Where do you start with building a website?
Planning to build your own website?
Where on earth do you start?
If you type this question into Google, you’ll invariably be met with a whole host of responses about buying your Domain (URL), choosing your platform and sorting hosting. These are all totally necessary steps but at risk of being controversial, I completely disagree.
Hear me out…
This is all great advice but it isn’t the first piece of the jigsaw, in fact there are a number of pieces to find and piece together first.
Diving into the tech is the most common error that self-builders make and inevitably feels way too daunting to many and out-facing.
You may well battle through and build a website, ultimately anyone with determination can do that but what you really want and need for your small business is an effective website that actually works for you, connecting and converting your perfect clients, driving enquiries and sales, not just existing surrounded by cobwebs and tumbleweed.
Is building your own website hard?
I’m not going to lie and say it’s a walk in the park for everyone, we are all wired differently, that said I do believe anyone can do it if they have properly prepared before they start. What I would say is that you need to be realistic when assessing whether building your own is the most cost-effective use of your time. For some, it is, for others what starts out as a good idea can quickly spiral into a huge waste of time with little to show for it and then a financial bill to foot for someone else to do it and the calendar pages have been turning constantly in the background.
I’ve been there and got the “Done it wrong” T-shirt so I want to impart a little hard-earned wisdom to help you along the way.
OK, so what do you need to prepare before you start building a website for my small business? As I’ve already said, it’s nothing related to tech. It’s pointless paying out until you’re ready to actually build the site, without doing the prep work first it’s dead money. A man much greater than me sums it up perfectly…
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Benjamin Franklin
What do you need to know before building a website?
01 – BUSINESS BASICS
Know your business basics – your strategy for the next year to 5 years minimum
Know the role you want your website to play to ensure it supports your strategy
Know your ideal clients
Know and understand your products or services
All sounds pretty straightforward? You wouldn’t believe how many people miss nailing this step. They’re caught in a world of “I have a business so I need a website”, without any further consideration beyond what colours and fonts they like of if there’s a good photo of themselves they can use.
02 – COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Understand what your competitors are doing.
What can you learn from them in terms of improvements or great inspiration – DO NOT COPY, just become familiar with what your prospective customers are going to be seeing when they are looking for businesses like yours.
03 – KEYWORDS
Get to grips with keywords (a key building block of SEO) and research well. Don’t just consider the insider jargon you use, think about the language of the “uneducated novice” clientele.
04 – SITE STRUCTURE
List out all the pages you’ll want on your website.
Map out how they’ll interact with each other so they make sense to a visitor landing on your site for the first time (SiteMap but don’t worry about the proper name).
Plan out the all sections you need on each page of your website (Basic Wireframe, but again don’t get hung up on the official names).
05 – CONTENT & COPY
Work on the words, the messaging, the titles, the oneliners, the calls to action, and the copy itself. Don’t forget to think about your brand voice.
06 – VISUALS
Visual branding, logo, colours, and fonts, for some this is fun, for others, it fills them with utter dread. If in doubt keep it simple, and even if not in doubt, be restrained and keep it simple!
07 – IMAGES
Whether you use a professional or decide to use stock images you’ll need to assemble images that represent your brand and convey the message that you want to share. Whatever you use, please aim for as professional as possible with the quality. Poor images snapped on a phone are easily spotted and tend to be a huge turn-off.
08 – TECH TIME
Now it’s time to get to grips with where most other advice pieces start, selecting your domain name, website builder, and website host. (There’ll be another post along shortly to give my take on these)
09 – BUILD TIME
Time to build your website, now isn’t the time to reinvent content and copy (at least not to start with). You should already have a plan on paper (in broad terms) so start with that and let the brainpower be spent (undistracted) in mastering the software. When it’s built you can go back and ramp up the pretty. Friday afternoon colouring at school was always the reward for the end of the week’s hard work, and this is no different (if you like doing the creative stuff).
10 – GO LIVE
Test and launch your website. Check every link, every button, spellings, punctuation, customer journey etc. Once you’ve checked, check again or get someone else to help with a fresh pair of eyes.
11- ONWARDS
Share, connect, maintain, develop and grow your website. A good website is never finished!
Can a beginner build a website?
Absolutely, just take it one step at a time. If any of what I’ve been saying makes sense to you then you may be interested my course,
The essential demystified guide to planning, building, launching & maintaining your own website. The course will equip you to understand, build and have the knowledge and confidence to maintain a great website, and giving you complete control.
YOU DON’T NEED ANY HOSTING, PLATFORM ETC. SORTED OUT BEFOREHAND – IT’S ALL COVERED!