Whether you have decided to create a website for a personal blog, a portfolio, or a business, there are several important things you should keep in mind as you are starting out.
1. Cost
Most of the time, professional websites cost money to build and maintain. However, there are free options as well. When deciding whether to choose a free option or a website with paid hosting, you should weigh costs with professionalism and capabilities.
The free option I would recommend is a subdomain on WordPress.com. You get many of the benefits of WordPress sites without the expense and hassle of managing a hosting plan and keeping the site up-to-date. However, rather than a true domain name (heidimichellemarketing.com), you would have something like heidimichellemarketing.wordpress.com. These sites are less professional and have fewer capabilities but can be useful if you need something free and simple. One of the best use cases is if you need a portfolio website if you are entering a creative job market and need the website only for job applications and your resume.
If you decide to invest in a true website of your own, you will need:
- A domain name, starting at $12/year
- A hosting plan, starting at $3/month introductory rate on Bluehost
- A content management system, such as WordPress, Drupal, or Wix
You may also need:
- A website theme (if you don’t want to build a website from scratch), averaging about $59 for WordPress
- A business email domain plan, starting at $3/month
- Other website plugins, such as WPforms, WooCommerce, OptinMonster, or MonsterInsights (Note: some website theme purchases come with these tools, so keep that in mind while shopping for themes.)
- A website developer, if you have more complex website needs
2. Capabilities
If you will be selling things on your website, you may need certain plugins or services to do business. Some website themes may already have these plugins included and incorporated into the webpage templates.
Some businesses that offer things like ongoing training may want to be able to offer customers an option to log in so they can access their saved content or continue where they left off in training modules.
3. Branding
Having a professional domain name is just the first step in incorporating branding into your website.
It’s also important to consider the look and feel of the website, the tone of voice used throughout (fun, humorous, empathetic, serious, hopeful, etc.), and the use of imagery, illustrations, and/or videos.
Deciding on the appearance of the website is the most difficult part when first starting out. This is where choosing a pre-built website theme can be especially helpful for getting inspiration and saving time. Choose a theme that is close to how you want the final website to look. You can always customize the colors and fonts after you have purchased the theme.
4. User Experience
In addition to branding, the website design should also take user experience into account.
One major decision to make before even getting started is how you want the website navigation to look. The two major website navigation setups include single-page scroll and traditional navigation. The single-page scrolling website uses navigation links at the top of the page to automatically scroll the user down to the corresponding part of the page. On the other hand, the traditional navigation style links the user to separate pages for the different links in the navigation menu. If your website will be very simple with minimal content, it might make sense to use the single-page scroll navigation style. However, if you will have many pages or pages with very different content, you should opt for the traditional navigation style.
5. Upkeep
As previously mentioned, if you choose to go with a paid website with custom domain name and hosting, you will need to make sure the website is staying up-to-date with security and other updates. You can usually set it up so that WordPress or Drupal will perform these updates automatically when they become available. However, there might be errors from time to time that will require investigation. You should do periodic audits of your website to make sure everything looks and acts as it should. Some updates may change the appearance of things on your website, and sometimes links may break.
