7 Steps On How To Make A Website On Your Own
7 Steps On How To Make A Website
Are you thinking of ways to make a website on your own? We have prepared a 7-step guide for you. It is our hope that by the end of this read, you would have learnt the basics of how to make a website on your own.
A lot of people nowadays are quitting their jobs in record numbers and starting their own businesses. Some are thinking of ways to turn their talents into businesses so that they can supplement the income they are getting from their day jobs.
There is also another group of people that have been made redundant by covid and are now looking at businesses to start because finding a job with their current skills is proving to be a daunting task as they may be required to retrain.
The internet has been an important aspect of our daily lives but covid has exacerbated our dependency on it.
Making a website is no easy task, of course, there are numerous website blogs and YouTube videos that will make it look easy, but anyone who has made a website will tell you it’s not as easy as they make it look.
However, if you are computer savvy and have the time, then it can be done. These days, you don’t need to know how to code to make a website. However, knowing how to code is an added advantage, because you might encounter certain problems when developing a website that may require coding skills.
Our dependency on the internet has led to numerous pros and cons, but this article focuses on the pros the internet has brought especially those pertaining to online businesses. Below is a 7-step process of how to make a website on your own.
1. Think about the business you want to venture in and ask yourself questions.
Before you make a website, you need to research what business you want to venture in. Ask yourself these questions;
Are you going to be selling products?
Are you going to be providing services?
Or maybe you will be a non for profit company?
In some cases, you might be thinking of being an affiliate marketer of certain products or services.
Starting a business requires you to sit down, study the business environment you are about to enter and ask yourself questions about the business you want to venture in.
Other questions you ought to ask yourself include:
*What type of business are you going to start?
*What value you will provide to your customers?
*What makes you different from the current players in the market?
* What are the industry challenges you might face?
* Should I start as a sole trader, partnership, Trustee or Company, which one makes more sense?
We have written an article on what to do before building a website in Australia.
2. Get A Domain
After you have decided what business you want to venture into, the next step is getting a domain.
Most people have come across the word domain by now, but if you haven’t don’t worry we will explain to you what a domain is and what it does.
A domain is essentially an address for your website.
A domain, in layman’s terms, is a website address that helps people find your website when they search for it on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others. Some of the most popular domains are .com, .net, .org, and .au, for those of us in Australia.
Usually, when you type a query in Google you will be given a list of domains and you click on the one you feel is appropriate and will answer your particular question or need at the time.
You can get a domain from Go Daddy, HostGator or local domain providers like Oround Web Design. Domain prices range from $10 -$100. This all depends on the availability of the domain.
Make sure that you get the appropriate domain. For instance, most businesses in Australia their domains have the .com.au at the end.
This help to signal to a website visitor that this business is Australian owned.
3. Choose A Hosting Provider
In an article we wrote a few weeks ago, we defined hosting as:
Web hosting is a service that allows organisations and individuals to post a website or web page onto the Internet. A web host, or web hosting service provider, is a business that provides the technologies and services needed for the website or webpage to be viewed on the Internet.
Websites are hosted or stored, on special computers called servers. When Internet users want to view your website, all they need to do is type your website address or domain into their browser.” Perth Web Hosting is what most users in Perth looking for hosting would type.
Popular Web Hosting Providers include; GoDaddy, HostPapa, HostGator and Oround Web Design.
We recommend using local hosting companies because their servers are usually domiciled in the same locality as you, you can easily contact them if you have any downtime and they can also help you with increasing your server space or server option if need be.
The problem with some international servers is that they don’t have local servers and the nearest server might be in a different country or in some cases a different continent altogether.
Hence your server response might not be as fast as those whose websites are hosted locally or whose servers are nearer to would-be searchers as yours.
This might also affect how Google ranks you, if your web page takes a long to open, Google might look at it as a bad user experience and may show you less and less to potential website visitors.
4. Choosing A Website Builder
Which Web Builder is the best
A Website Builder is a software that helps you create a website with ease.
At Oround Web Designer we prefer WordPress as opposed to the others.
Is it the easiest?
