What you need before you start your website

If you’re anything like me, when you get an idea in your head you just want to run with it and get it out in the world immediately but this isn’t the way to approach a website. Before you start thinking about the design of your website or how successful it will be, there’s a few things you’ll need first…

Branding

Branding is an important part of setting up a business and includes your logo, fonts, colours and even the tone you’re going to speak in. Branding creates a reputation for your brand and can make you instantly recognizable. Before starting your website make sure you have a brand guide and stick to it!

Content

There’s no point starting a website if you have no content to put on it. This might just be the copy for your website pages but could also include products and blog posts too.

Keywords

A major part of SEO (search engine optimization) is keywords. It’s important to think about what words your website visitors will use to find your site and then fit these keywords into your content when creating your site. When keywords match a users search you have a better chance at appearing higher in search results.

The purpose of your website

What do you want from your site? What are you trying to achieve? If you don’t have a reason for your website you risk it going stale. There’s no end of reasons for starting a website; to sell products, to gain trust with potential customers, to provide information etc. Whatever your reason is make sure you know it. Keep your reason in mind and this should help you to update the site with purpose in the future.