Making Your Non-existent Website a Masterwork

It’s Easier Than You Think

By Kimberly Grant

Starting a website is daunting.  It seems easy enough because we are constantly viewing the websites of others and their content looks easy enough to re-create.  What looks easy is actually well-planned, has a storyboard, and is quite deliberate.  Never fear, though.  There are quite a few sites available that can help you with getting your website set up and looking professional within a week of planning and troubleshooting.

If I had to give any tips for creating a website, the first would be to set aside a few hundred dollars for your fees.  If you live in the United States, you know that we live in a capitalist society and anything that’s not love, family, and friends is going to cost you money.  Next, you will have to figure out what your website is going to be (the look and feel).  For that, you have to do three things: decide the purpose of the website, decide your target audience, and look at the websites of those who have a similar purpose.  This will help you understand where you’re headed in your path to developing your website.

Next, decide what pages you are going to need.  A good starting point for website pages is included in the below visualization:

Now that you have a starting point for your pages, it’s time to write your actual content.  For example, your About Page needs to have, well, something about you or your brand/company.  Once you’ve written content for your pages (preferably in Word), spell/grammar checked and pasted onto your pages, it’s time to add images so that your website isn’t a jumble of words.  I decided to go the budget route and chose free images from canva.com.  It took some time because the premium images cost money.  That said, if you’re willing to pluck down the funds for the premium service of Canva, then you should.

For the Contact, Privacy Policy, and Cookies pages, you will need to add plug-ins (Complianz, Word Press starter, etc.) so that you are in compliance with the laws that govern websites and privacy tracking.  It’s also a good practice to add analytical plug-ins (like Google Analytics’ Monster Insights), to get an analysis of your website visits and what parts of your site is most and least popular.  If the thought of figuring out a plug-in is challenging, there are no worries.  If you use a web hosting site, like Siteground, you will have what you need for the plug-ins.

Once you have the basics down, you can start building your pages using website themes.  I decided to use WordPress themes as they are easy to manage; or so I thought.  In my personal experience of developing my website (kagrant.com) I was able to put together a pretty decent looking website, except the slider feature that I thought would look awesome.  The slider feature was working on the mobile version of my website, but not on the tablet and desktop versions.  I spent a good part of a week trying to troubleshoot what could be wrong with my slider feature.  As usual, the fix was something that was simple: adjust the size of my feature images.

After I had a short laugh about that, I went to work on making sure the website looked good to the outside world (read: people who weren’t me).  As I was clicking through my site, I realized that in my zeal for making sure I had a compliant Cookies section of my website, I inadvertently listed my personal information for contacting purposes.  At which point, I promptly adjusted my plug-in content to ensure that the only contact information that was listed was what I wanted the general public to see.  The lesson: Always use email addresses and professional social links for users to contact you if you do not have a business address.

Once you have created your pages, added content and photos, ensured that all features are in working order, and that the information you want on the web is listed, it’s time to publish your masterwork.  Another good practice when you publish your website is to take a moment and view your work.  Marvel at your creation and appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into something that will bring value to you and your future audience.  Once you’ve taken that moment, tell your friends and family to take a look so that they can give you their notes.  Because their notes will help you turn your masterwork into a masterpiece.