5 Things to keep in mind for your new Website

Build your own website in 3 easy steps” to “No coding or design skills required“. Usually, these offerings allow you to select a template that you then populate with your own images and text. You may think, that a template allows you to just add text and images to pre-defined spaces. You’re done, Bob’s your uncle and you have a website.

There’s more to the actual process of building your website than slotting text and images into place and there are many considerations before you start building your site and some things to wrap up after your site has been built. None of that is usually included in your DIY offering.

But whether you use a web developer or are a DIYer, here are some things to consider:

1. Planning
   Like many worthwhile things we create, much of the final success lies in the initial planning. Every website should have a clear purpose. It is easy in the design and development process to lose sight of that purpose.
2. Is the right person doing the work
   In contrast to the advertising of DIY websites, sourcing the right images, formatting and placing them on the site is actually very time-consuming. The same is true for creating text content, look and feel, colours, and layout. We suggest working with someone that is experienced in graphic design or at least get an idea of what the site will look like before you dive in.
3. Hosting
   Make sure that your site is hosted locally and that you have someone that can deal with the technical challenges of hosting. Some of the things to consider are cost, security, encryption, mail gateways, site performance, not to mention the legalities, especially if your site is a shopping cart.
4. Search Engine Optimisation
   SEO is paramount to the success of your site and has to be kept in mind throughout the design and build process. Search engines like Google have complex rules that change from time to time and your website has to be flexible to work with the changes. Your initial design and wording content is as important as keeping current.
5. Keeping things going
   The formula to keep your site being found is not an easy one, but in short, if you create lots of original content and you get ‘liked’ on social networks, then it’s likely that your website will perform well. None of that happens without constant and time-consuming work.

You see that there is no silver bullet to getting noticed on the web and that, like anything worthwhile, it requires hard work. It’s not that we don’t support DIY, but keep in mind that often DIY ends up in not done well or not done at all.