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Getting your website started!
Hey guys! So, today I want to talk a little bit about getting your website up. If you’re starting a new website, kind of a little 101. And you know how to get started.
The first part about that is start off. Generally, you’re going to start off with a theme. A theme is a kind of framework, a base of an actual site that companies make. And instead of starting with a blank sheet of paper or blank screen in this case. It kind of has things already pre-set. To places where you can go to take a look at some of these things is gonna be a themeforest.net that’s one site. The other one and there’s more than these two but these are two probably the most popular. The other one is called templatemonster.com.
So, what we’re talking here is about a theme and primarily we’re talking about WordPress. WordPress pretty much is dominating the internet as far as websites. I don’t know the exact number but it’s more than half. And unless you have something very specific, some type of e-commerce, special team nature you’re doing. You know WordPress is going to be the platform you’re gonna work on. So, your platform is WordPress. And then you’re gonna get a theme which is when you look at these sites you’re gonna have categories. Whether it’s you know shoes or photos and you know you’re gonna have categories for that kind of stuff, professional services.
Picking what you need
And it’ll have all kind of pre-sets up. So, when you’re looking at it you know you’re gonna see dummy pictures and dummy text. You know text that looks like you know gibberish kind of stuff. And that’s made for you to kind of get a feel for the features and the kind of you know sliders bells whistles. All the little things that are incorporated in there, the style all those things. And we would basically be filling in, changing pictures, moving things around. All these things could be changed. But you know it pretty much gets us halfway down the field. When all this stuff is already done, it’s been tested.
Laying out your site
So, it’s really a huge move forward in setting up and creating websites. So, you go to those sites and find something that you like. From there when you take a look at those don’t get so caught up. I mean you got to look at it with an open mind you know you might see one that’s about as an example. I don’t know maybe you see one that’s selling shoes and you’re selling you know t-shirts. So, don’t get bogged up with exactly the detail there. Think of the concept, big the pictures, the titles, the areas, the pages that are kind of set up.
The sliders that are basically on the home page. How do you want it to look? Do you like a big picture just kind of talking about your company? Do you want five pictures kind of a shopping type page? And when you look at those you kind of see what I’m talking about. So, get yourself a theme and remember we can change colors and we can change all those things. Afterward, when you’re looking through this theme some of the things are gonna make little sense. You know some of these are gonna have for example a check out our team, right. And they’ve got a team of like ten people.
And you’re maybe a small company you got three people. So, you know you might say well that’s not really gonna apply to me. Some of these things are not gonna apply. You don’t have to use everything. All the pages that they have basically are all the examples of everything possible. And then you’re gonna Whittle that down to really watch you know what you need and you know catering to. So, it’s a matter of more like kind of I would start with probably eliminating the things you’re not going to use. I’ll probably be a good place to start. So, things like that. Maybe you’re not gonna have a team page, maybe you don’t do appointments. And there’s an appointment calendar thing like that.
Determining what you will keep
Start making notes on what does not apply. You’re gonna see these little features kind of with percentages graphs, things like that. They may apply they may not. Some of the features would be like you know 10,000 customers served or 6,000, you know 27 years in business. So, if you’re just starting, you’re not gonna fill that one year. You’re not gonna put one year in business that’s not good. So, when you see those things just see how you can apply them you know to your business. And if you can’t see how that’s gonna work then basically would just kind of scratch that off and do something else.
So, after that what I would do is I would take a look at your competitors. Go to the competitors that you know just right off the top of your head. Take a look at their sites. You’re gonna get tons of ideas from them. They’ve already been doing it. They’ve already spent some money. So, nothing wrong with you know swiping some ideas from somebody. That’s maybe a little bit ahead of you, maybe made some mistakes. Save yourself, that trouble.
Again take a look at what you like, what you don’t like, make some notes, reference to that. Then I would do a search for how people are really gonna more than you know find you. And see who’s coming up in those search results. Not on the paper, you could look at the page searches. Both paid and the not paid. Take a look at those sites because you may have people there if you haven’t done this. I mean that’s a whole other thing that you should do is who’s coming up in the search. When people are looking you might say well Joe is my biggest competitor. Joe may not be your biggest competitor, you know you may know that Joe’s down the street.
Getting ideas
But if a customer’s searching and Joe’s not coming up then Joe may not be your biggest competitor. Do a Google search, see who’s there. And with the Google search, I wouldn’t narrow it down to just locally, take advantage of the whole, nationwide who’s ranking and take a look at their sites get some ideas you know from their sites for your site. Then you know after that, of course, I would take a look at my local competitor for your local business. And see you know who in your area in Miami in you know your County in your 5-mile radius. You know who’s showing up, what are they doing, what are they offering.
From these little exercises, you’re gonna pretty much have you know 90% of the information and kind of basic outline I would say, framework to really get started. From there we start building up all that info, pictures we might need all that kind of stuff. And then we just start the tweaking. But once you get this down I mean we’re like you know 75, 80 percent of the way.
Putting it all together
So those are some of the tips that I got for you guys. Kind of to get started if we’re gonna sum them up. Take a look at some themes on the two sites that I gave you. Also look at the competitors are you having your mind. Take a look at their sites, get some ideas from them. Take a look at Google search and take a look at who shows up there for your kind of product and get some information from them. Note all that down whether it’s paper and pencil if you like that or just grab a Word document and start writing away. And from there that’s where we start doing our magic.
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