Seven Things to Consider Before Building a Website

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So you decided to build a brand new website for your business. Congratulations!! That's a big step and a big decision, but, before you actually jump into the building process; there are a few things that you need to consider. And in today's post, I'm going to explain what those things are.

Click the play button below to watch the video or scroll down for the written version if you prefer to read.

1. What’s Your Website Goal?

So one of the first things that you're going to have to consider before you even start building your website is what is the primary goal of your website? This will help you structure your website in a way that will help you reach your business goals. And it will lead to more conversions on your website.

In other words, you will be able to measure how effective your website is by keeping those goals at the forefront of your mind. Now, ideally your website goals should align with your business goals. For example, If you want to make $50,000 in your business, or $100,000 dollars in your business in your first year; you need to know how you're going to get there, and then you need to know how your website is going to help you get there.

So in this case, if you're a service provider, obviously, you're going to want to promote your services. This means that one of the primary goals needs to be to ask people to actually book a discovery call with you.

But you should also have a secondary goal in mind, because not everybody will be ready to take that first step, immediately. Because of that, you’ll want to give them something to do; if they're not ready for that big step. The best case scenario is to actually invite them to join your email list.

Once you know what goals you want your website to achieve, you can easily understand what features you need to implement to help you reach those goals. For example, you know that you want to book discovery calls and you want to grow your email list. This tells you that you're going to need a contact form or an online calendar; as well as an email marketing platform to help you collect email addresses and stay in touch with your subscribers.

You will also probably want to integrate Google Analytics or another form of analytics software that tells you how many people are visiting your website, which pages they're clicking on, what action they're taking, and is your website actually helping you achieve your business goal.

2. Who Is Your Ideal Client?

The next thing that you want to consider is who your ideal client is. This is important because it will help you make a website that appeals to them; which then in turn makes them more inclined to actually reach out to you or subscribe to your newsletter.

Now I have a post that talks about how to make sure that your website appeals to your ideal clients, that you can go and read. But just know that when you're talking about your ideal client, the primary thing that you want to do is focus on the problem that you're solving or rather the problem that they're experiencing, rather than on the demographics of your ideal client. Those can come into play later. And I explain why in the post that I mentioned earlier.

3. Photos and Graphics

So once those two strategic elements are out of the way, the next thing that you actually need to consider are the practical things that you're going to need. You're going to need graphics for your website. That would be images of you, backdrop images that support your primary goal and your brand; that make your audience feel more connected to your brand.

If you have any brand patterns, you're going to want to prepare those. If you have custom brand icons, you’ll also want to prepare those. Now, if you don't have any of those elements, it's fine.

For example, if you don't have a logo that does not mean that you now have to go and design your logo. You can just start with a simple text-based logo. Depending on your website platform, you can get away with my favorite logo hack: use a different font for your website title to serve as a temporary place holder logo.

With that said, I do recommend that you prepare images of you, because people want to get to know the person behind the brand. More importantly, people want to buy from people. So using your own images is the best way to actually show your personality and the person behind the brand.

Now you don't have to go crazy and have 50 different images of you in different locations and whatnot. A few simple images that you can use on your homepage, your about page, and even your contact page is more than enough to get you started. You'll also want to consider a few images that are a good fit for your industry.

For example, if you're a photographer, you'll probably want to showcase your work. Using images from your previous photo shoots throughout your website is a good way to give your potential clients a sense of your style, aesthetic, and the way you take photos.

Similarly, if you're an interior designer, you'll probably want to use photos from the homes you've styled before working with previous clients. If you haven't worked with clients yet, then you would use those types of images to speak to your ideal client and to actually showcase what you're about.

It wouldn't make much sense if you're an interior designer and your website is littered with pages of puppies because you really love puppies. I love puppies too, but that doesn't really tell them anything; it can give them the wrong impression on what the website is about.

Ideally, you'll want to prepare a few images that can span the full width of the page, because those work really well as images that go at the very top of every page, which is called the hero area. And you can also use them if you have images that have a blurry background as you can use them as backgrounds for other sections on your page.

Lastly, consider using square or rectangular images that are around 1000px wide. You can use them to represent your services and other offers that you might have on your website.

4. Content For Your Website

The next thing that you want to prepare before you jump into building your website is the content for your website. This is where that strategy comes into play that I mentioned earlier. Once you know what the website goals are and what you're trying to achieve, you will have a better idea of what pages you need to include on your website. Naturally, you're going to need your homepage, your about page; and if you're a service provider; you're probably going to want to work with me page. It's also a good idea to have a contact page so that people can actually get in touch with you.

Now I have another post that talks about the absolute five pages you must have in order to launch your website and I recommend you go read that because it gives you an explanation of what should go on each page and what is the purpose of each page.

As to why I say you need copy before you design, it’s because it's a lot easier to design and lay out elements on a page once you have copy ready to go. If you were simultaneously trying to write the copy, find the right image, position it all on the page, it gets confusing and it can be overwhelming. Especially if you're not a professional designer.

Additional Content

Don’t forget to consider additional content that you might have to include on your website. Do you have any testimonials that can back up your claims, that can actually speak to your expertise, and showcase that you can get results for your clients? It's okay if you don't have them yet, but it's not a bad idea to actually collect those and have them ready before you start building your website.

Similarly, if you plan on launching with a blog or give people something to read when they show up to your website, it's a good idea to prepare that content before you actually start building your website.

5. Inspiration Sites or Design Direction

Another thing that you'll want to prepare is your mood board or your inspiration sites. It's a good idea to have a general direction and aesthetic that you're going for when you're designing the website, rather than going in blind and making design decisions on the fly. Because that will just make the whole process unnecessarily long. And it will take you a lot longer to actually launch your website.

If you have everything ready to go, you know which fonts you want to use, you know which colors you want to use, you know which photos you have for each page; then that design process takes a lot less, even when you're DIYing; then if you're just trying to scramble everything together at the very moment of building your website.

6. Legal Policies

Another thing that you'll want to have ready and consider before you actually start building your website is what legal pages you actually need on your website? You absolutely need to have privacy policy on your website. This is because you need to show that your website is compliant with numerous privacy protection laws all over the world. Whether you're in the USA, Canada, in Europe, no matter where you go; there are several privacy protection laws in place and if you don't have a privacy policy, your website is not compliant, which leaves you open to various lawsuits, and trust me, you want to avoid those.

Beyond that you might, depending on your industry, you might need disclaimers. Or any other type of legal pages that you might need for that you will want to consult your lawyer or a legal expert and ask him what actually do you need to have on your website.

Another thing that you also probably want to include is your terms of service so that you can avoid any misunderstandings and any potential lawsuits waiting to happen. So be sure to talk to a legal consultant, expert, lawyer to tell you what legal pages you need to have on your website. You will want to have those ready to go before you actually start building.

7. Your Domain Name and Your Address

The last two things you're going to need is your domain name and your physical business address. This is actually a legal requirement in many states and in many countries around the world, not just for your website and things like your privacy policy, but also in order to comply with the CAN-SPAM legal act, which basically requires you to have a physical business address at the bottom of every email. Now again, this doesn't need to be your actual home address. If you're working from home, you can go and get a business address for a few bucks. I know that there are services who provide that type of a service. So it's worth doing a little bit of investigation and checking out what can you actually do in that regard.

Final Thoughts

And those are the seven things you need to consider before you actually start building your website.

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