When you have dreams and ambitions, whether that’s about being a blogger or starting your own business, one of the first things you’re going to need to do is build a website. Websites can help you get further than you would on your own as you open yourself up to a much wider portion of the market. Here are a few pointers that will help you to get started with building your website on your own:
Choose Reliable Hosting
Make sure you don’t simply select the cheapest web host available – doing your research is imperative. If you experience high traffic, you want to be able to handle it. You don’t want to go offline. If this is your first site, making sure that the host has good customer service is important as you will want issues to be explained and fixed quickly.
Include a Contact Form
Having a contact form is important, even though you’ll probably have numerous ways for visitors to contact you on your website. Some customers prefer to use contact forms as they may not like speaking on the phone, and they might not even be up to date with emails. Including this form will help you to increase conversions.
Write Your About Page
You want to really take your time writing the about page as it’s one of the most important pages on your website. Don’t be fooled into thinking that nobody is going to read this page. This is where you can talk about what you’re setting out to do and why.
Easy Navigation
What are you going to do when a site is too hard to navigate? You’re going to leave and go elsewhere. You shouldn’t make people click more than four times to get to and from your home page. A company like Slickplan can help you work out your navigation properly so that users easily find what they need. Focusing on the user experience above all else is crucial.
Buy Your Own Domain Name
Sure, you could get a free domain name, but the fact is it doesn’t look very professional. Whether you’re getting this domain name for your business or yourself doesn’t matter; it’s always better to buy one. It shouldn’t cost you more than $20 per year providing you pick one that’s not too popular.
Your Template And Stock Photography
It’s ok to use a free template when you’re just starting out, but avoid using one that everybody else is using. You don’t want your site to look like all of the other sites out there. Avoiding bad stock photography is also crucial. Stock photos are fine, but bad stock photos that are used everywhere will make you look cheap. Taking your own photos is always the best option, if you can. You can learn how to edit them to make them look even better, too. If you can’t, then setting aside a small budget for pictures could also work. Explore different sites out there, like Pixels and Pixabay and see what you like best.
