I Need A Website!

If you have ever heard yourself scream ‘I need a website!’ or you have been getting sleepless nights and worried about how to go about setting up an online kingdom. Well let me break it down for you, and you will be online before you know it!

The name

The first thing you need to do is sit down and work out what you want your website to be called. It can be anything that’s relating in what your website is about. Either your name, business name, project related, or anything.

Once you have a few ideas on your name, it’s now time to purchase your domain. This is your unique part of the internet that will make it easy for everyone to find you. There are many variations either a .com, .net, .org etc… to be honest it doesn’t really matter. As .com used to be king for years but with so many of them already been bought, people have had to be creative in their choices.

Once you have found a domain name that is available to purchase, it is now time to find a domain vendor to purchase. Company’s charge different prices for the exact same product, so it might be worth doing a search to find the best price. (Anything over £10 for just a domain name is too much, and they are ripping you off)

Hosting your website

Once you have your domain name. It’s now time to setup a place to store your website files for your domain name to display. This is called ‘web hosting’. This is separate from your domain in that you can have your hosting with the same or a separate company. Like domain vendors, their are also many company’s providing a ‘website hosting’ service, they also range in various prices.

Sprinkle your world with beauty

Once you have your domain name and web hosting setup, it’s time to build your website. This can either be done by yourself with the aid of templates, video tutorials and guides etc.. or you can approach a professional designer and get your website designed and built professionally. This depends on your skill level, time and budget for your website.

Part of the design process is adding the right content for the audience your website is aimed at. Content is key, so it is important that all your text, spelling and grammar is perfect, images are correct and sized properly, your logos have been designed and applied properly, and everything has been carefully analysed to deliver the best your website can be. It is also important to keep your website updated wether it’s new blog posts, amended services, about us pages etc… nobody wants to visit a website with the information that is seven years old.

Spread the word

Once you have your brand new sparkling website, it’s time to shout out loud about it so everyone knows about it. These days we have the beauty of utilising social media, which can really help in online promotion. You have the choice of setting up new accounts with a similar name to your website, or utilising your current profiles with your website promotions.

Online promotion is great and very good for quick promos and limited budgets. It’s also important not to forget certain traditional ways of promotion. Posters, banners, adverts in local newspapers are still effective ways of spreading the word depending on your website and project. It’s important to look at your potential returns before you invest as it can be quite costly when your just starting out.

Marketing and promotional advertising as all about getting your project or brand in front of people, then creating a response. So it can sometimes need thinking out of the box in a way of getting people to notice you. Try working out where the audience that would be interested in your project tend to hang around, either online or offline. Do the frequent on certain websites or social media’s? or do they wait in certain establishments? How can you get them to see or actively notice your project or brand.

The process of building your online kingdom is very exciting, yet it can take time. Generally it won’t have over a million hits on launch day, things take time so it’s important to be patient. As long as you follow these tips and tricks then I’m sure you will have a successful project and will go a long way. Good luck!