Building a Website From Start to Finish

These days, having a strong and effective web presence is essential for keeping your business going. While you may think of it simply as a place to tell people who you are, drive traffic, or possibly sell products outside of your physical storefront, a website can do so much more in both the short and long term. Today, an effective website can act as a 24/7 storefront, resource hub, and lead generator for potential customers/clients. 

Sound difficult? Well, it doesn’t have to be. We’ll cover how to build one from start to finish - from defining your goals to optimizing your final product for search engines.

Laying the Groundwork

Before you start constructing

your website, it’s best to create a plan for what you want it to look like. Ask yourself:

• What is the purpose of your website? Websites can serve different purposes, from simply providing information on a specific topic to functioning as an online store or a chat group/forum where like-minded people can collaborate.

• Who are your target visitors? Hobbyists? Other businesses? Researchers? This information will help determine the content you need to include.

• What pages will you need? The main purpose of your website will guide the pages you add. At a minimum, you should have Home, About, and Contact pages. Depending on your goals, you might also need a Store, Blog, or Portfolio.

By answering these questions and laying a solid foundation before you begin, you won’t be diving in blindly.

Designing Your Website

Feel free to make your website as simple or as elaborate as you want - it all depends on your goals. Gone are the days of building a website from scratch and writing endless lines of code. Today, many website builders offer pre-made templates that you can customize with just a click.

The Basics

No matter your overall goals, every website relies on a few essential elements:

• Clear, organized headers and footers

• Colors and fonts that match your brand

• Your company logo

• High-quality written and visual content that resonates with your target audience (as identified earlier)

• An “About” section and a contact method (if applicable)

• Easy-to-follow navigation and links to your pages (usually in the header)

• Clear calls-to-action (CTAs) encouraging visitors to take specific steps

If you want to go further:

• Create an e-commerce site if you plan to sell products online. Use high-quality photos and detailed descriptions to ensure customers understand exactly what they are purchasing.

• Add a blog! Regularly updating it with new posts can boost your website traffic, improve your search ranking, and establish you as an authoritative and trustworthy source.

These elements work together to create a website that is both functional and user-friendly.

Making It Mobile-Friendly

Have you ever visited a website on your phone and found some content cut off or missing? This indicates the website isn’t optimized for mobile devices. Since most website traffic now comes from mobile, ensuring your site works well on phones is more important than ever.

This doesn’t have to be difficult; simple improvements can make a big difference:

• Increase text size and select readable fonts

• Resize images for quick loading

• Arrange content for easy navigation (nothing frustrates users more than long scrolling)

• Consider using collapsible text sections

Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines

When people search for your product or service on Google (or another search engine), you want your website to rank at the top. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. SEO has three main components that work together:

• On-Page: Everything on your website that makes it more user-friendly and relevant, including using the right keywords, providing clear and organized content, and ensuring fast page loads. Most website builders, such as Wix, guide you through this process step-by-step.

• Off-Page: Actions outside your website that boost its reputation, like earning backlinks, promoting on social media, and optimizing your Google Business Profile. These steps help your site appear more authoritative and trustworthy to search engines.

• Technical: Behind-the-scenes efforts to structure your site for easy crawling and indexing by search engines, such as improving load times and securing your site with HTTPS.

In Conclusion: Monitor Performance

And just like that, you’ve built your website! But don’t just set it and forget it. Regularly monitoring your site’s performance is crucial to keeping it effective.

While many website builders include analytics tools (which are very useful), adding a Google Analytics tag can greatly expand your data collection. You’ll see where visitors are coming from, what devices they use, how they interact with your content, and which pages perform best. Click HERE to get started.

Another helpful tool is Lighthouse, a free analysis tool built into Google Chrome. It audits your site’s performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO, grading each from 0 to 100 and offering improvement suggestions. Don’t worry if many tips seem confusing—some are meant for advanced web developers. Click HERE to learn more.

Follow these steps, and you’ll be well on your way to establishing a strong online presence. Good luck!