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A website is an essential part of doing business. By creating it, we gain not only a business card of the company, but also get access to communication with customers, the ability to collect data about our target group. Thanks to analytical tools we will know who our client is, what services or products he is looking for, what interests him from our offer. A properly designed website provides a number of opportunities to build brand image and collect leads. How to make a website to be effective ? Is it possible to make it yourself ?
Setting up a website is not difficult, you can use a wide range of wizards or ready-made solutions offering to create a site in 10 minutes.
However, it is worth remembering that the websites themselves are not just graphics and content, they are first and foremost :
Just setting up the site and completing the template is only the beginning, with the launch of the site begins the constant work of developing it, analyzing it and drawing the appropriate conclusions to make it more and more effective and bring customers. A site left to its own devices will perish among competitors who are constantly improving their sites. It is also useful to know how to increase traffic to the website once it is done and build visibility.
It takes knowledge and practice to properly design its architecture, navigation logic, user journey process in such a way as to maximize conversion and its effectiveness. A website without SEO and technical optimization will not work effectively and build traffic from Google search. You can create your website on your own using the Wordpress CMS system, but keep in mind what are the common mistakes on websites that people who make them usually make.
A website is a document written in html, containing content, graphics, links and CSS styles that give it its appearance. A website is usually an image-building tool for a brand, a digital product used in a company's communication with customers, and a tool for acquiring leads.
What is needed to make a website work ?
To make your website visible on the web you should have a domain, hosting, SSL certificate purchased.
Where to buy a domain
You can buy a domain from any provider such as: ovh.com or atthost.pl - it is important to check the prices for subsequent years because often companies give a promotion of 0zl for the first year, but the prices for renewal are much higher.
Where to buy hosting
Proven and good hosting is not necessarily the highest price for this service. It is worth checking and comparing the offers of several leading companies with smaller but proven companies that provide services only in this area, for example: atthost.pl or cyberfolks.com. It is worth choosing an offer with unlimited transfer and capacity. You will need at least one database for the CMS and several mailboxes.
SSL Certificate
Securing a website with an SSL certificate is necessary in order for the website to be, first of all, secure but also not blocked by browsers with an appropriate message. Building user confidence in the brand and domain SSL is necessary to install. You can take advantage of the offer of hosting companies by buying the simplest certificate or implement a free one. How SSL certificate works and what it is.
In the case of creating a website on our own, it is worth considering its purpose for this purpose before deciding to set it up we should determine :
These are very important points that define the type of website being developed (see what types of websites are). The most common problem is to determine its nature and purpose. This set of hints will come to our aid.
Do you want to get more customers by setting up a website ?
If so, then bet on optimization and an expanded website to build your search engine visibility. In addition, an expanded site will also be better for building Google Ads campaigns.
Do you want to share your knowledge on the site ?
This is a very good way to build the image of an expert. Properly communicated knowledge in the form of a blog or knowledge base will attract customers looking for solutions to a specific problem. The blog will act like a magnet generating traffic from phrases of several words, so called: longtail.
Need to show work / portfolio ?
Intuitive navigation, modern website design, ideal mobile version. Bet on the quality of implementation and unique design. Customers are sure to remember your style against the repetitive solutions of your competitors.
Do you want to generate leads ?
When setting up a lead-generating website, create a landingpage prepared for specific goals and conversions. A onepage page with a form and the most important information to build trust and the so-called: social proof will help.
There is a lot of choice among popular CMS systems and wizards. Choose the solution for you, but keep in mind that a wizard is a subscription fee and a limited number of template choices that can be replicated by others. A dedicated website in this regard is better if you are building a professional image. A website builder gives you a good starting point, but without proper web design knowledge, the result can be a site that doesn't bring in customers and doesn't convert.
With the CMS, you will be able to simply and intuitively manage the content of your website. In the case of an extensive site, you will easily add new sub-pages and blog posts. It is advisable to choose a flexible or one-time solution so that you are not permanently tied to the cost of maintaining the site on a monthly basis in addition to the purchase of hosting and a domain. The recommended solution is to implement a site based on Wordpress CMS.
If, in the future, you are too short of time to take care of the site, you can outsource the care and administration of the website to any interactive agency.
