain, ensure it 100% available to work
- Don’t include figures or dashes
- A better, faster, and smarter way is to add .com
2- A Web Hosting Plan. This is where your website is stored. it’s like a house you rent to secure your domain. A hosting enables your website to store everything needed for security and back up purpose.
Without hosting, your website cannot function or be noticed. Also, for smooth running, it requires a monthly or annual subscription, depending on its services or how large. such as WhoGoHost, DomainKing.ng, Truehost Nigeria, Siteground etc.
- Site ground. Usually best known for its high-speed work with great support.
- Bluehost. Easily recommended for beginners, it has a good guide for usage.
- Pressable. It helps ensure the website is taken care of. E.g., your update, speed, and backups.
Before you buy a host, take note.
- It Support WordPress installation.
- It is customer-friendly with enough reliable support.
- The bigger the hosting, will attract growth to your business.
- The first use should enable a free domain.
To get all these, 40,000 or 70,000 naira per year for a small business owner is sufficient, and ensure its followed with maximum flexible support.
3- WordPress Installation. After getting a hosting web and domain name at hand, you now have the access to build your dream website to your taste of choice, by one-clicking to download WordPress and include all the needed features that would give it the chance to match your brand identity. Here are simple ways to do it.
- Go to your hosting web account and find the login details
- Click on the cPanel
- You will find “sign up for WordPress”
- Tap on it and fill in the requirement, e-g, web title, e-mail address, username, and password
- After fulfilling these, a notification of your link will be sent, and your WordPress software will be ready in a jiffy.
Don’t get overwhelmed, because navigating to set the bunch of menu icons might confuse you, it’s normal, and after a few steps with a YouTube video tutorial will help.
4- Theme to Design. It defines what your website represents. Themes assist in furnishing your website layout, font, color, page building/structure, and everything else to design your website.
There are many themes you can perfect to fit in your website, which both come in free and paid versions. Perhaps you can’t afford the paid version, don’t stress yourself, use the available free ones.
To learn how to browse and install a theme, follow these steps.
- Go to your dashboard.
- Under the dashboard, you will find appearance.
- Followed by themes, add new
- you will land on the official theme library and select the one that matches your objectives.
Everything you want is available on the themes library, various filters, features, and eye-catching layout, all are available to use.
5- Plugin. Plugins are the primary features you add to expand your website functionalities in line with the previously one permanently installed one. Plugins are countless, but as a Nigerian business owner, you only need to download the essentials that can enhance and maintain your business, because too much of un-needs plugins affect a website and depreciate its objectives. For example, I recommend the following essential plugins for you as a business owner.
- Yoast SEO: it’s a must-have plugin, essentially designed to rank your post high.
- Elementor: a page builder editor for efficient drag-&-drop. It is very user-friendly.
- Wordfence Security: it ensures to protect your website against any form hacking, and supports good maintenance.
- Google Analytics: Highly recommended as a necessity to track your website activities, learn about recent viewers/readers, and suggest areas of improvement.
- UpdraftPlus: best for website backups.
What You Don’t Need to Waste Money on
Recently, I came across some business owners stating how they have mistakenly spent extravagantly to build their website. Here is a breakdown of what to avoid same mistake.
1- Buying Paid Themes Instead Of Free Ones. Anything premium is mostly expensive and could be difficult to keep up with, because the least of a premium theme is $30 to $70, and they could be great to utilise, but as a Nigerian business owner, there should be no room to consider such expense as a starter. There are some available theme offers to explore, which are excellent and smart.
Tips: Explore the popular themes that work hand in hand with Elementor or Gutenberg.
2- Un-useful Plugin. Don’t be carried away to install every plugin; it will cause you harm and affect your website’s productivity. Just stick to the essential ones. Examples are WordFence for security purposes, RankMath for SEO, UpdraftPlus for safety backups, LiteSpeed cache for good performance, or WP Super Cache, all of which are trusted plugins.
