In today’s digital world, a site is usually a business’ first impression on potential customers, so having a good-looking online presence is essential, but how do you create a website? The process can be overwhelming if you’ve never delved into website creation before, so here’s a ten step guide to making a website for individuals and businesses.
Step 1: Define the Purpose of the Website
Before starting any type of web design to create a website, you need to get to grips with exactly what your website’s for. It could be for a business selling products, or personal showcasing blogs, but this needs to be decided as it will help shape all other steps.
Step 2: Choose a Domain Name
Your domain name is the address that people type to reach your site (.co.uk or .com). At this stage remember to keep it short and easy to remember and check for any trademarks. If your business is UK based, having a .co.uk domain can help signal trustworthiness.
Step 3: Select Your Web Hosting
The service that stores your website’s files and makes them viewable online is called web hosting. Popular web hosting providers include Siteground and IONOS. You should consider whether you want Shared (cheap), VPS/Cloud (powerful), or Managed (hands-off) hosting as they all offer different pros/cons. For individuals looking to create a small website, shared hosting from a respected host would be sufficient.
Expect to pay anywhere from £3 – £20 p/month.
Step 4: Website Builder or CMS?
The fourth step answering ‘How to Create a Website’ is deciding on whether to go with a website builder or a content management system (CMS).
Website builders like Wix, Squarespace and Shopify don’t require any coding and are best for beginners or small businesses. Because of their target audience, these solutions usually use monthly subscription models, providing flexibility.
On the other hand, CMS’ like WordPress are flexible and powerful with thousands of themes and require more setup but give loads of control.
Step 5: Plan Your Structure
Think about all the pages your site needs, typical sites include a home page, about us, services/products, contact page, blog/news. Coming up with a simple design, even what pages you want, is so important as you will have some sort of image in your head when designing.
Step 6: Design the Site!
Still don’t know how to create a website – Well now we’ll make the look of the site! Good website design is definitely not just about looks, for time we are just listing off points, but click here to see the 7 best UX practices that improve website conversion rates. Some principles include making sure the site is optimised for mobiles, there are clear call to actions, consistent branding and readable text throughout.
WordPress has thousands of themes to choose from and website builders come with easy to use templates.
Step 7: Add Content
The content in your site is what engages people and makes them stay and take action, some tips for this stage include: keeping everything clear and concise and optimising the site for SEO by using keywords. Also, write all text for your audience, in the ways that they would want and about the things they like.
Step 8: Optimise for SEO
There’s no point in learning how to create a website if no one can find it, so SEO is a crucial step in the guide. SEO ensures that your site is visible online, some beginner steps include: Adding title tags, use header tags to structure content on the page, make sure load times are quick and register with google business profile.
Step 9: Test
Before launching, test: does it work on all platforms (mobile, tablet, PC), are all the links functioning as intended, are contact details correct and is the site secure and looks trustworthy.
Testing your site across multiple browsers (Safari, Chrome) is effective for catching any compatibility issues out.
Step 10: Launch and Maintain
Once you’re confident that everything works perfectly, it’s ready to be launched. To ensure your website stays secure and effective, back up the site routinely, keep updating everything and refresh content.
Universal Web Design – Contact Us:
If you need a professionally built website to save time building one for yourself, get in contact with us today. Visit our contact us page by clicking here!
Or if you would like to contact our team directly, you can email through at sales@universal-group.co.uk . Or call us on 01206 588 000
We look forward to hearing from you!