When creating a site on Wordpress, it is worth investing in a good server. See what Wordpress hosting is and whether it's worth paying attention to popular marketing slogans of hosting companies. Learn our tips on how to choose a server for your website.
As a standard and regardless of our creativity or designer, a website should always contain elements that users are used to :
A complete list of what a website should include.
On a website, we should first and foremost include content in appropriately selected subpages that briefly and concretely present what the user came to our site or subpage for. Proper SEO optimization will allow entrances from Google search to the site through the subpages. It is worthwhile for each sub-page to be optimized for key phrases appropriate to the content of the sub-page.
Content on the site should be short and specific. Avoid solid blocks of text with too little spacing, this makes the content unreadable. Ample space between paragraphs, clear h1-h3 headings will help when a user scans the page to determine if this is the content they are looking for.
Graphics for the site properly optimized.
All graphics that you add to the website through the CMS system are automatically adjusted by it to the size of the container and framed. If this is not the case it means that the backend of the site is not working properly. Even if you add a 1mb photo final on the page it should be properly resized and adjusted by the CMS.
Video on the site, is it worth adding ?
Definitely yes. Video on the page will keep the user for longer. This form of presentation of a short offer in the form of, for example, 10-15 seconds will say more than a few paragraphs of description (although in terms of SEO the text should also be under the video). However, in the creation of pages we should focus primarily on the user is to take into account the recommendations of Google, which to be able to find out what the page is about and classify it accordingly needs content. It is worthwhile, when designing pages, to focus on creating them according to the principle of SXO, or the combination of SEO and UX. The two concepts intertwine to form one set, as UX positively influences SEO and vice versa.
There are free website builders like: wix or free wordpress themes. However, you should be careful about the quality of design and responsiveness and administration capabilities. Full SEO configuration and the possibility of technical code optimization, which affects page load time, is also an important factor. In case if you want to create a site for free check it with technical code analysis programs like: gtmetrix.com or Google Page Speed.
Without adequate technical knowledge of responsive website development, you will have a hard time writing your own site. In this case, it is better to use free solutions on the market or outsource this work to a professional agency or freelancer, and spend your time on further developing the site and building its search engine visibility.
It's definitely worth it if you don't have a big budget for a website and it's just meant to be a business card. In case if you don't need to design user processes, dedicated mobile versions and mockups, but you want a simple website page builder is a good idea. In the page builder you can easily customize the style of the elements, add content through the visual editor and replace photos.
However, if you are thinking to exist on the web seriously, the wizard at some point may limit you in terms of, for example: capacity, the number of subpages to set up, the size of graphic files that can be uploaded or too simple design and not very readable responsive version of the site.
Often, responsive versions in website builders are unfortunately not top-notch. Usually it is the basic version, in which scaling consists of changing the layout from wide (desktop version) to narrow (dedicated to mobile) already at tablet size (about 980px) and continues to the width of a mobile device such as a phone (about 480-360px). It's worth checking before choosing a wizard solution how the demo or provided trial version looks like on a phone. See what a responsive website is
Due to the increasing number of mobile users and Google's search engine, which takes into account the implementation of the correct responsive version for ranking, it is worth choosing a solution that provides us with positive responsiveness tests.
In the case of creating a site on a template such as: a ready-made wordpress theme, all you need to do is replace the content (content, photos), add your own logo and set the color scheme and you can enjoy your own site made on the template. Wordpress offers a large selection of templates both on ready-made themes dedicated to a specific theme and implemented using builders such as : elementor, DIVI, bakery or oxygenbuilder. There is nothing wrong with such a solution, provided that we know what we are doing, and the site, once made, works properly and scales smoothly, i.e.: it is responsive, has decent technical parameters and we can optimize it for SEO.
As you can see, there are several ways to set up a website. Depending on your preferences and needs, you can use free solutions or hire an interactive agency, but in this case you have to reckon with the cost of design, mockups, prototypes and implementation of frontend coding and CMS integration. You can also try your own hand with a wizard or builder, however, if you don't have the time or passion for exploring web development techniques the time spent designing a site in a builder will be disproportionate to the results and your expectations.
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