What’s the next step to building my website after I buy the domain?
In part one of the web design series, we covered the logistics of purchasing your domain, adding hosting to it, and selecting a publishing tool or website builder. Now, it’s time to plan out your website content. You might groan when I say this, but trust me that your first step is research. As the expert of your business, I trust that you know your customer inside and out. Now, you need to use that knowledge to conduct your SEO research.
It’s vital to understand how your audience is searching online and what they are looking for. Competitor research is also important at this stage. These steps are important so that you can make everything about your website stand out to potential customers, and plan your content with their needs and experience in mind.
Once you feel like you have a clear idea of what your customers are searching for and what information and features will best grab their attention, you’re ready to start planning your content. If you need more SEO research tips to get started, you can revisit this blog post or download my free SEO guide.
How do I create a wireframe and why is it useful?
Before you do any writing or designing for your website, I personally recommend that you start with a wireframe. A wireframe is a simple visual representation of your website using shapes and simple text to map out what content you will have on a given page. Wireframes allow you to play around with the layout and align on the key features of your website before diving into the details of your website design.
Wireframes are a great way to start planning your website because they allow you to easily align with other stakeholders on the overall structure of the website. They also offer you a template to work from when you get to the design stage. When you’re creating your wireframe, think about the information that is most important to your customer, and what actions are more important for them to take on the page you’re wireframing.
What is a sitemap and how do I create one?
When you’re happy with your overall layout, you can start building out a sitemap plan. When I create a sitemap, I like to use a spreadsheet to plan out each page with columns for the name or title of the page, the purpose of the page, any needed content to included, and the metadata. This gives me a simple overview of my website structure, and I can get some of the SEO pre-work out of the way.
A sitemap is essentially a list of pages of your website. In SEO, a sitemap is a file that helps search engines better crawl your website. You can create a sitemap yourself, as I suggest above, for the planning stage of your website content creation. You can also generate an XML sitemap of your website once you have built it to help search engines better crawl your website.
How many pages should my website have, and what kinds of pages do I need?
Typically, a business website should have a place to read more about your mission and values, a place to contact you, a place to browse products or service offerings, and a place to read about experiences from previous customers. It’s up to you how many pages you want your website to have, just make sure that each one has a distinct and clear purpose.
If you’re an expert in a niche field, you may want to have a blog to share your knowledge. If you’re a coach or a mentor, you may want to have a way to book meetings with you that syncs with your calendar. You likely need an e-commerce function and a way to build or leverage a newsletter. Be very thoughtful and intentional about all the features your website needs to have, because that will likely affect how many pages you need to create.
I have my website content prepared, so what’s the next step to publishing my website?
I bet you thought I’d say you can start building, but there’s one final step that you may already have completed (at least I hope you’re not this far into launching a business website without it!), which is to have a brand kit so that everything you put online – from your website to social media – is cohesively and effectively branded.
If you need a brand kit for your business, I would love to create one for you.
What should be on the home page of my website?
The home page is going to be the first page most people see on your website, so you want it to present the very best first impression possible. Within 5 seconds or less, your audience should be able to land on your home page and get a sense of what you’re about and what they can gain from working with or purchasing from you. You want short, clear, concise headlines and tight, compelling copy.
Once you have mapped out the content you want to have on your website, you can start building! It’s ideal for your brand to have a brand kit to make sure that your colors, fonts, and overall look-and-feel are consistent. Use your SEO research to write and optimize your website copy. Make sure you have the rights to use any media that you add to your website. Finally, make sure to enable any features or connect any tools you need for analytics, e-commerce, CRM, or other needed features.
Building a website yourself can be overwhelming, but you can do this! If you need support along the way, you can always book a free consultation with me. Did I answer all the questions you have about web design? Let me know!