How To Create A Website – The Epic Way
Creating a website can be a relatively simple or very complex process, depending on the type of website you want to build and your level of technical expertise. Here are the general steps you can follow to create a website:
Choose a domain name: This is the address of your website on the internet (e.g. www.example.com). You can purchase a domain name from our domain registration page for a small annual fee.
Choose a web hosting service: This is where your website’s files will be stored and made accessible to the public on the internet. There are many web hosting plans (such as Linux Hosting or Windows Hosting) that offer different plans for various types of websites.
Plan your website: Before you start building your website, it’s important to have a clear idea of what you want it to look like and what it will include. This might include things like a homepage, an “about” page, a contact form, and a blog. You can create a rough sketch of the layout and pages of your website on paper or using a wireframe tool.
Build your website: There are several ways to build a website, depending on your technical expertise and the needs of your website. Some popular methods include:
- Using a website builder, which allows you to create a website using a drag-and-drop interface with little to no coding required.
- Using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, which requires a bit more technical know-how but offers more flexibility and control over the look and functionality of your website.
- Writing the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for your website from scratch. This method requires a significant amount of technical expertise.
Publish your website: Once you’ve built your website, you can publish it to the internet by uploading the files to your web hosting service and configuring the domain name to point to your web host.
Promote your website: Finally, you will want to get the word out about your new website. You can do this by sharing it on social media, reaching out to friends and family, or running ads. And of course, you need to keep your website update and make sure it is easily searchable by search engines.
Keep in mind that these are just the basics of creating a website. There are many different tools and techniques you can use to build and promote your website, and the process may be different depending on your specific needs and goals.
If you have decided to design your own website from scratch follow the instruction provided :
Table of Contents
Headers and Front Page
A website’s header is typically located at the top of each page and contains important information such as the website’s title or logo, a navigation menu, and possibly other elements like a search bar or login form. The header is often a common feature across all pages of a website and can be used to create a consistent navigation experience for visitors.
The front page, also known as the homepage, is the first page that visitors will see when they visit a website. It is typically used to give a general introduction to the website’s purpose and to provide links to the most important sections or pages of the website. The front page can be designed to be simple and minimalistic, or it can be quite complex, containing a lot of information and elements.
It’s important to make the front page visually appealing and easy to navigate, as it often serves as the starting point for visitors to explore the rest of your website.
The header and front page should work together to give visitors a clear understanding of what your website is about and how to find what they’re looking for. The Header will give them the site’s main navigation, whereas the front page will give a glimpse of what your website is all about and where they can go next.
Domain Name
The domain is the most important part of your website, make sure it easy to remember and related to the topic of website. It may be your company name or anything that should be easy to remember.
So, take your time and make sure you get the best domain name registered before going ahead with the website design.
Must Read : Online Branding: How Domain Branding Can Boosts Your Business?
Logo
So, why a logo on the website is important? Because it grabs attention!
Logo of website makes a strong first impression, is the foundation of your brand identity, is memorable, separates you from competition, fosters brand loyalty, and is expected by your audience.
The Logo is the identity of your work, people will be recognizing you from your logo.
So, make sure it’s perfectly and clearly visible to your visitors.
Tagline
The tagline is normally referred to as the motto of your company or in this case your website.
Keep a punching line ready for this space.
Phone Number
Make sure people know that you are a real human being behind this website, give them a personal touch by sharing your contact number.
So they can get in touch with you and talk to you.
Call to action
Give them the option to take action on your phone number, like save it address book or even make a call on displayed number.
Navigation
Now here is one of the most talks about step “Navigation”, while making your website be very selective on what you put in your menu/navigation area as they will be displayed everywhere on your website so make good use of them.
Breadcrumb Navigation
Remember to show breadcrumb navigation to a user so they know where they are at your website at any given point. Basically, this helps them for not getting lost on your website.
Above The Fold
Once your visitor scrolls down a bit, they are basically seeing your home page center/main page which we call Above the Fold.
Slider / Image
You can use appealing picture / quotes / slider here (remember to keep all images as compressed as possible, so they take less time to load).
Below are the details of how to load website quickly.
Crucial Business Information
Next, website should clearly display your office location or awards you organization has achieved. This creates a credibility in your field.
Testimonials & Reviews
People love to read about Reviews, this creates confidence in the users reviewing. Like what they think about you product / your company/ your restaurant or even your blog.
Do display review of your customers for people to refer, research shows that a video based review work even better.
Try to put customers feedback online. You can also place review from google review on your website to display.
Below The Fold
It’s basically the center of your main page, what we generally refer as Below the fold.
Main Features
This area can be used for listing your products or your key selling items.
Quality Content
Your content is the key selling point of your website, even search engine loves quality content.
We as SEO Company always believe quality content is the king of the website.
Internal links
With quality content you should also be considering linking your content with relative information. This could be linked to your internal pages.
Footer
Footer area is as important as any part of your website.
Contact Information
You can add your contact information in this area, as footer is noticeable from every page.
Business Hours
People will like to know when you’ll be reachable, displaying your working hours will be a good idea here.
Social Media
Make sure you are also reachable through social media.
Create a page on Facebook and account in different social media network like Twitter, YouTube and others and remember to link your profile to your website footer.
Online Chat Feature
If you want to provide quick support to your customer, consider setting up live chat service.
This will help your visitors to get in touch with you quickly and effectively.
Newsletter Signup
Sometimes people will like to keep hearing from you. Ask them if they want to signup for your newsletter.
Navigation
Just like header navigation, you should also consider having a footer navigation. As footer is also visible on every page.
