In today’s technological society, utilizing modern communication tools keeps you and your business abreast with modern trends. Writers are among those that can most benefit from the website conversion funnel. Generating and presenting quality content is the competition, such as ways on how to write a call to action and utilizing reputable sources are just a small part of what writers have in spades.
Finding the right team of web designer and developer can definitely help establish a reputable online presence and website authority for you and your writing.
Why Even Start a Website?
As a writer, what benefits are there to building a website of your own?
● Innovation.
Going from creating brochures and paper advertisements to starting a blog or creating social media profiles are great ways in which you can innovate and make use of modern communication tools to open up your business and skills to the vast online community.
● Accessibility.
With everyone seemingly present in the online community one way or another, the importance of online presence for you and your business is even more essential. This makes you more accessible to your target audience, which will lead to an increase in potential customers and a larger network for your business.
● Introduction.
When you build a website or start a blog, you now have a new platform where you can introduce yourself, showcase your skills and achievements, as well as show potential customers the quality of services that you have and will be able to provide.
● Showcase Achievements.
A website can serve as a platform where you can highlight your work, showing the skills and effort that went towards your projects. You have the freedom to present your work the way you want. To substantiate your work, you can also include testimonials from clients. This way, visitors of your website will have an idea about the quality of your work from your clients’ perspective.
● Personal Branding.
Personal branding provides your potential customers a cohesive picture of what you and your business represent and will be able to provide. With modern tools such as a personal website, blog, or social media profiles, your personal branding has a more online presence, and author popularity and recognition.
● Customer Relations.
One of the reasons for the importance of online presence is that you get to communicate more with people, especially those in your target audience and potential clients. Since you are more accessible, there can now be a better way to communicate with your customers and, with enough information gathered, improve your skills and products to better serve your clients.
● Network Expansion.
When you build a website, start a blog, or create social media profiles, you get to expand on not only your target audience and pool of potential customers but also in the network of other professionals; ones with similar skills or in the same industry as you, or those in other fields that may help you develop or improve.
● Business Value
Keeping with technology and with an increasingly digitally social market increases your business value. This shows that you are aware and are able to communicate with today’s market. Not only are you accessible and innovative, but are also abreast with technology and your customer needs.
How Do I Even Start?
The steps on how to build a website of your own are not overly complicated. The framework that you need to remember and understand is as follows:
1. Know your content.
The most essential step that you need to take is to know and understand the content that you want to present. This includes what product or service you are providing, your professional profile if you want to showcase a portfolio of your work and other aspects of your business. Having a concrete goal and vision as to what your website will look like and contain will greatly ease the process of the following steps.
2. Identify the type of website.
Understanding your content and how you want it to be presented will help you identify what type of website you will build. Is it a blog? A consolidation of social media profiles? Maybe one of the following:
- Personal website
- E-commerce website
- Community-building website
- Corporate website
- Portfolio
- Bespoke website
3. Choose your domain name.
One way of making your website more personal and more consistent with your brand is choosing a personal domain name and hosting service. This shows your customers that you are taking this step seriously and are applying the necessary measures to ensure that your brand and product is represented the best way possible.
4. Pick a platform.
There are many ways that you can build a website, one of the most common is building them through a content management system (CMS) platform. A CMS provides an environment that makes creating a website manageable and not necessarily requiring technical skills. There are numerous CMS platforms available for you to use. The most popular of which is WordPress, followed by Drupal and Joomla.
5. Design.
Your website design ideas, can be responsive website design or using push notifications, is crucial in ensuring that your website and the other tools that you are using will meet the goals and vision that you have set out. To ensure the best possible results and gain a better understanding on how to design a website, it is highly recommended that you consult with skilled and experienced web designers They can provide the user experience and user interface that best fit for your website.
6. …then Execute.
For this step, you have the option of developing your own or outsourcing the project to professionals. Outsourcing web development projects is an investment; web developer salary can be competitive and development costs can be a challenge. But as long as you are clear with your goals and vision, and the parameters of the project, outsourcing web development projects can be an advantage for you.
7. Test it.
Once you have your website, test it. Test it yourself, with a sample of customers, friends, or random people online. This process will provide you with the initial feedback on your website. With the information you get from testing your website, you will have enough time to improve upon it.
8. Launch.
Finally, you are ready to launch your website. Treat this as an achievement! You are now opening yourself up to bigger market and experience. Congratulations!
Why Even Go There?
Creating and having your own website can definitely bring advantages, such as innovation, increased accessibility, a platform for showcasing your personal brand, improved customer relations, and expanding the network, and enhancing your business value.
Certain core steps need to be taken to build a website of your own, however, this process is not perfect and has its own challenges:
- Unclear or inconsistent content. Before even designing your website, or even ideas of a design, understand the brand and content that you want to present.
- Weak design. It would be best to consult skilled and experienced web designers.
- Choosing the right web designer. Research beforehand can go a long way.
- Whether to focus on products or customers. It will depend on your goals and vision for your website.
- Navigation and use. Collaborate with your web designer to ensure a highly responsive website design.
- Unclear development timeline. Discuss and plan with your development team, and monitor to ensure adherence to agreed timeline.
Having a website is an investment, it may be a challenge to start with, but if managed properly will pay off in the long run.
