Designing and building a website is a fascinating project of business and marketing strategy, design smarts, and tech challenges. There’s many moving pieces, and if you’re going to do all of it yourself, you get to wear many hats in the process.
Do I think you can do it yourself? Yes, I absolutely do. Do I think you should do it yourself? Well, it depends on you. With the technology, platforms, and templated solutions we have available today, I think you should at least consider designing and building your website yourself. Unless, of course, you have extra $5k, then you should hire me to do it 😀
In any case, this video will walk you through the decisions you need to make before you build your website — the same decisions that in a very concrete way will affect the success of your website. Check it out and let me know in the comments if you have any questions.
To support this video and your website building project, I created a comprehensive Website Design & Build Checklist
This checklist will help you to:
- Learn what it takes to build a website.
- Answer guiding questions to uncover the best strategy, technology, and process for your website project.
- Plan and prepare the roadmap to a successful website project.
Get your website checklist here.
The steps this video walks you through are:
- The purpose and business goals of your website, and how they might affect what kind of website you build and the kind of platform solution you might need.
- Your products and services, and how they might affect the features on your website, or even the platform your end up using.
- The content you’re going to put on your website, and how it affects your platform choice and related technology.
- Different platforms you can use to build a website for yourself, and what are each of the platforms suitable for.
- Where to get hosting?
- How to come up with an URL for your website, and what to do if someone already has the URL you would want to use.
- How does your branding affect your website?
- How to design your the pages on your website?
- And who is going to build your website…
Further resources for building your website:
If you need support in the process, join my free Facebook group DIY Brand Design & Strategy for Soulpreneurs This video is also available in the group in addition to branding and design support and awesome people. Welcome!
And if your website is already under way, but you’re not sure how to move forward or how to improve your current website, sign up for my free website design audit. Right now, I’m conducting free web design audits in my free Facebook group DIY Brand Design & Strategy for Soulpreneurs.
Join the group and post: 🙋#designaudit [ -and add your website URL- ]. I’ll be selecting a few brave volunteers for a website review. 👉 You’ll submit your website for a design review. And I’ll take a look at it and give you my honest, professional opinion (free of charge) on anything you should change or revise.
And since we’re on the topic… I’m doing a LIVE Website Design & Build workshop ($47) soon. If you’re thinking about building a website for your brand or re-designing your current one, you might be interested in this. Learn more and join the waiting list to get updated on dates, times, and more details.
In the 2-hour workshop, you’ll learn:
- How to plan your website project
- What content & pages you need on your small business website
- How people behave online these days
- How to design the pages for your website
- Good user experience principles
- How to use the Divi theme on WordPress to build a stunning website quickly and easily
