Building your very own website is a dream for many small brands and individuals, yet there’s a common misperception that it’s impossible to build the best website without the right experience as a computer programmer or engineer with vast experience in HTML and CSS. Luckily, anyone can build their own website if they’re willing to put in a little time and effort and have a little money to spend on things like themes, hosting, and a great domain!
The misperception that you need to spend countless hours slumped over your computer screen typing mundane lines of code is simply a facade, as it couldn’t be easier to set up your website using other methods that are much more fun and interesting, and can be done in no time at all! If you want to discover some of the best tips and tricks to help you build the best website ever, then read on to find out all the information you need to create the perfect professional end product.
1. Find The right direction
You may have a good idea of the kind of website you want to create, but essentially this is the most important step and cannot be overlooked. Think about what VISITORS want when they visit your website and ensure you provide the content they need in a way that’s easy to navigate and fun. Also, check out your competition so your site can provide something unique or present material in a different way. Otherwise, your website gets lost in a sea of similar websites.
To ensure that you can find the right direction, you may want to answer the following questions:
- What information would you like to convey? How many other websites exist in your chosen field, and, are they successful?
- What will your target audience want to experience when they decide to visit your website? Discovering a complete gap in the market is becoming increasingly less common, so it’s best to find a hopeful direction in which there is some space for you to grow as a website is so vital for your overall success.
- Think about the different topics in which you have some kind of knowledge or experience, and identify which of those would be most successful as a website in today’s climate.
2. Creating a design that’s a fit for your purpose
Once you’ve decided on the purpose of your website, now is the time to consider the way you would like to present your information, products, or services. Easy navigation and clean design are keys to any website. While content is crucial to achieving marketing objectives, don’t forget the aesthetic side of your website which invites visitors to explore. With so many templates available at very reasonable prices, it’s easy create a beautiful design that fits any purpose.
- Stick to a few basic colors throughout the site, experimenting with different shades and tones to accentuate certain areas of your website, preferably building on the brand palette you’re already using.
- Be sure that you stick with a white or cream background when adding text, as many people struggle to read from a screen in darker colors and your efforts to create a more accessible page fall flat.
- Depending on the direction of your website, you may want to consider adding a few images or graphics (that are free from copyright laws) to help convey the overall purpose or replace some text for a more varied layout, as the phrase “a picture paints a thousand words” really does ring true in this respect.
- Be sure that you don’t end up going overboard by including too many bright and colorful distractions, as this will lead to a very cluttered and somewhat childish design, as well as a drastically long load time that may encourage your users to click back and visit another website instead.
3. The importance Of mobile browsing
A very large percentage of users visiting your website will be doing so via a mobile phone or similar device, so you must make an effort to ensure that the dimensions can translate to provide the same quality experience no matter how small their screen may be. Increasingly, it’s important for websites to display well on mobile devices not only because you might lose the hard-won traffic you bring to your site, but because Google imposes a penalty when sites don’t perform well on mobile. That means it’ll be harder to get traffic to your site in the first place.
So, once you’ve created your website and you’re satisfied with how it performs on your computer or laptop, try loading the pages using your mobile phone and some other mobile devices with a much smaller screen size to test its appearance. Or, better yet, do what most experts recommend, which is design for mobile-first, then you’re sure to have something that looks great on both mobile and desktop.
Designing for a laptop/desktop means you’re likely to see much of your hard work scrambled and the aesthetic value diminished, leaving your website somewhat unattractive and hard to navigate when buttons become unreachable and sidebars disappear from the page completely. Fortunately, designing a mobile-friendly site isn’t as many design templates are built to show up great on mobile devices.
4. Include great content to spark visitor’s interest
With a huge amount of information already finding its way around the internet, publishing something exciting that can catch a visitors attention is so important to gain loyal users. Ensuring that you include the best quality content throughout your website will uphold the standards set in your design, therefore creating an enjoyable experience in every sense. Waffling (typing with no real aim or purpose) will only encourage the user to question your knowledge and distrust the words they read. Including useless words just to fill up the page shows nothing more than a small amount of care or effort on your part.
