A great foundation for building your brand is to start a website. Today is an age where we all have different social media outlets and great platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and even YouTube. Many people still underestimate the power the website has for your brand and your online business. If you are still building your brand, even if you don’t have a product to sell, it’s still important to have a website even if you haven’t considered an email list. So, when people perform a google search, they can find you specifically. You also want to have a platform that you own and that you control when YouTube or Facebook or Twitter change the rules, or if something should happen to your account, you want a place to call home. You want a place where you’re still in charge and where people can still find you.
So, we’re going to give you my Six-Step Process for starting your website. You’re going to be able to build this thing from scratch, and we’re going to talk about some other things that we are having to do with your website.
1. Choose and Register a Domain Name.
The first part of starting your website will be to have what they call a domain name. This is the dot-com net org, where people will type this into their web browser, and they’re going to be able to find you. So, having your website has a lot of benefits, especially when it’s time for people to find out more information about you.
So no matter what, we would still get a website with your name, even if your name is and taken, consider adding something to your website. Name that particularly makes you stand out, like if your name was John Smith, maybe instead of johnsmith.com, which is definitely for sure taken. Maybe it’s johnmsmith.com, or maybe it’s johnsmithphotography.com or johnsmithphotovideo.com, adding some context to the domain name, even if it makes it a little longer. It’s usually worth it to help you stand out and make people identify you and what you specifically have to offer.
There are a lot of things to do under their business umbrella. Having this domain name is also going to let you set up a professional email address. We recommend that you use either your first name, your first initial, your last name, something like that, or you also can consider setting up some defaults like info at your website.com or mail at your website.
2. Find, Choose, and Purchase Website Hosting
Whatever you want and whatever is allowed with the web hosting company you’re with, which will bring us to step number two. In addition to a domain name, you need a web hosting company. Usually, domains and web hosting go hand-in-hand. We recommend Bluehost for this. If you want to start your website, you want to sign up for a domain and get hosting.
One of the reasons we recommend them is, if you’re not a very technical person, this will be an easy process for you, an easy website to use, and when you speak to someone customer service-wise. If your domain name is your address, then your web hosting is your actual house or apartment, and you’re renting this.
3. Make a Back Up Copy for your Files.
The next step is making a backup copy for all your website files. You can put anything you want when you want to start your website. Just like you could put your furniture, files, images, this is where it lives. This is where you’re housing that – and so we think, that’s a really good analogy for this because your brand is about how much of the online real estate you’re going to get social media places are a borrowed space. This is something of your own that you have a lot more control over there you’re using their venue, their platform it’d be like renting out an event hall, or something like that. This is yours.
This is a place for you to call home, typically with a low-level hosting account. You can usually host two or three websites without any real problem, especially if you’re only getting to know thousands of people or tens of thousands of people in terms of traffic every month. So, we wouldn’t worry about getting the highest-priced web hosting out there. We just don’t think you need it, especially for you just getting started. You have a couple of options here.
4. HTML and Web Designing
If you’re tech-savvy and you know HTML and web design coding, you can completely build this yourself, but if not with step three, we recommend that you do one of two things: either use a website builder or use WordPress. It’s what’s called a content management system, and it’s pretty easy. Since they have a one-click install and can pick themes, you can lay it out, design it, or hire a web designer and someone who can put that together for you. When it comes to hiring a web designer, find somebody recommended by your friends or associate in the past for their website and work with that person because they are already in your network. Still, if not, you need to hire a freelancer or Digital Solutions Agency who can help you with your SEO and Website Design and Development. Ubique Digital Solutions is one great partner for this task. When you’re designing your website, you have to consider a few things. You may need to go ahead and have your photo in place.
Don’t underestimate the power of using really good templates, our dime a dozen, and yet everybody has them. And your thing may look a little cookie-cutter, but when you’re just getting started, the important thing is to have something in place that can represent you. You can make it fancy later. When we first started, it wasn’t anything special, but it did get the job done. So resist the urge to be fancy right out the gate. This will be with you for a long time so that it can grow and evolve. It can progress.
5. Adding Content to your Website.
Step number five in starting your own website is to add your content. Usually, if it’s a website for your brand, the content will be very minimal. It’s going to be an About Section. It’s going to be a contact page with your contact info, and some info you want to share. This might be your portfolio; this might be your demo reel. This might be a list of your prior speaking engagements.
Whatever represents your brand, you should have this thought out in advance, and then later, you can add what is called a blog. You can write articles, and you can post updates to this, which is why we like WordPress. You can do this with other systems or do this manually, but we recommend WordPress because it just makes things simpler, and you don’t have to learn a lot of technical, complicated stuff to manage it. It is very straightforward. You don’t need to have every article planned out in advance, but we would think that if you’re doing a blog, if you’re, building a personal brand, there is some content that you should have in place. That can represent you well, show your skills, and show what you’re about and your interests. So, we would think about these things in advance, if you don’t have them when you watch the website, that’s perfectly fine. But try to get these things in place. As quickly as you can make sure you have a plan for the content you want to put out there, that will be shared with the world.
6. Tracking your Google Analytics.
Finally, step number six is slightly more complicated but it is really helpful in starting your website. It is tracking your Google Analytics. Getting visitors and traffic and people commenting on your blog or joining your email list or hiring you for your services or giving you that job that you want is amazing. But you know what’s important, analytics and tracking data.
Knowing how people find you and knowing what websites drive referral traffic to you – these things are all important, and that’s what Google Analytics is going to tell you. It’s really simple, and you can copy and paste Google Analytics into your website. You can set it up in WordPress, usually with a plug-in or a click of a button, or you can get somebody to just set this up for you. And that’s what we do in Ubique Digital Solutions. We help you analyze your data to benefit more from it and create amazing strategies for long-term excellent results. Then you can take the time to try to learn analytics. There are YouTube videos that cover it. It will be helpful for you to understand what’s going on with your website and where your traffic is coming from, and what people want from you, especially if you’re creating content and blog articles. You’ll want to know what your most popular topics are. You’ll want to know whether or not this is driving people to a sale or not. If you happen to be selling something, maybe you want to know who’s buying your book or who’s downloading your free guide.
We think all this stuff is important. So having those analytics in place is a critical step 6 again. This is the basic process for starting and launching a website. Obviously, there’s so much more to get into, but we wanted to help you understand what this could look like for you and your basic steps. So that’s our six-step process for starting your website. You can take this so much further.
There are things you can do with your marketing, especially if you’re a small business owner. There are things that you can set up to help. You build an email list. we just didn’t want to cover all that at once and overwhelm you. We will be covering many of those topics in more of these getting started, videos, and more of my topics that teach you about personal branding. If you still have questions about building your first website, then definitely let us know and contact us on Ubique Digital Solutions. We can definitely help you build your online presence and step up your game in the digital market.
