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Website Guide:A beginner’s guide to your first website.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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Letter from the author
Why you need a website
Phase 1: Building the Basic Website
Inexpensive services
Free services
Phase 2: Marketing Tools
Phase 3: Professional Touches
Conclusion
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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with
multiple startups under my belt, I had little experience with
websites and little reason to believe how important they
were to businesses of all types. Over the years, I have come
to appreciate websites as a work of art and wealth of
opportunities. Nothing gets your business up and
running as fast as a website. Get ready to learn the easy
steps you need to take to get your business off the ground!
Letter from the authors
Step one is simply making the commitment to get started.
This can seem intimidating at first, but realize there are
tools out there designed to make your life easier – tools
that I rely on myself to skip past most of the coding and
focus on what really matters: my business. In the coming
pages, we will identify these tools and show you exactly how
to use them. Even if you are new to tech or web design, this
guide will give you the confidence you need to get up and
running in no time. See you inside!
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Title of the book
Why your business needs a website today
While there are many critical components for the success of a new business, there
is one component that must not be ignored. That is the website that your business will
use to market your product or services. Your website can help you get a jumpstart on
your business even before you lay a chisel on your product, saving you a lot of time and
money later. Think of your website as your weathervane. It will help you steer your
business from an idea to acquiring paying customers. Setting up a basic website can
take as little as an hour and is not difficult. However, try not to think of setting up your
website as a one-time deal. It is something you will want to work on during the life of
your business. You will easily pick up new skills as you go along and not before too long
you will become well-practiced in website development.
Title of the book
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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
To build a website is to
construct one’s headquarters,
establish legitimacy, and develop
a brand. Great websites convey a
professional image and draw
customers in by the dozens. On
the other hand, poorly designed
websites will see higher “bounce”
rates as visitors struggle to make
the connection. Everything from
layout and design to content and
navigation structure will affect
user experience – and in turn,
affect sales and results – so it is of
particular importance to get it
right.
Luckily such a feat can be
accomplished over time. Step by
step, you will see your website
become the focal point of your
business.
When I first entered the startup
world in Silicon Valley, I didn’t really
understand how powerful websites were.
Sure, many entrepreneurs base their
business model and entire revenue
stream solely on their website. Obviously
they would want to focus their time and
attention building it out. But there are
many entrepreneurs that don’t use their
website as their stream of income that can
greatly benefit from it. Some people build
apps, hardware, and other products which
are purchased on different platforms.
Google Play and Apple’s iOS store, for
example, are the main platforms for the
majority of the apps out there. While there
are plenty of opportunities to succeed on
those platforms by climbing the rankings
and getting visible, app stores are a
are a crowded space with over a million apps to compete with. It becomes a battle for new
apps to get discovered and a missed opportunity for app developers to succeed.
Equally, the entrepreneur that sells physical products such as a fitness
accessory like FitBit, for example, would find Amazon, a popular platform for physical
products, not a great way for getting their product visible to the mass market.
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As I navigated the startup world of Silicon Valley, I came to understand that
websites are not nice-to-haves but must-haves. They belong at the very
beginning of an entrepreneur’s business lifecycle. The website is where they tell
the world what it is they are doing, why they are doing it, and how others can
learn more and eventually become customers. It is where the entrepreneurs
learn more about their customers and provides insight on how to better serve
them.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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Having a website is vital to your business and is something that you want
to spend time on before you launch. This is if you are doing your business full
time or even as a side project. This is a guide that will help you get your basic
website up. Often many entrepreneurs including myself have gone through the
difficulties of having to build out a business on little capital. We are living in
unprecedented times where a business can be launched for almost nothing. It
can cost dollars a month. A reasonable price for something that is going to
bring customers to your door and money into your pockets.
A website is like a piece of real estate or a brick-and-mortar shop in a
virtual world but has some unique advantages when compared to the real-world
thing.
· Websites are low maintenance and low cost
· Websites are low risk and flexible in design and implementation
· Websites scale across the globe
The cost of operating a website can vary depending on the business. There
are so many accompanying services out there that you will think you will need
them all. You don’t. But there are a few which are great to have. Depending on
your needs, you might want to invest in some web services and hold off on
others until it makes sense. For the average entrepreneur, operating a basic
website will be negligible compared to the thousands of dollars spent on leasing
a shop, paying for utilities, décor, and labor. There are few forms and contracts
to fill out, licenses to acquire, or inspections to be made for building a website.
