The most important things you need to know about your website
However, it is an old truth that our wants do not always match our needs. Quite often what we want is not exactly what we really need.
And while what you want is just a website, what you actually need is not just a website, but a valuable site that will really make your business more efficient and profitable. You don’t just need a website, you need an effective website.
And what’s the difference, you ask? As you will find out on this page and on this site in general, the difference is huge.
As we have mentioned many times in our articles,
Building a site is not particularly difficult. Building a successful and effective site, however, is already “a completely different story”.
Let’s repeat again (we will never get tired of repeating it!) 380 new sites are created every minute on the Internet today. In just the second you’ve read this sentence, over six new websites have already appeared on the Internet! Do you know how much that makes per day? Over half a million. In a single day!
Today, more than half a million new websites appear on the Internet every single day!
Well, with such competition, if you expect to succeed by building just any kind of site, you are vowing to waste both your time and money.
Sometimes clients come to us saying: “I know what I want. I just need people to implement it technically”. If you also think so, you are deeply mistaken.
A website is not a technical endeavor! It is a sophisticated marketing tool. It is a powerful weapon in your hands, and like any weapon aimed in the wrong direction, the site can do harm.
A successful website combines knowledge from multiple fields such as economics, marketing, psychology, aesthetics, ethics, and many more. In really successful websites, behind the seemingly beautiful “pictures”, backgrounds, fonts, and buttons, there is a lot of hidden knowledge and many years of experience.
Therefore, always treat your website with due respect and care. Because as much as a good website can make your business more successful, a poorly built website can hurt it and in some cases even fail it.
Your website is a reflection of your company
Never forget:
Visitors always equate a website with its owner.
If your site looks unsightly and unprofessional, to its visitors your company will look exactly like the site – unsightly and unprofessional, no matter what it actually is!
These days, when more than half a million new sites are created every day, and thousands of companies are fighting for the “minds and hearts of users”, investing huge sums in highly professional and precisely optimized sites, the frivolous attitude towards the website is the worst mistake a business can make!
These days, where even old ladies are checking their horoscopes, getting their pensions, and shopping over the Internet, you can’t afford to have “just any website”.
Your website can make your business, but it can also break it. However, this does not depend on the site, but on you, because what kind of site you will own depends solely on you.
Therefore, do not underestimate any of the steps listed below, and do not miss to familiarize yourself with the articles related to them. Thus, the chances of your site having the necessary qualities and working effectively for you will increase many times over.
Step 1: first of all – prepare the content
The success of your website depends not only on your web designers but also on you! Of the qualities of the information and the texts that YOU will have to prepare for your site.
Do not trust or rely on designers who promise to build you a “highly professional” website without you ever “lifting a finger”! Whatever web designers you hire will only be able to amplify or detract from the impact of your content.
Think of your website as a magazine for your company that you need to publish.
To publish this “magazine”, of course, you need to prepare in advance its structure (what sections it should contain) and its content – texts, illustrations, diagrams, company signs, etc.
To get the right approach and prepare good content for your website to make it successful and useful for your business, read the articles What should I put on my website? Why is my site failing? The worst mistakes in the websites and How to make a successful site?.
Let’s repeat again: believe me, no one else will prepare the content (texts and photos) for your site but you.
If you do not feel prepared enough to write texts, or simply do not have time for it, hire professional writers (copywriters), but closely monitor and check their work. Remember that no one but you knows your company and your business well enough to prepare the texts for the site for you.
Step 2: choosing a contractor for your website
At this point, it’s time to decide who will build your website.
Here, above all, it is important to know that the relationship with the people who will build your site will be long-lasting. Don’t expect to “forget” about your web designers once your site is ready. This happens extremely rarely, and there is a serious reason behind it. Every web designer “leaves a part of himself” in the construction of every site, and sooner or later you will be forced to seek their help again.
Therefore, carefully select the contractors for your assignment. You will have to work together for a long time.
The options that will open up to you are numerous – from the free, do-it-yourself option, to working with freelancers (freelance designers), to hiring specialized web design agencies to take on the task of designing and developing your site.