Tips. Ensure the paid plugin has a good purpose; does it solve a problem or fancy?
3- Paying for a Custom Logo at Lunch. Hiring someone to design a logo will cost you a huge money. Some people give the excuse of excellent branding launching, unknowingly, Canva can provide a sleek, beautiful, professional, and desired brand logo.
Tips. Branding is gradual, don’t rush, pay attention to your message, and offers.
4- Expensive Hosting Plans You Don’t Need. Recently, it was announced that some business owners are using the sum of 120,000 annually for hosting a web plan they barely make use of, when there are affordable, cheap hosting websites you can kickstart with starting from 40,000 to 50,000 yearly from trusted and reputable companies people have used before. E.g., Whogohost and Truehost.
The best time to give in to expensive web hosting, when the traffic control is beyond measure and requires a better performance to avoid malfunctioning, then you can decide to afford one.
Tips. Only buy a web hosting that works with meaningful back-up, free SSL, and with tangible support.
5- You Only Need One Domain. If you are a small business owner, one domain is sufficient; you don’t need two or beyond. All you are expected to, is to ensure that the domain is relatable, quick to recall, good to pronounce, and link to your brand identity. Having beyond one domain has no benefits of purpose.
Tips. Establish a reputable relationship with customers; one domain is enough to build trust.
6- Hiring a Developer For a Simple Task.
It depends! However, if your site requires advanced customization, integrating payment gateways, or adding extra layers of security, it’s wise to hire a professional freelancer or developer to ensure everything works seamlessly and securely.
As a Nigerian business owner, your aim in using WordPress should mainly focus on using it to generate leads, traffic, sales, inform, and build reputable trust.
Why Local Context Matters
Setting up a business that includes how to benefit the customers, specifically people in your locality, assist them to solve their needs, and this should be each Nigerian business owner; this will propel customers to find the brand worthy and enjoyable to patronise. Because using Nigerian local tools has commendable services, with managing time and resources.
The content below highlights the importance of using local context to build your WordPress website as a Nigerian business owner.
Consider Payment in Naira. Some customers face challenges using a foreign website to pay, due to the exchange rates and charges, but when local companies’ payment is enabled, it becomes stress-free to use the naira.
Problems Are Easily Rectified. In case of any unforeseen challenges on your website, there are quick ways to reach out for support from Nigerian hosting companies.
Excellent features. Developers and local hosts critically know and understand the essential features to be included in setting up a website brand business for Nigerian owners, such as Flutterwave, mobile-friendly design, and WhatsApp chat buttons.
Effective Performance. It’s quick to use because it’s hosted in Nigeria.
FAQs
Is It Possible To Use a WordPress Website Freely?
Yes, there are eligible free offers, however, they are very few and might likely not give you the objectives goals. A free WordPress website doesn’t include a domain name, effective features for complex tasks, and it has frequent WordPress ads each time on your site.
Does WordPress Requires Coding?
No, you don’t have to. WordPress is very simple and easy to navigate, and there are available ways to design without coding, just drag and drop, like Gutenberg or Elementor would suffice.
Is SEO Free?
Yes, it’s a free plugin like Rankmath or Yoast that enables your brand to rank high. It also suggests real feedback to know if you are using the right keyword research and tips to improve readability. (Note: Off-Page is not free , which is link building or PR)
Can I Sell Through The Online Store?
Definitely, yes, of course. Just install WooCommerce and upload your products for customers to see and patronize you.
Do I Need to Hire Someone To Build?
It depends! However if your site requires advanced customization, integrating payment gateways, or adding extra layers of security, it’s wise to hire a professional WordPress developer to ensure everything works seamlessly and securely.
Conclusion
Just like each achievement in life is a gradual process, likewise, building an efficient, people’s need demand website business in Nigeria. Stop thinking you need huge money to establish a functional website. All you need is a good domain, create educational and helpful content, enable contact info, and showcase your products, or make things simple for customers. As time goes on, you expand and scale up.