If one day you decide your website isn’t working out, you can pretty much walk
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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away scot-free. Try doing that with a brick-and-mortar shop. Many shop owners
end up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, legal and contractual
liabilities, employees and taxes that they must pay, and a nightmare that will
scar their life.
Websites are also very flexible. You can tweak your logo at a moment’s
notice, change the main color theme of your website, update your product
description, or have a complete makeover all in the comfort of your home office
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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without having to close shop for renovations. Not only that, your website can
reach the entire globe. No kidding. Some of the apps I used to develop for my
businesses have ended up being downloaded in the most unlikely places.
Yemen, for example.
I will divide up this guide into three phases. You should complete the first
phase as soon as possible. The second phase is of next priority and then the
third phase will follow at a pace that you are comfortable working with. It’s
good practice to go through all the phases and understand the entire nature of
your digital presence.
After you have established your first basic website you can then start to
plan out your entire business.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
Phase 1: Building the Basic Website
The first elements of your new online presence
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Phase 1: Building the Basic Website
There are many ways to go about this but I will mention the methods that I have
personally tried and succeeded with. There are some options for you to consider
depending on your available time and resources. Choose which one you are
comfortable with or try them all out.
The best part is you can have a full website up without ever needing to code
(unless you want too)!
Before we get started you will want to get familiar with a few terms if you have
never had experience in web development before. The first term is domain. A domain
is the address or URL that is assigned to your website. For example,
http://www.yourbusinessdomain.com. A domain must usually be registered annually. A
service called a registrar provides registration services and you can have the domain
registration renewed every year automatically. Godaddy is a popular registrar and
there are a range of available services out there but each vary in quality as I will soon
talk about. Also, you will want to understand about web hosting services which store
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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your website on their servers. A good web hosting service will keep your website up
and accessible to the world 24/7 with high reliability and performance. Bluehost is an
excellent web host platform which we use for ThinkPlanLaunch but there are others out
there which I will soon explain. One thing that you can also consider is to use free
services in place of your domain and hosting. However, I highly recommend using the
inexpensive services if you are committed to the long term as they will decrease your
time involved.
Option 1: Inexpensive and reliable services
If you are willing to spend a few bucks a month and want a website that is
more reliable, easier to control, and efficient in the long run, you will want to look into
some paid services.
Domain Registration
This is your .com, .co, .me etc. They are easy to remember and give instant
credibility to your new business. Picking the right name can be tricky however since the
market for domains are competitive. Often many entrepreneurs will spend hours trying
to find the best domain for their business. Availability is usually limited and creativity is
key. Luckily there are tools available that can make the process of finding a domain
easier. GoDaddy has a nice tool that allows you to search for availability for up to 500
domains at once.
Domain registration can cost around a dollar up front as in the case of
1and1 but can also go over a hundred dollars for some of the more expensive
registrars. Also, each top-level domain (TLD) has different pricing. For example, .coms
are fairly cheap compared to some of the more exotic options such as .technology. It is
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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renewed annually but you can usually save by registering for multiple years at a time.
Choosing a registrar will depend on many factors. I have experienced
using almost a dozen registrars. Each experience was different with different
advantages and disadvantages. Everyone has different opinions on which is the best.
GoDaddy
the registrar where you are hosting your website. This is usually done through a DNS
editor where you can update your DNS records. Your DNS records are a set of
instructions that tell where your website is located among other things. Usually your
host server provider will help you through the process of changing your DNS records.
GoDaddy help support is common among the web hosting services because of its
popularity. It is rare to encounter any issues.
Changing these DNS records (DNS propagation) are not instantaneous
unfortunately. However, with GoDaddy, I am able to make DNS record changes and see
the effects really quickly. This allows me to change hosting servers, email servers or
assign a new one in the beginning and see the effects within a short time. Other
registrars are often slow and take up to 48 hours for their DNS records to be updated
throughout the world (and different locations will see DNS records updated at different
times). This can be frustrating when I am first trying to get my website set up and have
to wait days when waiting for the host server to be reached.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
You can’t go wrong with GoDaddy as a long
term solution. Registration is a breeze. What I like most
about GoDaddy is that they are quick and responsive. One of
the things you need to do when using a registrar is point
your domain to the appropriate host server. You need to tell
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1&1
1&1 is a great option for when you want to minimize your
costs and are more patient than me when dealing with DNS
changes. I’ve been able to get a domain for 99 cents. This
kind of deal is fantastic when I want to test out different
domains and ideas before you stick to it long term. When
your business relies on having many websites, you’ll want to focus on cost effective
measures for acquiring domains.