Therefore, it would be useful to read our article Who and how to build my website? and How to choose a web designer? in which you will find a lot of information and practical advice in this direction.
Keep in mind that experienced web designers have hundreds of built sites behind them, so they can give you really invaluable information and advice on not only how to prepare your source material, but also how to organize your information so that your website is maximally effective.
Therefore, after carefully choosing good and experienced designers, listen to their advice. Steve Jobs once said, “Hire people that will tell you what to do, not to tell them what to do.”
Step 3: choosing a technological solution
Once you have most of the text for your site in place and decided who will build it, it’s time to decide (usually with the help of your already chosen web designer) HOW to build your website.
Of course, we know very well that you are not IT specialists and there is no way for you to make this decision yourself. However, it is important to have at least some preliminary information on the subject so that you can navigate the advice your designers are likely to give you and make an informed decision.
As the first step in this stage, it is good to decide (maybe with our help) whether your site should be static or dynamic.
Please do not be misled by claims that only dynamic sites are the right solution! Each of these two decisions has its pros and cons, so it’s really important that you make your informed decision at this stage.
For this purpose, it will be particularly useful for you to read our article Static or dynamic site? and The advantages of a static site.
If your designers claim that WordPress is “your only salvation”, it probably won’t be superfluous to read our article WordPress – pros and cons.
Step 4: plan a budget for the website
Of course, you will certainly need to plan your budget as well, and therefore you will also be interested in prices.
There is a lot to talk about website development prices, but here we will tell you only the most important: a high price does not guarantee you quality, but a low price certainly guarantees that you will throw away your money, no matter how little they are.
Remember that nothing can replace a wealth of experience. When it comes to something as critical to your business as your website, don’t look for the cheapest solution because that’s a surefire way to lose your money and possibly hurt your business!
Website prices vary widely. Today you can find people ready to build a “site” for you for amounts of $500-600, and others who will not even talk to you if your budget is not at least $5000.
There is a reason for that: there is no requirement that you have any professional qualification in order to declare yourself a web designer. Moreover, no one will even notice you if you claim on your site that you are an experienced web designer, and the site where you write this is the first in your life.
Therefore, it would be useful to read our article titled What is the cost of a website? and Cheap site? What are the risks?, as well as trusting your gut when you meet the people who will be building your site.
Step 5: Register a domain name
The domain name for your website is important! It becomes part of your company’s identification and will be part of all your advertising material.
There may even come a time when your business will no longer be known by its registered name, but by the domain name, you have chosen. Therefore, take special time to both read up on the matter and carefully select that name. It may one day turn out that the time spent on this was one of your best investments.
What exactly are domains and how to register a domain name, read our page on What is a domain and how is it registered?.
Step 6: Set up a hosting account
After you already have your domain name, you need to rent Internet space (part of a server) in which to install your site. The service of renting Internet space is called hosting.
Yes, this is definitely a technical aspect that your web designers will take care of partially or fully. Regardless, though, it would be helpful for you to know the basics too, to reduce the likelihood of making mistakes or being misled.
What exactly is hosting, what are its features, and how to rent such a service, read in our article What is hosting and how to rent hosting?
Step 7: maintenance and optimization
There is nothing more pointless than an old newspaper and an outdated website! Once built, your website will need not only technical support but also optimization and regular updating of the information on it.
Above all, remember that building your site and then just “dumping” it in the hope that it will work for you without taking care of it is one of the surest ways to fail.
The Internet is a dynamic environment where everything is constantly changing. A site that does not change, evolve, and get optimized to constantly keep up with the environment in which it is placed, inevitably falls behind and sooner or later gets forgotten by Google.
To know in which directions to focus your efforts after you already have a site, read our articles What does site maintenance include?, What is website optimization (SEO)? , as well as What is on-page optimization? and How to rank on the first page of Google today? .
In conclusion
Yes, dear friends, as you understood, building and maintaining the website turned out to be neither simple, quick, nor cheap tasks.
However, we are convinced that knowing a problem is the most direct and possibly the only way to solve it. That is why we have created the materials on this site, in the hope that they will be useful to you and save you from the costly mistakes that every newbie on the Internet makes. We hope we have been useful to you.
Thank you for being here.
