Whether you want to start a business website, a personal website or a blog, starting and building a website can be a very rewarding project. If you have the time, patience, and know-how to make it work, it can also be very lucrative. It’s no wonder that website ownership is on the rise and is becoming very popular.
There are a few steps that you should take prior to embarking on such a large project. These steps will help your website become more successful and grow more quickly, as well as prevent burnout on your part.
Figure Out Your Focus (Make a Plan)
You may know what you want your website to be (maybe you have a yoga studio and you want to be accessible through the internet, or maybe you want to start a cooking blog), but in order to ensure your website’s success, you should create a “business” plan for your website. Even if you don’t plan on making money from your site, it’s still a good idea to define a few key things:
- What is your target audience?
- How do you plan on reaching out to your audience?
- What is your niche (what makes you unique from the thousands of other websites out there on the same topic?)
Making a plan is one of the most important steps before you begin your website. So many websites end up getting lost in the shuffle without a plan.
Ensure You Have a Good Design
I started my website (this was my first site) in 2010 and it was started with Google’s Blogspot. Some of you have been long-time readers that were around back when this started, and some were lucky enough to jump in after I’d transferred to WordPress and prettied my site up a bit.
To be honest, my site on Blogger was absolutely terrible. It was hard to look at, difficult to navigate and not reader friendly at all. I didn’t have a header, my sidebar was all over the place and the colours clashed and some were hard to see. Not to mention the .blogspot.com sub-domain hosting, some things are free but you pay for it in other ways.
There was really nothing good about my Blogger site, and I got some feedback about it that was less than favourable. Having a poorly designed website can hurt your traffic and also impair your ability to turn visitors into clients or customers.
Sadly web design services can be very expensive, but you can build your own website to ensure it is personalized without carrying a hefty price tag. Building it this way also means you get your own domain name.
Know Your Limits
Starting and maintaining a website is no easy task. It can be an incredibly overwhelming endeavor. You have to populate it with content, maintain it, update it, troubleshoot it, and sometimes even write for it (depending on the type of website).
It is really important to know your limits and accept that you can’t do everything when it comes to your website. You may have to outsource some things to make it easier on yourself. I, for one, can’t handle troubleshooting issues that happen to my website, so I outsource them to somebody much better equipped for such things.
Running a website can be a full-time job, and many people do it on the side of their day job. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, because if you don’t, you run the risk of burning out.
LOL…I made almost all of the mistakes you could make. I started on Blogger, had an awful design (I liked a black background with white letters…normal people don’t), and I had no idea who my audience was going to be (hopefully people I liked, lol). It’s hilarious how things end up evolving…