NameCheap
Just like the name suggests, you can get domains for cheap.
One big advantage however is that it comes with a free year
of WhoisGuard privacy protection which other registrars
charge for similar protections. What it does is it protects your private information from
being exposed to the world. When you register a domain, your information is often
provided in a WhoIs database. If you are registering the domain in your name, your
address, phone number, and email will be visible to anyone who looks up the WhoIs
database. The free year of protection from NameCheap is a great way to keep your
personal information safe.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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Hosting
Hosting packages are bountiful and the abundance often cause frustration
for many people trying to build a website for the first time and having to choose
among a large selection of options. Each hosting service can vary in price, value,
performance, customer support, and management. Also, each hosting service often
has many packages to choose from. When I worked in my startup we used some
hosting platforms that were not very consumer friendly and required specialized
knowledge of setting up servers. Luckily, many web hosting servers out there are very
easy to set up and use. Some even provide free domain registration which is a great
idea but be aware that you might be locking your domain into your web host service
which you might end up changing later requiring a transfer fee to release it to a new
registrar.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First WebsiteBy Torkild Retvedt
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server so that you can max out the performance. You can also try out some of their
great virtual private servers as well. It comes with one free domain and allows you to
host multiple domains on any plan using what is called add-on domains.
HostGator
Another very popular service is Hostgator. They are a bigger
hosting service than BlueHost, providing some added
security features on cheaper plans such as SSL. HostGator
also offers one-click installs of popular platforms such as
WordPress and Weebly (website builder).
BlueHost
BlueHost is almost the de facto web hosting service for
WordPress. In fact it is one of only three web hosting services
that WordPress recommends for its users. It has a new
updated interface that makes it easy to manage your web
hosting service. You can use its easy one-click install to get
WordPress in minutes. When I want to build a website I usually opt for BlueHost
because of its ease and reliability. Also, unlike some of the other web hosts, you won’t
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
need to worry about how much content you
upload on your website. It provides virtually
unlimited space. The cheapest package is usually
suitable for your basic website and can handle a
fair share of traffic. Should you decide that you
need more power you can easily upgrade and get
dedicated hosting which gives you your own
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Content Management System (CMS)
Great. So let’s say you have your domain and hosting set up. The next thing you will
need is a CMS system, unless you want to code everything yourself. A CMS system will
take care of all the little technical details of your website while you just focus on the
creative side. There are many services, some free, some not. WordPress is the best of
them.
WordPress
WordPress is a highly recommend route to go and probably
one of the best tools you can use for your business. You can
use it to efficiently build out your entire website. WordPress
makes creating a webpage so easy and doesn’t require you to
know any coding. While it is mainly used for bloggers, there
are many businesses that use it for their e-commerce site or for selling their own
products or services.
WordPress is also free. You can install it on your own website for free, use
BlueHost’s or HostGator’s one-click install,
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
or you can have WordPress
host your website, though the
address will be
yourbusinessname.wordpress.
com. Later you will learn of
some good themes you can
add to make it more
professional-looking.
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Option 2: Free services
That is right. Free. And there are several methods. Now this is where you
might be expecting me to tell you that while it’s possible to do it for free, it would be a
terrible idea and that serious entrepreneurs would never consider it. The truth is, using
free services to make your first website is not a bad idea and it has advantages over
paid services. Once such advantage is that you can get started right away and be up
and running in less than an hour. That brings us to the first of the free options.
LaunchRock
Launchrock is one of the most highly recommended website generator’s
out there. Its purpose is simple and relevant to the pre-launch phase of your business.
Essentially, it is a signup page generator for products that are “coming soon.” Its easy-
to-use service is also completely free. They also provide with a form for you to collect
email addresses with which will not only give you a means of contacting your
customers, but also allow you to gauge interest and how successful your product might
be. The more signups, the better.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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The full free package
The last free method will give you complete control over your website. I
don’t normally recommend this option because of its lower reliability and performance.
As an entrepreneur you should be the type that values time over money. You will spend
more time with the following services. If you are curious do read on but take caution
and prepare to make a transition to using paid solutions.
