For the past ten years and more, my partners and I have been building webpages and social media campaigns which produces results. This task is not a static one, it involves constantly monitoring our sites, looking for what worked last month but isn’t working this month. Just when we get everything working like clock work, something will be changed.
It is an exciting and sometimes exhausting way to earn a living. What looks easy and straightforward is actually pretty complicated if you use all the tools available to make a really powerful website. People get fooled sometimes because fill in the blank websites are out there for everyone to find. Building a website, a simple fill in the blanks site, is NOT rocket science. However, if you are not a patient person, what you end up with can be a pretty poor representation of your brand, and you might be better off having nothing at all.
If you have the patience to get beyond building the most basic elements of a WordPress website, then you need to know a few other things.
- Photos will not look good if the resolution is too low. They will definitely not look good if they are too small and you have simply attempted to stretch them to fill the space
- It is important to fill the photos with your keywords and alt text so they are not wasted on the search engines
- Make certain the theme you use is mobile enhanced. Not all free themes are built to automatically adjust to the size of the screen it’s being displayed on
- If you have picked a more robust theme to use take a few hours and really learn which plugins and widgets are compatible with that particular theme
- Choose your words wisely. On the front end of your website you want as few words as possible, but you want them to count, to make your point.
- Get someone to edit your copy before you post it. Nothing worse than a website with mistakes
- You only have a matter of seconds to gain someone’s attention before they scroll down to the next site, pick photos which convey the what you do
- Blog, Blog, Blog. I don’t care how much money you throw at Google Ads, the very best bang for your buck is to blog and push that blog out to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
- Research the keywords people use to search for the types of goods and services you want to sell with your website.
- Make it easy for people to contact you. Forcing them to click on a Contact Me page will just make them mad. Display your contact information prominently on the Home page of your site
- DON’T force people to sign up for your website before you let them in.
- DO offer them something of value if you want them to sign up
Should you still want to build your own site, if you follow all of these tips, and watch a few good YouTube videos on how to build your own WordPress website, then you might be just fine. Otherwise, just give us a call. We will be happy to work with you, and to build you a site which fits your budget, and as your revenue increases, we can then expand the scope of your site.
Social Cindy
