Essential Preparations for Website Building: 5 Key Steps
Essential Preparations for Website Building: 5 Key Steps
What is the most wonderful thing about a website? Think!
Okay, let me speak it out for you. They’re not set in stone—they can change and evolve as your business grows or changes direction too. They are really amazing!
But, you cannot build it in a casual manner. There are some important facts and issues that you need to keep in mind. Also, there are things you must do before even starting to build your desired website. These things will improve your site’s quality and make you profitable in no time. In other words, doing these things first can save you a lot of time!
So, What Should You Do?
We have come up with five unique things that are recommended to all creative minds, freelancers, business owners, entrepreneurs. Doing these will really help you see a boost in your website’s traffic.
Bring Out The Purpose
Why do you need a website? What actionable objectives are you hoping to achieve with it?
There’s no correct answer—in fact, these questions could be answered in a wide variety of ways. But, if you know the answer, it will bring clarity to the goals of your particular site.
Let us help you. Do you see your goal in the list given below?
- Promote your brand
- Sell products
- Sell services
- Grow your email list
- Provide information
- Grow your client base
- Connect with partners
- Choose your platform & template
You already know it is possible to transfer your site and domain to another platform. But, it can be a time-consuming process. It’s best to do your research and start your site on the platform you envision staying with for the foreseeable future.
If you’re interested, here’s why we think Squarespace is the best website platform for most small businesses, bloggers, freelancers & entrepreneurs (and why we design with it exclusively ourselves).
One more important thing. Do a research on your theme/ website template before building the website. There are tons of templates available on the internet. You can look for some competitors of yours if it helps. Though Squarespace makes it possible (and relatively easy) to switch between templates after you’ve started to design, there are some elements that can get lost in translation when switching, so starting with a template you’re confident in is helpful.
What should you look for?
- Do I want a button on the Navigation Bar?
- Blog Page Layout
- Mobile Responsiveness
- Page layout (do I want banner images? A sidebar? Index pages?)
- What tools are there to style the website?
A good starting point is to take a look around Squarespace’s template demos. Don’t worry if you don’t understand anything at first glance. They have great documentation that will help you understand the differences in both frontend and backend between their templates.
Make It Mobile-Responsive
Nowadays, it is very important to make your website mobile-friendly — the rate of access from mobile devices is increasing from time to time. Do make your website mobile-friendly so the experience from mobiles is as good as it is from desktops or laptops.
One of the reasons we recommend Squarespace as a web-hosting platform is that all of their templates are set up with a mobile responsive design, and their editing interface allows you to see/test how your design will appear on mobile.
(It’s still important to research your different template options, as described above because different templates display differently on mobile).
Do Check Your Name
Don’t just select a name and get distracted on other tasks. It is really important to check if it is available. There might be someone else who already has bought the domain you want to buy. Let’s look at these factors:
Domain: Is the domain name available? Are there any other websites that have a similar name? This may get confusing for your target audience.
Legal entities: Maybe you are planning on incorporating your business as an LLC. Either now or somewhere down the road, you’ll want to be sure your business name is not already taken. Also, you want to make sure that it’s not too close to an existing name in your area/state. This process may depend on the state you are searching it on.
Social names: You’ll also want to check that any social platforms you plan to use have a handle available for you—ideally, the name of your website or blog, but it could be anything else that makes reasonable sense.
Do Your Branding Homework
Your site needs a brand! With clear brand guidelines, the process of designing your website will be a much easier and simpler one. Go ahead and search for answers to these simple questions-
- What’s your color palette?
- Font scheme?
- Is the image aesthetic?
While it’s helpful to actually create a brand style guide for your business, it’s also understandable that if you’re just starting out, your brand style may still be evolving and not entirely clarified yet.
Narrow your focus by searching for answers to some basic branding questions –
- How many fonts should I use? What are they?
- What colors should I use that really suit my brand?
- How should people feel when they visit my website?
- What kind of graphics should I create to enhance the message that I am trying to send?