So you want to get a website, but you don't know where to even start.
The task of getting a website online can be challenging at best if you have never done it before. Trust me, I've been there.
First, here are the basic elements of getting a website up and running:
1) An HTML Editor.
2) A Hosting Account.
3) An FTP Client.
4) A Merchant Account.
5) A Marketing Strategy.
Let's compare these elements to a simple retail store in a strip mall: The HTML Editor creates your store's furnishings, fixtures, and inventory. The Hosting Account is the retail space you lease. The FTP Client is the moving company. The Merchant Account is your cash register. And your Marketing Strategy is how you get paying customers into your store.
Sure, you can hire someone to do all this for you, but who wants to spend thousands of dollars on something that you can do yourself? And how do you know the person you hire really knows what they're doing? Obviously, whole books have been written and many college-level courses taught about each of these elements, so to start with, let's focus on getting the first step done: designing and building your website.
WHAT IS HTML?
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the primary language most websites are written in. Learning HTML can require several college-level classes. However, with the advent of WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) Editors, learning HTML is no longer necessary to create a great-looking and functional website. Now, you can buy software for this, but personally, I use a free program called MyFreeWebsiteBuilder.
Unlike other free editors, MyFreeWebsiteBuilder has an awesome set of tutorials to walk you through all the features and steps required to make your website. Yes, it actually comes with instructions that are easy to understand! There are also a lot of other features and functions that will come in handy when building your website, but I will not go into those here as they are covered in detail in the tutorials.
So the first thing you need to do after downloading the free software and going through the instructions and tutorials, is to decide what you want your website to do, and how you want it to look. This is extremely important. No commercial building is ever built without a detailed set of plans. Before you start building your site, decide how many pages it will have, what those pages will be called, what order you want them in. Do you have a company logo you want to use? Will your customers be able to find and buy what they want? Sit down with a pen and paper and sketch out how you want your site to look.
SOME HELPFUL HINTS:
*KISS (Keep It Stupid Simple) - customers don't want to click any more than they have to to find and buy what they want.
*Take advantage of the "Golden Triangle" - people tend to click more in the top left part of the screen than the bottom right.
*Make it easy for people to contact you - provide your contact information conspicuously on every page.
*A "pretty" website does not necessarily translate into more sales - generally speaking, a "plain jane" website will outsell a fancy one.
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