No, it isn’t, In fact, a lot of people might prefer Wix as it is believed to be easier. But there are a lot of technical reasons we prefer WordPress and would encourage you to use it. Apart from WordPress and Wix, there are other page builders such as Shopify, Weebly, etc. Shopify is especially good for those that are looking at making a website with products, it has got a great payment gateway that is easy to integrate.
We use Shopify on some projects, but we still prefer WordPress because it allows us to escape the template trap and the monotonous aesthetic of most templated websites.
We have used Wix, Shopify and WordPress extensively, but we feel WordPress has an upper hand on most website builders.
A lot of non-coders and coders alike are electing to use web builders because of the speed they allow you to build websites. But please note, that this speed comes with experience, and building a website for the first time will usually not come as easy as most YouTube videos or articles make it seem. Speed comes with experience, the more you practise, the more you will become good at either making websites or anything that you pursue.
Most Hosting Plans come with WordPress and it’s cheaper to get it that way as you will be saving on both hosting and WordPress. So make sure that your hosting provider provides WordPress.
5. Choosing A Theme
What theme should you choose to build a WordPress website ?
We prefer the Hello theme. The reason is that it’s a light theme that comes with a blank canvas and it’s easy to build a website the way you want it from scratch. Add all the elements you see fit to make your website effective.
With the Hello Theme, you can make unique, nav menus, footers, popup sections and mobile menu footers.
The unique customisation you can make on pages to suit your vision and the needs of would-be website visitors is one to be unmatched. All this though is possible if you have experience with elementor.
If you don’t then fret not, you can learn through studying, Udemy or YouTube tutorials on how to build websites with elementor.
There are so many themes to choose from, especially if you go with WordPress.
Some popular themes include;
1. Astra
2. Neve
3. Simple
4. Sydney
Most people without web design experience and trying to build a website quick will opt for templates.
These are prebuilt columns, sections and web pages. Some templates might also include a nav and footer. Templates are good for people who want to build a website quickly and don’t have the time to build a unique website from scratch. You can drag and drop elements like logos, photos, galleries, image blocks etc, and make them your own.
Templates allow you to edit the colour, texts, sections and columns. Apart from that you can also delete and add columns and sections.
Even though this has a lot of disadvantages but it’s a good place to start if you are trying to create your own website.
6. Elementor Plugin
This is a WordPress plugin, that involves dragging and dropping widgets. It helps with building websites easily. Usually, it works well with the Hello Theme.
In it are numerous widgets that help with web design. Ideally, you are meant to add widgets to your columns and sections. These widgets include;
1. Heading
2. Text Editor
3. Button
4. Image
5. Icon
6. Forms
7. Slides
8. Nav
9. Gallery
10. Maps
There are many more but we will just name these.
7. Optimize your website
How do you optimise your website?
It’s important that you optimise your website with an optimisation plugin such as Rankmath. A website that isn’t optimised for Search Engine Optimisation might perform badly in both organic traffic and paid traffic competition.
Rankmath is the best SEO Plugin to get currently. A great alternative though to Rankmath would be Yoast. We prefer Rankmath to Yoast because even on its free version, there is so much you can do such as;
| Features | Rank Math | Yoast |
|---|---|---|
|
Page Speed
|
+0.03s |
+0.34s |
|
Lines of Code |
55.9k |
93.0k |
|
Plugin Folder size |
10.5 MB |
36.0 MB |
|
Memory Usage |
+0.35 MB |
+1.43 MB |
|
Complete Elementor Integration |
✅ |
✅ |
|
Google News SEO Sitemap |
✅ |
✅ |
|
Content AI 🦾 - Personal AI Assistant |
✅ |
X |
|
Advanced Google Analytics Integration |
✅ |
X |
|
Keyword Rank Tracker |
✅ |
X |
|
The Most Advanced Schema Generator |
✅ |
X |
|
SEO Performance Email Reports |
✅ |
X |
|
Import Schema From Any Website |
✅ |
X |
|
WordPress.org Average Rating |
4.9 |
4.8 |
Please see the complete List here
As discussed above, free traffic is also called organic traffic. Most websites that are Search Engine Optimised get free traffic. This enables searchers to type in particular keywords to find your web page.
