How to Create a Website – A Guide for Beginners
How to create a website for beginners, When you have a business to run, most of your customers will expect to find your business without extra effort. Either you are selling your services or products online, or simply providing information, it is essential to have a website.
Before you start creating one, you need to do a little homework; think about your goal, and research your competitors to see what makes their sites successful and what could work for you.
Creating a website is not that difficult once you know what you want, just follow these steps and your website should be up and running in no time.
Choose and register your domain name
You want your customers to be able to find your business easily, therefore your domain name needs to reflect your services or products, maybe choose something similar to your brand name. you probably want to think about using the domain name for your email address as well because it does look more professional but this is not a necessity.
For registering your domain name, there are many free registrars out there but there is a chance the name you have chosen will not be available. Go with an accredited registrar instead, pay the fee, and get the name you really want.
Find a reliable web hosting company
Most companies that provide a domain name, are also web hosting companies. In order to put your domain name on the internet, you need to find a good reliable host. Which hosting company you choose depends on the size of your website and the number of visitors to your site; both these factors also affect the monthly (or yearly) fee you have to pay to keep your website up. Research a few of the most authoritative hosting companies, check out their offers, and decide on a plan that works best for you and your business.
Create and prepare your content
You may have prepared this part in advance but since it is an important step, double-checking will not hurt you.
When you are creating and preparing content for your pages, think of the customers first; what do you want them to find, see, or do? What kind of information do they expect? How can you make it easier and more interesting for them?
Even if you are a talented writer with a good sense of people’s needs, running a business can be quite overwhelming, and maybe you should consider hiring a professional content writer, someone you trust to provide unique and well-structured material. A well-designed website, that is easy to navigate through, and relevant, high-quality content, including appropriate images, is what will not only help your brand to stand out but it will make your customers feel more comfortable with purchasing from you.
Build and design your website
If you are familiar with designing and building a website, you can build it on your own, some of the companies that provide web hosting even have their own website builders that can help you but the features may be limited. Or you can hire a professional developer that will build it for you rather quickly, and they can offer you reliable guidance on successful web designing.
Your website needs to be designed so people can use on their mobile devices with ease; more and more people are accessing and browsing the internet with their smartphones, and if your site is not designed for a mobile-friendly experience, you could potentially lose a lot of customers.
Little pieces of advice for the final words
1. When you are building a website for your business, do not just think about what you want to tell your customers, you need to also consider what they would have like to know, what kind of information could be useful for them.
2. For help, turn to real professionals; they know what works and what does not, and their guidance will not only help you through the first steps but can also come in handy later on.
3. Your website needs to be updated regularly; your prices, delivery information, written content. What you update depends on what your business is about but in any case, you need to be consistent with informing your customers, and with keeping them interested.
4. Your contact info has to be correct (email, phone number, address, etc.) because customers have to able to reach you in case they need any additional information.
5. Do not skip on a proper SEO campaign; this is what puts your website ‘’on the map’’ and steers in more organic traffic.
6. Do your marketing right; a new website need a good marketing strategy, how you want to tackle this, is up to you. You can do an email campaign, use social media platforms, you can even guest post on established, and relevant sites.
9 Tips For A Successful Website Design
What can you do best as a client to work optimally with a designer? And how do you, as a designer, get the right input from your client? The following 10 tips will help you on your way to a successful result.
Every designer can effortlessly shake up numerous anecdotes about interfering with their creative work. These anecdotes themselves inspire a lot of creativity, like this video on what a stop sign would look like if a large company designed it:
All the nice and nice. But how do you as the client and designer approach the design process as well as possible? The following 9 tips will hopefully help you on your way. To know the other tips check out here.
1) Talk about problems
The first “mistake” many people make when they brief a designer is to tell them what they want instead of explaining what’s wrong.
Design is not primarily about what something looks like. It’s about coming up with a solution to a problem. After all, the most beautiful toilet sign design is useless if the men keep stepping into the women’s toilet.
That is why everything the user experiences are part of the design. From logo to loading speed. From navigation to the error message. That requires a holistic view of design.
