Starting Your Website: 8 Steps to Done
Creating a website can be a hassle and anxiety provoking – all the while it is certainly the heart of your business. Take these tips to heart.
8 WAYS TO GET YOUR WEBSITE MOVING
Understand your offering
You may think that this is so obvious that you can skip over it, but that’s where so many people get stuck…and they don’t even realize it. First things first, you need to have your offering clear in your mind before you can move forward.
If you want to market your business with an engaging website, you need to know your offering inside out. Your business could be brand new, or it could have been around for years, but if you’ve never put pen to paper to clarify your offering in a few lines, you might be surprised by what you don’t know. Spend an hour on it, revisit it and keep going to make it crystal clear.
2. Define your brand
Try and summarize what you stand for in 6 bullet points or less, and then stay true to these at every turn – every word, every graphic, even the colors. This point follows naturally from the first point because without a brand, you won’t have a website that works. You now know what you’re offering, so make sure you’re clear that everything you show your audience online resonates with your brand.
3. Research your competition
Now that we’re starting to get moving it’s time to look to the side and see what your competitors are doing. Don’t worry, no one is pushing you to copy them, you’re more drawing inspiration from the good bits they do and figuring out what you don’t like about the bad bits. It’ll prove invaluable a little later on.
4. Set a deadline for completion
Your vision is clear and you know the landscape, so why not dive right in? Because if you do, you’ll find the task expands to fill the time available. Set yourself a (realistic) deadline and you’ll be amazed at how much more productive and focused you become.
5. Register your domain name early
Next up on your journey is registering your domain name. It might sound like such a small thing, but it’s actually absolutely crucial. You wouldn’t try to rebrand a physical store before you’d signed for the keys, and you don’t want to start designing an online presence until you have the domain. What you call your business matters, so spend an afternoon getting it right.
6. Find a writer if you need one
It’s fine if words aren’t your thing, but make sure you realize this from the beginning. Work with a copywriter who can use their pen to bring your vision and message to life and you’ll find things go so much smoother.
7. Share your vision with a designer
While you or the writer are busy putting pen to paper, it is time to start meeting with a designer to get a feel for what your site might look like. If doing-it-yourself is what you have in mind, there are platforms available to help. Just make sure to be a useful bridge between the copy and graphics so that both sides are in tune with your vision.
8. Invest in SEO so you’re seen
With your offering clear, your brand visible, your deadline set and the creative elements coming together, there’s just one more thing to focus on: SEO. Have a specialist search the keywords your audience will be using to find you and then have them written naturally into your copy. It’ll make more difference than you think.
Now that you’ve heard how to do it, it’s over to you to start making it happen.
Val Chimes in – You aren’t in this alone! There are a world of resources on the web – something for each of the steps above. The desire to get to the finished product is strong but you really need a roadmap to get there rather than just jumping in. Jon’s list makes it a step-by-step process that you can wrap your brain around, one step at a time. And if you would like to chat to get things started, sign up for a free 20 minute consult. I would be happy to speak with you and start on YOUR list. www.Marketing101Essentials.com