What you need to prepare for your website build

Jumping into building a website is intimidating. There is so much to know and often you just want to hand it over to an expert to take care of it so you won't have to think about it anymore. It can be especially intimidating if you don't feel you know enough about the process to appear competent. What if my web developer thinks I'm an idiot? 

The whole point of hiring an expert, afterall, is so that you don't have to do the project yourself, but having a minimum of preparation can help you feel confident that you are getting exactly what you need. It will help you steer the process the way you want it to go, and you can often save some money by doing parts of it yourself, or at least recognize early what you can and can't do yourself. 

What do you need to prepare your website build? 

1) Copy. I have seen more projects get hung up on this than any other. The content bottleneck is why I require clients to have their content submitted before the build even starts. Why? 

Well for one, there isn't really much of a website unless there is something written on it or some pictures to show. That part might be obvious, but what is not always obvious is how challenging it can be to write good copy, and how long it can take. Something I run into a lot as a web developer is clients who think they can write their own copy so they don't want to hire a copywriter, if they do hire one they don't want to pay a reasonable price, and then when the deadline looms and they still don't have anything they panic. Don't end up in that situation! 

The first thing to recognize here is how important copy is to your website. There is not a web developer skilled enough to save a website with bad copy. I highly recommend doing some research, finding a copywriter that you like and paying them to write your website. 

Barring that, your web developer may have guides available to help you write your own website copy. If you understand the general flow that a web page should have, it is certainly possible to do it yourself, just get some guidance. Writing web copy is a discipline all its own. Don't assume that just because you know how to write, you know how to write for the web. 

In my case, I offer copy guides to clients who want to write their own copy, I offer my expertise in tweaking copy that clients provide, and I offer complete web copy services for clients who know they need someone to write their whole web page for them. There are options. Get a sense for which path you would like to take, and don't leave it to the last minute. 

The good news about copy is that it is the easiest element of the website to change. You can even do it yourself after the project has officially completed if you decide you would like to update it. 

2) Photos. Nothing will improve your website faster than high quality photos with your consistent brand style. Lots of small business owners shy away from getting photos of themselves because it seems luxurious or spendy. But people who visit your website are going to want to know who you are! They are going to want to know if they will like you, and if they can trust you. Showing your face is a good way to make progress on both fronts. Additionally, they are going to want to know if you believe in your own services. If you wont spend the money to get good photos on your own website, why should a potential client risk their money on your business? 

Spending a couple hundred dollars on photos of yourself might seem extravagant at first but it is a prudent investment when you understand how people navigate webpages. 

3) Branding. A lot goes into this one, so a little bit at a time is fine. you will also change your mind over time. It is good going into a website build knowing some of the colors you want representing your brand. Then fonts. If you have a logo that is great. Often a web developer will be able to throw together a temporary logo for you as a placeholder until you ready to spend the money to get a designer to really think it through, but don't expect that to be included in the build. 

4) #Goals. Know what you want people to do once they are on the site. Too many amateur sites, and honestly lots of professional ones too, leave this out, or are unclear about it. You might not feel like a marketer, but if you have a website, you are in practice a marketer. As a marketer, you have only one job. Get people to perform a single action on your site. Usually it is buy something or contact your client. Lots of service industry professionals are afraid of being pushy, or manipulative. Fair enough. But, they end up being unhelpful. If someone has gone through the trouble of researching your site, they deserve to know what you are planning to do to help them! They don’t want to hear “I don’t know, you could do one of these five things, but I’m not the expert…” If you aren’t an expert, why are they wasting their time? They absolutely do not have to do what you tell them to do. They just want to know what you would tell them to do so they can make an informed decision for themselves. So what is the one thing you would tell them to do? 

5) Platform. What platform do you want to use for your webpage? There are literally dozens to choose from, but I'll make it easy for you. The options are a) Wordpress b) Squarespace and c) something else.  Of those, Wordpress is by far the most popular option. I started my web development journey as a Wordpress developer. But I'm going to tell you why I recommend Squarespace. 

Why Squarespace?

The learning curve for Squarespace is much faster than for Wordpress. This means that it will almost certainly be less expensive to build your website, but also that it will be easier to maintain, and this is so important! I can easily train just about anyone to make modifications to their Squarespace site in under an hour. It's so easy. And, if something goes wrong, customer support for Squarespace is ridiculously good. I am constantly surprised at how available and helpful they are. 

When I was working as a Wordpress Developer, my daily workflow would be: get into the office, make coffee, read an email by a panicking client because something went wrong on their website, spend literally my entire day figuring out what the heck happened and hopefully fix it for them. 

At first I was attracted to the flexibility Wordpress seemed to offer. There are no limits to what you can do on a Wordpress site! If you can code it, you can do it. But the lack of a unified whole meant that I spent most of my time fixing something rather than basking in the glow of my perfectly running website. I have been stunned at how easy my life has gotten since switching to Squarespace, and unless you have the budget for a literal team of developers, I would suggest you go with Squarespace too.

Need some help putting together your Squarespace Website? We have a package that is right for you!