An example: Suppose you like the design for the new homepage in the basics, but you lack sufficient brand experience. Do not ask if the logo can be bigger (your solution), but explain that the design lacks the necessary brand experience (your problem). The designer may then choose to make the logo larger. But he or she can also opt for more white space around the logo, for example. Or an adjustment of the color palette, or other photography.
2) Set goals
What should the new design achieve? What does success look like? Should the web page generate more leads? Or fewer calls to the helpdesk? Is the wish for more brand awareness? Or a higher conversion of the shopping cart? A professional designer who knows what you want to achieve with a design will undoubtedly come up with the best design to achieve that goal.
3) Be smart with deadlines
Many designers do not have enough time to make a good design. Creativity is difficult to enforce. Sometimes during the briefing, a designer already sketches a design that has the same purpose. But usually, he or she has to come up with quite a few versions before it hits the mark.
As a client, therefore, do not set overly rigid or even unrealistic deadlines. But ask them. Because without a deadline, creative work never ends. It is best to agree on a deadline with a designer that he or she proposes.
As a designer, you better keep the initiative on your side. Set a deadline that gives you enough time, but also keeps enough pressure on the process. Because some (time) pressure is good for the creative process.
4) Don’t argue about taste
Personal taste is often a bad advisor when it comes to applied design. Do not let your feedback on design be guided too much by your personal preferences.
Maybe you dislike the color purple, but your designer knows from experience and research of the target group that purple is the most suitable color for this design.
The best way to deal with differences in taste is to test the design against the objectives. So don’t ask yourself, “Do I like this?” But: “Is this the best design to achieve my goals (point 2)?”
5) Ask why
Children can drive you crazy by answering every answer you give them with the question ‘why?’. Maybe that’s why we lost this skill as adults. But in the design process, the question ‘why’ is essential.
If you as a client do not like the solution that the designer has invented, do not immediately vent your opinion. On the other hand, start your response to the design by asking why he or she came up with it this way. In the context you get, you may start to think differently about the design.
Conversely, if a customer says he or she does not like the solution you have come up with, keep asking “why” until you know the reasons. Because they are always there. And only by asking the question “why” do you help the client to think further about the design.
6) Test, test, test
“So many people, so many opinions.” And “there is no arguing about taste “. They are clichés, but no less true.
To prevent personal taste (see point 4) from getting in the way of the objectives, it is advisable to regularly test a design in the final target group during the various phases of its creation.
It is even better to involve your customers closely from start to finish in the design process. Design together with the customer. Involve him or her in all considerations and choices. By the time the design has to be presented to the other stakeholders, your customer is co-owner of the design and acceptance is usually a formality.
7) Talk to the decision-maker (s)
Make sure that the decision-maker (s) is at the table in all discussions that are important for the design.
Nothing is more frustrating than extensively presenting a design to people who ultimately cannot decide, but may have a hidden agenda.
The risk that they present the design internally very differently than you intended and that the ultimate decision-maker (s) then shoots the design (s) for reasons that you cannot imagine, is very great.
8) Start with the right material
Maybe an open door for you. But we still often see that designers are suddenly confronted with house style regulations only halfway through a process. Naturally, the designer should have asked for this at the start.
But if he or she forgets that, make sure that he or she already has the correct house style regulations and accompanying graphic files at the start of the process.
9) Design content first and in the browser
If possible, always design with real content. Therefore, ensure that for each page type the real texts and images are available to the designer.
5 best website builder tools
Nowadays, starting your own website is not as difficult as it used to be. There is a wide variety of Do-It-Yourself web builders you can choose from. But before you decide on which one to use, you have to consider what kind of website are you creating and the functionality you need.
Let’s have a look at 5 best website builder tools that can help you make an ideal business or personal website.
WordPress
The most popular site building platform in the world has two versions you can go for: WordPress.com, and a self-hosted WordPress.org which is the more popular one due to its ease of use, scalability, popularity, and powerful features. It is also an open-source builder, meaning that you have the highest possible control over your website.
