How To Build Your Own Website – Step 2: Planning Your Website
The secret to a really successful website is all in the planning. Set yourself some achievable goals and know what your limitations are. Take your time, don’t give up at the first hurdle and remember every business – regardless of size or industry – can gain an edge through having an online presence.
Here are some things to keep in mind as you start the process:
- What do I want my website to achieve? Having a clear expectation is paramount to making your website a success. You might set a goal of attracting new clients, through an email campaign, perhaps attract new customers: by raising awareness of new products. You might want to measure how well you perform through undertaking regular customer surveys and web statistics.
- Increase customer numbers during typically quiet periods: use social media and special offers. Increasing the number of followers you have on social media and the number of subscribers you have to your newsletter, the numbers could be used to measure your success.
- Create a new product line to increase sales separate to existing products. The success of this could be measured against your sales figures.
Once you have decided on what you want to achieve, it’s now time to start filling up your site with some content.
If you spend some time putting all your material together it will give your website a solid foundation. Experience says it’s always better to sit down with a notepad and put all your great ideas into one place.
Everything from written content, features such as contact forms, photo galleries, video content etc. 
Get creative and put all your ideas down on paper. A brainstorm session with friends and colleagues always helps. Draw some bubble maps with all your thoughts. This will allow you to instantly record any great ideas before you forget them.
Put the main idea/objective in the middle of the page and then start to fill in your thoughts. Fire them down and soon you’ll be creating a linked up map on how to bring the process together.
Once you have formed the basis of your own website with your own unique ideas you should take a look at what is already out there. It’s always better to do this after you have done your own bubble map. Don’t copy – be unique and stand out from the crowd take a look at our website and have a look at the the various themes available from our FREE Website Builder
Don’t just focus on sites similar to yours, look at all the websites out there that you like, the ones you find enjoyable to navigate around.
Make some notes about what you like and why you like it. Keep the bubble map filling up with new ideas, think outside the box and don’t be focused on what everyone else has done. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we do need to learn from the mistakes others have made.
You might wish to start by writing down all your keywords. The words and phrases that people will use to find your business online. It’s also a great place to start for your website’s navigation menu.
To find out more about Netcetera and how we can help your website become a success simply visit our website using the below button. Don’t forget to join us tomorrow where we’ll help you through the process of how to start using your Website Builder.
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