7 basic tips to make your own website
Hello there!
Welcome to 2021, a time where not having an online presence would basically deem you to be a dinosaur! While you may think that having an Instagram account or a Facebook page for your brand with some following is enough, guess what, it isn’t! What you’re missing out on is a website.
Now you might ask, “Who needs a website? Do I need a website? Why do I need a website? What should I use it for? What will it even do? Can I do cool stuff with it? Will it twerk if I ask it to? Will I make a dime out of it?”
Well, it won’t twerk, and yes it can definitely make money so let’s find follow a few basic steps for that.
Firstly, what the hell is a website?
A website enables people to see what you or your brand is all about while learning about your products and/or services. By having your website available to potential & existing clients, it allows your business to be functioning 24/7, 365 days a year, even when you are sleeping, eating or brushing your teeth. Now here’s the good part!
That’s right! You don’t really have to be tech-savvy to create a website and we we are here to tell you exactly how to go about it.
We present to you 7 know-hows that you can use (and you must) to create a website for yourself or for your business.
Tip #1
Get to know your audience
So before you go ahead and start “making the website”, take a pause and figure out who your audience is. Identifying with your audience will help you figure out the kind of messaging that works with the people you want buying your stuff and what kind of services you should be offering to them. (or you could just leave it all and become a caveman?)
Tip #2
Show them who you are
Take this opportunity to boast about your services & sell your products at the same time! Think of this as an interview scenario where your potential boss asks “do you have what we are looking for?”. But in this case, it’s not a job at stake, it’s just your business. No pressure though :)
Tip #3
Need for super speed!
*dial-up connection has entered the chat*
Been to one of those super slow websites that just wouldn’t load your favourite shoes on time? You wait and wait and wait and for what? To ultimately give up? Because honestly, at this rate, buying retail would be faster. Well, guess what! That website just lost their sale AND reputation because: People don’t scroll slow sites!
Let me tell you something.
There are only two facts in life: People don’t scroll slow sites & Joey doesn’t share food.
Tip #4
#SEO
*Marvel Fans Assemble*
Welcome to the part that basically goes over everyone’s head but they still pretend like they know what’s happening. Well, we know what’s happening. (Kind of. A bit went over our head. Just kidding) SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, if SEO is Christopher Columbus, your website is America. You’ll get discovered, Son! Basic idea is that you integrate your website content with the most searched keywords in your product domain. By optimizing your site, you can create a fast, robust, and user-friendly website that ranks higher on the search engines, which in turn helps bring in more customers!
Tip #5
Website builders to the rescue!
Don’t have development or design experience? No problem! There are plenty of website-building platforms in the market that can make your website creation process super easy! They come with preloaded layouts & features and you can pick whichever you deem fit.
Here are our top 5 picks:
Shopify: Probably one of the best e-commerce platforms on the market today. It’s designed to help people build their own, scalable online store with hundreds of built-in features, and tons of apps.
WIX: Their visually impressive layouts are curated for individuals, small businesses, restaurants, online stores and freelance artists such as musicians and photographers. They are optimized for mobile devices and offer great packages and domain prices.
Squarespace: It’s an all-in-one content management system or CMS. With your subscription, you have access to their user-friendly platform, content hosting, well-designed templates, built-in security and analytics, 24/7 support,
and much more.Weebly: Weebly gives you a personalized domain and email address, reliable and free hosting, fully customizable and modern themes and templates and premium support via email, chat and phone, video tutorials, webcasts and more. You also get a 30-day money-back guarantee plus loads more features.
GoDaddy: GoDaddy is used as a web host and domain registrar. What that means is when people want to buy a domain name they can go to GoDaddy and purchase it. After they purchase the domain name they can host their website with the service.
Tip #6
Update your website Constantly & Consistently
Let’s face it! You wouldn’t enter a store if you knew that they’ve been keeping the same clothes since 2016! Then why would your customers? A boring, redundant and hard to navigate website will repel clients.
Earn your customers’ trust by keeping the content fresh & always updated. This way they always have something new to look forward to. Your content might be precious but if it’s the same content as it was 5 years ago then, precious or no precious, it’s definitely at the bottom of the search engine crawlers barrel. So update your site regularly.
Tip #7
Cyber security is CRUCIAL
New or old, all websites are prone to cyber attacks. We get to hear about it everyday. But the likelihood of these attacks can be greater if you end up relying on antique, museum-worthy coding & technology. It’s not just security that we want to emphasize on but also the content management system that you use, the kind of server that hosts your website, running regular backups, and strong passwords. What we really want to say is “Guard the damn infrastructure man! Or get ready to be hacked”.
And that’s it! Remember these pointers when you start creating your website & we assure you that you would have started on a great note.
P.S. That’s our proud face right there looking at how you go about making a website that’s alive, kicking & up to date.