Wix
Wix.com is also one of the most popular builder software and it is all thanks to a simple and powerful set of features that make building a site very easy.With this website creator, you get access to numerous templates you can choose from, and each of them can be fully edited. You also get multiple paid or free apps that can be installed on your site; these allow you to add functionality and new features. And because Wix is a fully hosted platform, you can host your website for free.
Domain.com
This is an easy site builder tool. With only a few clicks it allows you to create a blog, a small business site, even an e-commerce website. It offers a drag-and-drop builder but there are also numerous templates you can choose from and design it to your liking. And because these templates are optimized for desk computers, tablets, and smartphones, your website will look great on every device.
BigCommerce
If you are building an e-commerce website, BigCommerce is the best site builder out there. This is a fully hosted e-commerce solution, which means you do not have to worry about updates, security, or website speed. The technical side and the server are being handled and you can fully focus on your business. Pricing is a little higher than most of the other builder tools, but it is a website that is not only fast but also secured, no matter how much traffic it gets, and the metrics can be seen on their dashboard so you can confidently grow your business.
Weebly
This is an easy site builder tool and it has a variety of great designs, and if you do not feel like learning coding skills, you can edit your site with an included, nicely crafted page builder. Because Weebly is fully hosted, they are the ones to take care of managing the ‘’background’’ software and hosting your site.
More 53 Best Website Builder Tools
Conclusion
Choosing a proper website builder tool is really up to you. Ask yourself these questions: What type of website are you building? What features do you need? Are you prepared to pay for it, and if so, how much? After you answer these, you can decide on a web builder tool that suits your needs the most.
WEBSITE DESIGN FRAMEWORKS AND LIBRARIES
How to Design a Website?
Every single aspect on a website, be it the outward outlook, the content and the way a website works, is fully dependent on the website design. Designing a website involves a process of conceptualising, organising, planning and collecting electronic files to determine aspects such as text styles, graphics, interactive features, layout, structure and colours among others to deliver pages to site visitors. To achieve the finest and latest web pages developers use various techniques and languages to deliver outstanding websites that meet the needs of customers. They include;
CSS3
CSS3 – Cascading Style Sheets language is the modern advancement of CSS2.1. The new advancements in CSS3 include the new layout like multi-columns and flexible grid layouts. Additionally, animations and transitions are more enhanced including rounded corners and shadows supported by CSS box-shadow property.
JQUERY
This is a javascript library that simplifies programming in JavaScript. Jquery helps in adding interactivity and animations to a website. It has simplified client side scripting making it simple to transverse through documents and it is easy to use across all browsers.
ANGULARJS
AngularJS is similar to HTML since it has only been added new attributes above HTML. It is best used in single page applications. It has also been supported by Google since a Google employee started using AngularJS and it turned out the official language. It is a front end web application that solves challenges faced while developing single page applications.
HTML5
HTML5 is the latest advancement that defines HTML. It incorporates new attributes, elements and behaviours. It is usable by open source web developers. HTML5 technologies have different functionalities such as styling that allows authors become more sophisticated in theme choices. It also allows use and integration of computer hardware and speed optimisation in the performance. Additionally, HTML5 technology allows offline and storage. This enables working offline on the client side thus making it efficient. A connectivity function is also attributed to HTML5 technology in terms of making it easy to communicate with the server in an innovative manner.
JAVASCRIPT
This is a programming language of the web and HTML. JavaScript allows powerful additions and interactions with websites, libraries and frameworks such as AngularJS, ReactJS, Jquery and NodeJS are commonly used. It is the most popular scripting language for web pages and also non-browser environments utilise it. It is a prototype based language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, declarative and dynamic languages.
PHP
This is a scripting language designed for the server side primarily for web designing. It is also a general purpose language. PHP is also used for command line scripting whereby, you make PHP script run without browser or server. PHP is also used in desktop applications development although not the best for applications unless the developer is extremely versed with advanced PHP features. The advantage of using PHP is that it can be used on all operating systems. It also has support for all web servers. PHP capabilities range from outputting images, pdf files, and flash movies as well. PHP auto generates these files and saves them forming a server-side cache.
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