How to Make a Website in 11 Steps

0:00 So, you want to know how to make a website. You may have been putting it off for awhile, but now you’ve decided to quit procrastinating and get to it. I hear you. But before you start building that site, let’s take a step back. I promise this video will be well worth your time. You’ll learn how to make a better website - one that impresses visitors, encourages them to give you a call or purchase from your online store and ranks higher in Google.

0:29 You wouldn’t build a house without taking the time to draw up some blueprints, right? In website building, too, a lack of planning can have some pretty scary results. In the next few minutes, I’ll walk you through how to build a great website in 11 steps. Let’s start with the site basics: Before you start building your new site, ask yourself: What is the one main goal that I want my site to achieve? This goal is your “Call to Action” and every website needs one. Your Call to Action is what you want visitors to do on your site. Do you want them to call you? Sign up for your mailing list? Shop in your online store? Look at your gallery?

1:07 As you build your site, focus on making sure that the design, images and wording throughout your site, all encourage the reader to take this action. Later on, you can use your Call to Action to gauge your success. Is your site achieving what you want it to? If not, what changes can you make to encourage visitors to take this specific action? If you’re trying to impress absolutely everyone with your new website, it’s not gonna work. But you do want to make sure that you impress the right people.

1:39 Before you build your website, the first thing to figure out is who you’re building it for. This is called your target audience. Think about who you want visiting your website. How old are they? What are their interests? What benefits can you offer them? Take these into consideration at every step of the way. Imagine you sell surfboards bro. Your target market should be pretty clear; your customers are people who surf (or want to learn how.) They probably love the ocean, live or vacation near a beach, and are athletic and adventurous. Think about these potential customers as you build your site, when you write your content, choose images, fonts and colors, and organize the layout of your site.

2:24 Remember how I said that building a website is like building a house? Well now it’s time to get out a piece of paper and draw up your blueprints. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be an architect or an artist. You just need to draw a simple map of all of the pages you want on your site. In addition to your Homepage and Contact page, common pages include About, Testimonials, Services and Pricing. Decide the order you want your pages to appear on the menu and how you want a user to click from page to page. Keep in mind that visitors usually start clicking on the left side of the screen and navigate right.

3:00 Another part of the planning phase that is often overlooked is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. This has to do with how high your site will show up in Google results. To give your website the best shot at success, you should start thinking about Google before you start building your site. Search engines rank websites based on keywords and phrases. The more relevant key phrases that you use on your website, the more likely is that your target market will find you.

3:27 Let’s say you own a bakery in NYC. Relevant keywords that customers might use to search for you include “gluten free bread, Chelsea,” “best bakery in New York,” or “chocolate cake Manhattan.” Pick a few key phrases to focus on, and use them throughout your website. Google will use these words to learn what your site is about and place it in relevant search results. Now that you’ve determined your target audience and created your sitemap, it’s time to gather gather everything you need to build your website! The process will go much more smoothly if you have what you need from the get go. You don’t want to be scrambling to find things while you’re deep in the design process.

4:10 Before you start work on your site, make sure you have the following: Your Logo - Use a high resolution version. This will help you look professional and legitimate. Don’t have one? You can create one for free or have one designed for your for cheap through services like Fiverr and 99designs. A good logo should be memorable -and- simple. Content - Write all the content for your website and organize it according to your site menu. Regardless of who your customers might be, make sure your content is well written, professional and free of spelling errors.

4:38 Break up large blocks of text with helpful headlines so visitors can easily find the information they need. Did you know that the average visitor will only read 28% of the text on your website. Be sure it’s easy to skim! Images - You’ll want to use high quality images on your site. Whenever possible, work with authentic photos rather than stock images. This is one place it’s well worth investing in hiring a photographer, especially if you are selling online. If you want to include videos on your website, no problem! Make sure you have a link to them on hand.

5:13 Testimonials - Don’t be afraid to reach out to some of your favorite past clients and ask them to send over a few kind words about your business. Request that they be specific and share what it was thatt they enjoyed about working with you. You’re ready! It’s time to start working on your site but, like most things in life, building a website will require just a little bit of bureaucracy. In order to make your website live on the World Wide Web, you will need to purchase a domain, find hosting and choose a platform to help you build the site.

