Like the saying, everyone has got a book in them, everyone has got a website in them. So thereupon in mind, I assumed it might be helpful if I covered the fundamentals in beginning your own website. Subject Matter First, and most significantly, is deciding what your website is about and the way it meets the requirements of your audience. Chances are there is already a website covering your subject matter, but that doesn’t matter! You will have different ideas, ways of explaining things and other differentiators. It is important that you find a competitive edge and keep it! So, research your competitors and understand your markets and audiences to seek out ways of delivering better value.
Website URL
Now you've got your winning idea, you would like a robust URL. This should be memorable and relevant to your brand or company name. It doesn’t need to be an outline of your products and services, for instance, Moonpig.com isn’t obvious that it sells cards, but it's memorable; on the opposite hand, simplydigitalmarketing.com is the name of our company and covers our subject matter, Digital Marketing, so find the right URL for you. To check if a URL is available use a registry site e.g. 1-2-3reg.com; there are many website registry providers. It is recommended that you purchase the local URL e.g. .co.UK, .com and .net as well as any others you want; this will stop competitors snapping them up! Once you have registered your URL you will need to host them so you can start building your site. Again there are many hosting providers and it often makes sense to register and host your URL with the same provider. A point to notice, you'll register domain names without hosting them. This is a good idea if you are thinking about a number of different URLs so buy the lot, then let the ones you don’t want expire. The cost of registering a URL varies from free to around £10 per year, with basic hosting ranging from £2.99 per month to £10 +; so the cost is relatively cheap.
Building your site
Your skill level may dictate how you are doing this, but blogging and content management systems are a well-liked choice, for instance, WordPress and Joomla. I currently favor WordPress as it is very easy to use and although primarily a blogging system, there are a number of great themes and plugins which allow you to quickly create sites with a limited amount of skills necessary. Theme Forest has a large number of templates available for around $30, these offer a quick solution for getting up and running; they often come with excellent support too, I would recommend True Themes as a template provider.
Managing your site
Ok, so you have your URL and site template set up, next you need to fill it with great content, messaging, product or services; then all you need is to get visitors! Take a look at our ‘The SEOPressor Plug-in...Where it FAILS! blog article for more information on this.
Optimizing your site
Now that you are getting visitors you need to make sure your site is optimized to deliver conversions, whatever they may be to you e.g. downloading a brochure. Use tools like analytics to watch the content being viewed, bounce rate and exit pages to realize valuable insights into how your site is performing. Tools such as crazy egg, although at a cost, will provide you with in-depth information into where your users are clicking, allowing you to make changes accordingly. There are many tools available that will assist you to optimize your site and study the consequences of moving a button here and a contact form there, so find the right ones for you and tweak away!
I hope this helps with the basics in setting up your site; as you progress you will come across all sorts of information and tools which will help you succeed. I would recommend (as you'd expect) understanding our 3 Principles, which offer you a robust Marketing foundation for progressing, I think Marketing is that the key to business success.
