We love the modern, clean looks, and simplicity of a WordPress website!
There are thousands of beautiful themes to choose from and they are all so easy to work with. If you have the extra time to build a website yourself, these are the six steps to ensuring a successful website launch!
The 6 single most important steps for setting up your WordPress website:
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Outline the content for your site
Everyone wants to pick a theme as his/her very first step. Most if us are visually oriented and love to browse all of the cool templates. But before you do that, you will want to decide on the type of content that you want to include. Your content will be your framework from which the entire design process will flow!
Think about what is important to you and your customers. You know what is important to you and what you want to get across. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and the new ones you want to attract. Figure out what they will want to know about.
Define your scope of subject matter. For instance If you are a restaurant, you might want to have include a menu with pricing, a gallery of mouth watering photos, and your personal story of how you started your business.
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Choose a WordPress Theme
There are thousands of amazing WordPress themes on the Internet for you to choose from. When you start looking at styles, be sure to find one you love! Chances are, you will know it when you see it because you will know whether or not it has the look and functionality you are looking for.
One word of caution! Be sure to find a theme that is not like your direct competitors’. You want to stand out and have a website that is unique to your business.
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Convert your website to a static home page
You will need to make sure your home page is a “static” home page. When WordPress first started, the company targeted bloggers and they designed website themes that were specifically made for them. The reason you have to switch to a “static home page” is because the WordPress website default is always a blog style home page.
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Create your site’s web pages
Now you are ready to start adding the pages of your website. After you create your homepage, you will want to start adding the rest of your pages based on the content you’ve mapped out in step one. Wordpress makes it pretty easy to do and gives you step-by-step instructions.
Once you create your website pages, you will be ready to start adding all of your unique content and branding which includes your text, photos, images, and logo.
Don’t worry if your content isn’t 100% perfect right away. You should give yourself plenty of time for reviewing and editing before you are ready for your “big launch”.
(Photo Source: www.Giphy.com)
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Create a menu
A menu will make your site user-friendly and easy for your customers to navigate through all your website pages.
The menu is typically at the top of your homepage. When your customers click on your menu buttons (sometimes called bread crumbs), they will be brought to a different page or allowed to make page selections from a drop down box.
You want your customers to have an easy, satisfied, and positive experience when they come to your website. The menu eliminates any confusion for your customers and quickly tells them where to find the information they need.
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Review your website
Even when you think you are completely done with your WordPress website, you will want to review it one final time before launching it. Ask your friends and family to give you some honest and objective feedback. You can be sure, you will find things you no longer like or have overlooked during your final round of review.
Here’s one last thing to remember! You can always make changes at any time. Your website is meant to evolve along with your business and your customers’ needs. Be open to adding new content and keeping your site consistently dynamic and inviting to all your visitors!
- Does your current website need to be more enticing to the kinds of customers you want to attract?
- Are you thinking about building a new website using WordPress?
- Would you like some help from our Lightpost Digital web design team and a free website audit?
Give us a call, send me an email, or simply leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you!
Blog Post by Eve Dimesky
Sources: Wordpress.com
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