5:47 A domain is like your address on the Web. It’s what people type on their browser to get straight to your website. Most domains cost around 15 bucks a year. When possible, choose a domain that includes your business name and ideally some of those keywords that I spoke about earlier on. It’s also best to go with a domain that’s simple to spell and easy to remember. Next up is hosting. If your domain is your address, think of hosting as your rent. This is the place where all the information on your website “lives.” Depending on where you build your website, hosting may be included. If not, you can choose from a variety of services that cost anywhere from a few dollars a month to several hundreds of dollars a year.

6:31 Finally you’ll have to decide what software or program to use to build your site. Until a few years ago, you needed to know how to code to create a professional, attractive website. Today, there are website builders that make it easy for nearly anyone to build a great site. While we’re partial to Wix, you do have other options. If you’re curious, a quick trip to Google will help you find them. One great benefit of Wix, among others, is that they also take care of hosting and security and even throw in a free domain for the first year.

6:57 Congrats - you’ve put in the grunt work and now it’s time for the fun part: building your website! As with most website builders, the first step is to choose your template. Whether you are a musician, a lawyer or the owner of a fitness center, you are pretty much guaranteed to find a template containing all the elements you need on your site. Try to choose a template that matches the site map you made. Or, if you have an eye for design, you can create your site from scratch. Once you’ve selected a template, it’s time to start work on your homepage.

7:34 Your homepage is the most important page of your site, both for visitors and for search engines. In just a few seconds, a visitor will decide if your site has what he is looking for. If they can't find it, they’ll move on. To get visitors to stick around, you need a homepage that looks legitimate, is up to date and immediately explains what the website is about. As you design that homepage, be sure to keep your Call for Action in mind. It should be clearly displayed so that your visitor knows exactly where to click and what to do on your site.

8:08 Not sure if your homepage is up to par? Look for these: a business name and logo; an obvious call for action; a clear explanation of a business and off course your contact info In addition to including all of these elements on your homepage, make sure your website’s look and feel reflect your business’s brand. Everything from colors, fonts and images have a significant effect on your website’s tone.

8:39 Once that homepage is just right, it’s time to move on to the other pages. You can edit the pages in your template to match your site map. Remember all that content you gathered earlier? Since you organized it all before you started, it should be pretty simple to add it to your site. Working page by page, add in the text, images and videos that you want on your site. Once you have the content in place, adjust the layout and alignment to make it look professional and attractive. Consider not only aesthetics, but also the user’s experience. Constantly ask yourself, how easy will it be for a site visitor to find what they are looking for?

9:21 Show the site to a few friends to get their feedback. You also want to include internal links on your website to make it easy for visitors to navigate to different pages, and find the information they need. Let’s go back to our surf shop. You could link text on the homepage that says, “Check out our boards” to a page in your store where the visitor can take a look at all of your products. In addition to making your website more user-friendly, internal links are also good for Google. Speaking of which....

9:53 How can you make your site easier to find on Google? Once your content is in place on the site, your website is almost ready to go live! But before you click on that Publish button, take a bit of time to make sure your website is optimized for Google. Remember those key phrases you chose earlier? Now it’s time to make sure you’ve used them throughout your website - in text, in headlines and in alt text behind every image or graphic.

10:22 Use them frequently, but don’t go crazy. If you start to use too many keywords, Google can penalize you for what’s called “keyword stuffing.” A good rule of thumb is to write for humans and make sure all of the text on your website sounds natural. Next, write a meta-title and description for each page, using your keywords.Your title should be up to 55 characters long and your description should be up to 155. Your homepage title is a very strong factor in how you'll rank on Google!

10:54 Finally, connect your site to Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. They’re both free tools that let you track who comes to your website, how they found it and which pages they are visiting. It’s a great way to evaluate your success and learn how you can tweak your site to better achieve your goals. Your beautiful, unique website is complete, but how does it look on mobile? Did you know that in 2015, mobile browsing officially surpassed desktop browsing. That means, more than ever, you need a website that looks great and is easy to navigate on mobile.

11:34 What’s more, Google penalizes sites that are not mobile optimized. Luckily, Wix offers a mobile editor that makes it super-easy to use and create a mobile site. Keep in mind that when visitors are looking at mobile sites, they want to be able to find important details as quickly as possible. Make sure that the most important details - plus your phone number, address and email - are front and center. Your new website looks fantastic on any device and we’re pretty sure your customers are going to be impressed. You’re ready to unleash it into the world. To make sure you’ve dotted all those i’s and crossed all your t’s, you can watch this video or download our checklist of what to review before you go live!

12:23 Thanks for watching. Excited to see you next time.