Build Your Own Site
There are a few reasons you might decide to build your own website. It could be that you can not afford it, or want to save some money. If you are considering building your own website there are quite a few decisions you need to make up front. Let me help you get started on the right foot!
Initial Questions to Ask Yourself
Do I have the time?
It takes a designer 15-20 hours to build a 5-page site and an additional 4-5 hours per page. This includes all the upfront research, feedback, meetings, SEO, ect. If you have never built a site before, expect it to take more time than this. I have included a few places where you can buy Squarespace templates below, this can help cut time.Who is your audience?
Answer questions like Location, budget, roles, age, gender, education, marital status, Education, occupation, personality, attitude, values, and lifestyle.What does your audience need?
They could need to know when your business is open, or where you just moved your business. Maybe your audience is young parents looking to book their families on a guided tour while on vacation. This means they most likely will be booking on their phone, so providing an easy booking that is mobile-friendly is key.What are your goals for the site?
Often times these goals are: to create legitimacy, to book trips or sell items, to create reoccurring revenue by creating an online course, or simply provide information about the business and services.What are your visual standards?
Do you have a brand guide, do you need to create one, or create a visual identity as I design? If you do not have any branding and you are not creating a guide, you risk confusing your customers. They may not see the link between your site and the building they roll up to for their trip, or might not trust the website because it looks so different from the business card you handed them. Creating visual consistency is VERY important, and if you do not already have it- note that will probably take you more time to create while designing the site.Who can provide feedback?
When designing it is so easy to make decisions that make sense for you, but may not be best for your audience. Finding someone in your network who represents your audience ( preferably more than one person) to look things over and give you feedback will make sure your site is functional.
Forming a website
Now that you have an idea of the functions your site needs to have, and who you are building it for you can start looking at the pieces that build it. Use this checklist when you are building!
Domains
A domain is the URL or name of your site. You will have to purchase this. Well, I guess you need to purchase it if you want a nice one. Sometimes hosting sites will give you a free one for a while but it will be crazy, for example: wolf-deer-k9gp.squarespace.com is the free domain for this page. No one will remember or look that up.
Come up with your ideal URL. Then search a few domain sites for it. Your perfect URL might be taken, but most domain sites will give you options that are similar. Here are some domain options:
Squarespace | If you are building on Squarespace you can purchase your domain directly through them- at a reasonable price and a free year! They also connect easily to Gmail.
Bluehost | This is best if you plan to build your site through WordPress. A little pricy but is super easy to work with.
Siteground | Tends to be super cheap, but is decent to work with!
Godaddy | Everyone knows godaddy- talk about great marketing. Higher prices, more variety, and connects easily with the office360 suite and Outlook. You can also connect godaddy easily to a Squarespace site.
Picking a host/platform
For basic sites providing information and contact:
Squarespace | I find this platform to be the most robust and easiest to pass off to a client because it is so intuitive to work with. The interface is easy to navigate and update.
WordPress | Although it used to be THEE platform to build on, it is very convoluted. There are many ways to do one thing which means if you forgot how you updated the fonts one time, you might not ever figure it out… then will download a widget, and then your site becomes slow because it has to load all this code that didn’t need to be there. I personally hate working on WordPress, and strongly hope to convince you away from it. If you do decide to use wordpress, for the love of god use Elementor.
Wix | This is simpler to work with, but from my experience, I still find Squarespace easier.
For selling items:
Wix | I still think others are easier to work with.
Shopify | Monthly payment but is easy to work with and integrates well with many platforms, including mail chimp. So you can really dive into email marketing.
Square | Can be free to host, but they take a percentage of each sale. Check out my Cyano- site to see this in its most basic and free form.
Squarespace | The easiest of them all, and depending on the package you get- a pretty great deal.
Fair Harbor | For booking trips and rentals I suggest Fair Harbor ONLY. They are free ( only take a percentage of bookings) and are absolutely amazing to work with. They will give you a code to easily drop into your platform of choice. Check out Willard Mountain Guides to see how it looks on a site I made. If you want a direct link to the company email me and I’ll link to you the team!
For online courses:
Kajabi | A little pricy, but is decently easy to work with. The site is pretty basic and is easy to link to your courses.
Teachable | I have never used this site, but I’v heard that it is a bit cheaper and comparable to Kajabi.
Saving Time with Templates
Squarespace | Has some built-in templates for super basic sites like portfolios.
Creative Market | Has templates for pretty much every platform!
Purchase a template from me | A couple of my sites in my portfolio are templates I made, I am also creating more that I will be selling on Creative Market so hold tight!