If you don’t think you can write your own quality content, don’t worry. There are lots of places to find professionals ready and waiting to take your concept and convert it into great text that will entice any user to continue reading and appreciate the effort your team has put into creating your website.
Trying to survive without fresh content just because you don’t feel competent or don’t have the time to create great content will hurt your website as it won’t entice readers to linger over your pages, which is an important factor when Google determines where your content shows up when users search for the kind of information you provide. Similarly, fresh (ie. new content every week, or a couple of times a week), valuable (meaning visitors linger on your site to read what you’ve written), content on a consistent basis is critical for helping users find your site.
5. Generating traffic to reach your audience
Even with the most beautifully sleek design and amazing content, you’ll find it difficult to attract visitors if you don’t optimize your site and content for search. Luckily, showing up when users search isn’t as technical as it once was; relying more heavily on creating great content (see Tip #4) than on coding as it did in the past. To get you started, chose keywords that users might input to Google when they want to find your site, then harness the free Google Search Console.
It’s so simple to take advantage of this tool and can really increase the amount of traffic you receive from search engines, called organic search. This is FREE traffic.
Another easy tip that can produce dramatic increases in the traffic you get from search is reworking your existing content – keeping the same professional text you included before, then refocusing on keywords that receive a greater number of searches or adding keywords to content originally written without a keyword. By including some relevant keywords throughout your content, you increase your chances of appearing on more search engine pages; therefore reaching a larger number of potential visitors. Just be careful that you don’t do something called keyword stuffing, which means overusing keywords or writing nonsense content just to include keywords. Google will penalize your site for stuffing.
Another great feature that may help to increase your traffic is the inclusion of internal links within your website. Always look for an opportunity to provide some kind of link between your content and other authoritative sites across the internet, as internal links are like references in a research paper. Thus, internal links show you know what you’re talking about because you’ve read what other experts write. Linking to other sites, as well as creating great content other sites WANT to link to as authoritative, will also generate some traffic if those sites link back to you, called backlinks.
6. Easy digital marketing
Once you feel as though you have done all you can to build the best possible website, take the opportunity to advertise and market your concept confidently. There are so many forms of digital marketing to consider, but generally your target audience should influence your end choice. If you aim to attract younger visitors, harnessing the power of social media can help your traffic soar, often without a hefty price tag. Another great way to reach many people is through email marketing – although many businesses make the mistake of overlooking mass emails due to overuse. Since many mobile phone users link their email accounts to their device, you can contact them at any time or in any place, and they are likely to receive and read the email within a couple of hours due to the notification popping up on their screen.
With any luck, this guide can help you to build the best website ever. Here’s a recap:
- Figure out the purpose of your website that will attract the attention of a large percentage of people,
- Focus on the design by including basic colors and readable text that flows well throughout
- Never use an excess of photos of graphics, and ensure that your website is able to translate perfectly from a mobile device to a laptop-sized screen.
- Make sure that you include some amazing content for users to read and enjoy, adding some keywords inside to appear in as many search engine results pages as possible.
- Generate even more traffic by taking advantage of the various services online, and reach a wide audience by harnessing the power of digital marketing through social media and emails.
- Don’t forget to test your website through every stage of its creation and regularly once it’s published online – this way you can always find any faults or issues that may affect the users’ overall experience and fix them before they weaken your reputation.
7. A step-by-step guide
If you still feel like you need some guidance as you build the best website ever, here’s a step-by-step guide that walks you through the process of creating a website, one screen at a time. The guide includes:
- sites where you can buy templates
- how to install them in your hosting account
- which plugins you’ll need
- how to create pages/ posts
- what pages you’ll need to get you started
- some basics of bringing traffic to your site
- and much more
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