Inner Pages
Inner pages are other pages of your website which can be linked from your header navigation, footer navigation or from the internal links.
You can have different type of internal pages like: Contact US Page, About US, Product, Support and Blog.
Contact Form
I am sure everyone wants to be contacted by their visitors. So include ‘contact us’ page as your inner page with a contact form on it.
Captcha
Captcha helps you bring down spam, you can try using google captcha or any other captcha.
About Us
Build a personalized ‘about us’ as an inner page. Talk about yourself in this page, tell about your achievement and about your team.
Inner Page Content
You can have multiple inner pages (apart from above listed) but remember to follow F pattern applied to all the pages. What is F Pattern ? A well-written article about F pattern is posted on tutsplus or you can refer to video below.
Privacy Policy Page
If your website is collecting user information (even its only email address from Newsletter) then you should have Privacy Policy inner page.
FAQ Page
Why should you have a FAQ Page? Well because people have the questions and mostly same type of question. So, why not make a FAQ page which will make visitor’s life simpler.
Blog Page
Never underestimate the power of content. And blog is the best way of adding new content to your website.
Blog
The blog itself is such a big topic that I decided to have detail section for it. If you just want to start a blog refer my past article about how to start a blog, but for now remember to have these following expat :
Search Function
As you will keep adding new articles, old article may get lost. Adding a search option will help users to find any topic on your website.
Social Media Share Button
How to Create a website? is a good question but How to share your website? is even better.
Consider having a share button below every article of your blog. Any article can go viral!
Comment Feature
Like I said before, people can always have a query.
By giving comment option you are giving an opportunity to your visitors to interact with you on the article topic.
Sidebar
Showing your other post most popular blog post or tags in a sidebar will attract visitors to explore other topics in your blog.
Other Design / Content Points to Consider
Apart from the above listed points. Keep the points below in consideration in all the pages.
Links that are easy to Recognize
Make all links in your website easy to spot, let it be in your article or any part of your website.
Clean Font
Easily readable font is always recommended for website. Do not use fancy fonts which are hard to read.
Mobile Responsive
75% of internet user visit websites from mobile devices. Your website should be future ready and user-friendly.
Design a mobile friendly and responsive website which can be browsed from any device without compromising your design.
Ham Burger Menu
In Mobile device, your Header Navigation should be converted into Ham Burger style Menu.
The menu is called Hamburger menu because it look like icon of hamburger.
Its function is to toggle a menu or navigation bar between being collapsed behind the button or displayed on the screen
SEO
Oh My God, This is such big topic which needs to be updated from time to time.
I have listed some at Google website ranking factor – The complete list and I keep updating them.
But at the same time you should also keep SEO factor in mind while designing your website.
Automatic Sitemap Creation
A sitemap is kind of map for your website, it shows every page in your website and how to access them.
Page Titles
Your CMS or any other platform you are using should give full access to easily update page title and meta descriptions.
URL Structure
Apart from Page title URL structure is very important factors for your SEO factor of your website.
URL structure also helps search engines to improve indexing of your website.
Server / Hosting
You made that awesome website, but it is very important that it stays online. Choose your hosting service wisely and keep following things in mind.
Good, Reliable & Fast Hosting
Don’t just look for cheap hosting as your bullet point to select any hosting provider, if you are low budget start with a minimum plan like Linux Shared Hosting and the upgrade to even dedicated server as and when to require, but choose a right company.
No one likes downtime.
Security
Always make sure your website is secure to start with. Keep strong password in all login area and install an SSL certificate for more power to your security.
Backup
Things go wrong no matter how much preparation you have taken.
Having a backup service active will make sure that your data is kept secure for bad days. Contact your hosting provider for this.
Technical Requirements
This is a fact, Website is just not about designing. To make a website you should have some basic technical skill
Use of CMS
The Content Management System will make your life easy for sure. Use CMS like WordPress will do most your job mentioned in this article.
Cross Browser Compatible
Like different mobile device people also uses a different browser, make sure your website is cross browser compatible.
Google Analytics
Analytics gives an insight of how users are behaving in your website. This helps you to take smart and critical decision for your website.
Google Webmaster
Like google analytics tells you what’s happening on your website, Google webmaster helps you to understand how your website is behaving in the search engine.
Speed and Fast Loading Website
People love fast loading website, keeping your website on right hosting platform will help maintaining loading speed, There are other tweaks you can perform to make your website load fast.
Use Browser Cache
Browser Cache and other types of cache helps to build a fast website.
Browser uses part of your local computer’s storage to store temporary data which will speed up internet surfing.
If you’re website user tries to go back to same pages (which he recently visited), the browser displays the stored pages instead of downloading them again.
This makes your website load fast.
Schema.org
Use of proper schema will help your website to list properly in any search engine.
Schema.org is a joint effort, in the spirit of sitemaps.org, to improve the web by creating a structured data markup schema supported by major search engines.
On-page markup helps search engines understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results.
For detailed info visit https://schema.org/
Things to Avoid
Consider this para very important. And, I don’t want you to miss this area. Now, enough of what you can do let’s talk about what you should not do on your website.
Don't Use Flash Elements
Flash is old fashioned and also make your website heavy to load. So try not to use them.
Background Music
Everyone loves music but not on your website as a background music.
Sometimes, it even forces people to close your website.
Avoid Uploading Videos on Website Server
You can always integrate videos from Youtube or other video sharing website but uploading it to your server will only increase your running cost.
So avoid it.
Conclusion
These are the some basic points to be consider before you start building website.
Let me know, if you have any query or feedback in the comments below, I will be happy to help.
Neha Somani
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