The first step is to get a free website domain. There is one catch however.
You will not get a .com. Instead it would be a .tk which is a domain for the country for
Tokelau. It is totally free and easy to get. Access it by visiting dot.tk and registering for
a new website. When you register the first option will ask you for a URL to forward to
domain to. You can put any URL you want in there for now, but to be safe, pic a random
URL of an image file that you get off of Google Images. Complete the registration and
you are ready for the next step. Alternatively, you can go to freenom.com and get a
domain with other TLDs like .ga, .ml, etc.
Step 2 is the harder part: getting free web hosting for your new
domain.
Web hosting services store your website on their servers. They keep their
servers online (or try to) 24/7. If you go the route of wanting to get your own website
domain and building your site from scratch you can try out free web hosting services.
I’ve had some experiences trying to use a few free web hosting services.
They helped me out in a pinch before and proved to be an effective short term solution.
I wouldn’t recommend using free web hosting in the long run however. The free web
hosting service that was the most reliable for me seems to no longer be in operation. I
used free hosting from hourb.com. It seems as if it is no longer in operation and that it
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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was actually a reseller of 0hosting.org which doesn’t allow for any new registrations.
When it was operating the service was hit or miss depending on which
hosting server their assigned to you. The free option assigns a shared server that hosts
other websites. This is a huge disadvantage specifically for free hosting services. For
shared hosting there are many websites that are hosted on these free servers and their
IP address is shared with yours. If any of the other websites are flagged as spam or
malware, your site might also by recognized as spam or malware. This hurts your
search rankings and also some browsers might automatically block your website. This
wasn’t always the case and I did have some success for a couple of months
Another service I used was 000hosting.org. It seemed to work on and off
and I didn’t like it as much as hourb.com. There are other free hosting sites out there,
but don’t count on them being reliable. I ended up going with the paid hosting service,
Bluehost. They are cheap, reliable, and I can host multiple websites on one account for
free through their add-on domain handling. Since I knew I would be making many
websites in the future it made sense to pay for something that would save me a lot of
headache later. Of course, if you aren’t ready for the commitment, I do recommend
these free options. Once you are more comfortable head over to Bluehost and get a
hosting package with them, use the free domain and one-click WordPress install.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
Phase 2: Marketing Tools
Finding and building your audience
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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
Phase 2: Marketing Tools
Provided that you were successful in getting your basic website up you are now
ready for the next phase. This is where you will implement tools that will allow you to
know who your audience is, where they are, and the best way to reach them. You will
also build a following by activating your website visitors into repeat visitors which will
eventually lead to sales. This is by giving them the option to subscribe to one of your
marketing channels.
Email has been proven, time after time, to be one of the most effective channels to
reach your subscribers. Other options include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more.
The more channels you can grab visitors the better.
Financially, marketing tools range from free to modest costs. Ultimately, your
marketing tools will be worth every penny because they will optimize your business
and will lead to more sales, revenue, and profit.
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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
Websites have become the face
of most modern businesses. In
fact, many websites host the
actual product or service which
itself is at the core of the business
– such as with today’s increasingly
popular Software as a Service
(SaaS) solutions. Even in cases
where the product is not based
around online software, however,
most websites still act as a central
point of connectivity between a
business and its customers. This is
just as true for a one man show as
it is a huge corporation.
Your opportunity awaits in this
connectivity where you can learn
more and more about your
customer. They will happily be
thankful that you can tailor your
site so that it suits their interests.
Service 1: Market
research - Google Analytics
Google Analytics is often
considered the universal service for
analyzing your website visitors. It is
free and relatively easy to install. You
can insert the provided code directly
onto your website or if you are using
services like LaunchRock or WordPress
you can add it by providing your
unique ID in the settings or with a
plugin.
What Google Analytics does is
give you insight on who your visitors
are, what they are doing and how
many of your vistors are doing what
you intended them to do. Something
as simple as purchasing an item on an online store is actually a fairly
complex process with multiple decisions for users to make and multiple
pages for them to navigate. By using Google Analytics you can understand a
user’s behavior and make decisions on how to improve the site for the
user, making it
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your site useful. It also tells you what product or content to focus on by showing you
which pages have high activity. There is really no reason not to use Google Analytics for
your basic website.
Service 2: Email Marketing Service - Aweber
Ask any startup guru and they will tell you that one of the
most effective marketing tools out there is a good email
marketing service. There reasons are that it typically has the highest conversion rates,
is cross-platform (across devices), and relatively low cost compared to the alternatives.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
Aweber is the best with MailChimp
being a close second. If you set up your first website
with LaunchRock, you will hopefully be amassing a
list of future customers using their free plugin to
capture emails. Alternatively, if you are using
WordPress you can use a number of plugins to
easily embed an Aweber sign up form on your site.
If you have the ability to code, you can just copy and
paste a snippet of code in the right area.
easy for them to navigate and complete their goals which in turn helps you complete
your goals as a revenue-generating business.
It is a very powerful tool that can accelerate your website development by
showing you what is working and what is not. Also, it can save you a lot of money by
telling you which customers you should target. Specifically, who are the people that
find
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Service 4: Engagement Software - SumoMe
SumoMe is a great free tool that you can add on your
website to help build your email subscriber list,
analyze your website visitors’ behavior, get your
visitors to share your site on social media, and more.
Installation is easy. You can add the code directly to
your website or template builder that supports HTML editing, or, if you are
using WordPress, you can download and install the plugin.
The essential tool provided is the list builder. When a visitor lands on your
website and they don’t end up signing up and giving you their email, a nice little
box pops up and gives them the chance to sign up one last time before they
leave the site. It is triggered when the plugin detects the user is about to leave
and gives you a chance to get some extra subscribers you wouldn’t get. You will
probably have seen it on our site, thinkplanlaunch.com.
Another cool add-on is the heatmap tool. It shows you where the visitor
focuses their attention when they visit your site. You might see where they are
reading, where they are clicking, and how you can improve your site to make it
easier for them to complete your goals.
Lastly, once you’ve entered Phase 3 of this guide, you can turn on the social
sharing tool. It makes it easy for your users to share your site with their friends
on social networks. If your content is amazing, your visitors are only one click
away to making your site go viral.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
Phase 3: Professional Touches
Credibility, reliability, and trust
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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
Phase 3: Professional Touches
So you have gotten your website up, connected it to some marketing apps. Now
you are in the position of taking it to the next level. Phase 3 is where you will need to
establish trust, prove your credibility, and have a reliable site for your visitors. This
mainly touches on the design of your website and monitoring its performance.
The design of your site will be judged by your visitors immediately. Does it look
like a legitimate site? Does it seem trustworthy? Or, does it look like a spam site filled
with information that is untrue or unreliable? Having a professional looking design will
elevate your site to make it look like it belongs to a well-established business rather
than a fly-by-night operation.
Also, is your website always available? How do you know? For your business time
is money and there are tools available that will help give you peace of mind.
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Professional Templates and Themes
There are many outstanding website templates and WordPress themes
available for free. Usually they get the job done. However, when you are building a big
site, you’ll want to consider using professional templates and themes. They can save
you time and money (if you later need to hire a full time designer/developer).
Professional themes for WordPress offer many extras that are essential to
making your site look professional. Beautiful icons, e-commerce support, flexibility,
customization, and more are included in your premium theme package. The themes
usually come with support too so in case you need some extra help, you can easily get
access to a support team right away.
Divi by Elegant Themes for WordPress
ThinkPlanLaunch is built off of an Elegant Themes’s package
called Divi. It is amazing. Before I got into WordPress, I used
to code entire websites. Usually this took a lot of time,
planning, and collaboration with other designers and
developers. The results that I could achieve were great, but,
with the great expense of time and effort, which was somewhat of a guilty victory. Time
is your most valuable asset and Divi has given me back a lot of time. I wish I came
across it years ago.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
What makes Divi stand out is
it’s simplicity, the website builder tool
that is preloaded with many templates,
and flexibility. Divi is a website in a box. It
takes literally minutes to build out an
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entire website, whether it is a commerce site, personal website, company website,
branding site, or even product promotion site. Of course you will need to replace the
preloaded text with your own and maybe change a few icons.
The page templates that it gives you are all tested out and based off of
other successful websites. You just need to plug in your own words, images, and color
themes.
Either way, you can simulate your entire website experience with the click
of a few buttons. Trying to do that by HTML editor takes a lot of time. Even worse,
trying to test it out using HTML takes forever. Using Divi, you can make alterations easy
make your site adaptable to the analytics data you will collect.
Themeforest – Wordpress theme and HTML template market
Themeforest is a marketplace for premium WordPress themes and HTML templates. It
has a lot of professionally designed and well-thought out themes for you to choose
from. A lot of big sites use the themes and templates from Themeforest.
Avada for WordPress
Avada is the most popular premium WordPress theme. It is also very versatile like Divi,
great for e-commerce, and has great support. Like Divi it has a builder tool so you can
construct web pages without needing to code or do anything special. It is an excellent
option for making your site look more professional.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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X Theme for WordPress
X is another popular, versatile premium WordPress theme. I have had the
pleasure of using it extensively. What I like about this theme is that it is preloaded with
different styles that you check out and play with. It is great for when you want to get a
website up but don’t have any particular design ideas in mind. X is great at showing
you want you can do with your theme.
ThemeForest Market for HTML
If you have decided to go full HTML then you should strongly consider
using a premium template. Themeforest has a large library of templates that look great
and were designed by professionals. You will just need to alter the code to reflect your
site wordings and images. If you have some skills in HTML this could be a good option.
In my case, despite my HTML coding abilities I still prefer WordPress because of its
speed of getting websites up and running. However, if you need a customized page, do
consider these templates as an option.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website
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Design work
The look and feel of your website is important to adding to your credibility
and professionalism. Design alone can determine sales as people really do judge books
by the cover. In the case of apps, I’ve learned that the app icon design is often one of
the most important elements to getting it downloaded. While it would be nice to have a
full time designer available at any moment, I have learned that hiring a designer full
time isn’t necessary for everyone. In many cases, having a designer is a luxury. Unless
your business is on multiple platforms (web, apps, print, media, etc) or you are
engaged with several stakeholders (customers, partners, affiliates, investors, etc) you
really don’t need a full time designer.
What you can do is get design work done at a fraction of the time and cost
through agencies both online and offline. 99 Designs is a great resource from
customized, professional design work. You can get logos or entire web design packages
with proposals for you to choose from all without hiring a single designer. It is
something to consider for the long run. One good logo might be just enough to add an
element of professionalism to your site. You can also use it on your social media pages,
printed materials (pamphlets, business cards), and emails.
Social Media
Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, Instagram, Pinterest, and even Snapchat
and Vine are often considered for social media marketing. Before you sign up for any of
them, do consider how they will be used in your overall strategy and make sure you
wording, logos, themes, and designs are consistent.
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Uptime Monitor - Pingdom
Many entrepreneurs might gloss over this service but I highly
recommend it because it has save me a lot. Pingdom is a
website monitoring tool that will notify you by email, SMS,
Twitter, and more if your website goes down. You can get one
website monitored for free. The peace of mind it can give is
amazing.
I have had instances where I would go out to pitch to investors and to my
horror find out that my website went down before I headed into a meeting. This is not
only embarrassing but can also detract from your credibility. Imagine your first-time
customers clicking through to see your site and not get through. Same with putting up
expensive ads.
Web hosting is not perfect. You generally can look at a websites reliability
by judging its uptime or the amount of time the server is running and your website is
accessible. Ideally you want an uptime of 100%. This is usually not obtainable due to a
number of reasons. Power outages, natural disasters, overheated servers, human
error, and others can cause a server to go down. Having an uptime of 90% is abysmal.
Even something as seemingly high as 99.8% is actually a little concerning as within a
year, a server with an uptime of 99.8% will experience a downtime of 17 and a half
hours. Imaging if Amazon was down for 17 and a half hours. They would lose so many
sales.
Protect your website with an uptime monitor. I recommend Pingdom
because it has been reliable to me and hasn’t given me false alerts like some of the
other uptime monitors I’ve used.
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If you have made it through phases 1 to 3 congratulations. You have
established your online presence and built a strong foundation for your
business. Hopefully you have picked a great new domain name, found a great
web host, and set up your marketing tools. With a professional-looking site,
your website visitors will be delighted to explore your website and hopefully
become your customer.
Your website is a powerful asset for your business. It is part art and part
science. Your visitors will let you know how they feel about the site through your
analytics, feedback, and social networks. The next steps would be SEO, driving
traffic to your site, and advertising considerations.
If you want a full list of resources talked about in this eBook as well as
some more that we use on ThinkPlanLaunch, be sure to visit
http://thinkplanlaunch.com/resources/.
Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Graphics by FreePik.com
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