Website Development: Simple Steps to Create your Website

 

At Neuwelt, we are promoters of digitization around the world.

Indeed, there are countless benefits of going online, especially for businesses. Numerous companies and organizations reported a significant increase in revenue, customer care efficiency, brand penetration, quality recruitment or a combination of all by creating and maintaining an active and professional website.

Now you might be wondering! Is it possible to create a serious website without coding or design skills?

Well, wonder no more!

There are multitudes of easy to use tools on the internet that have made this possible and today we want to share a few “easy to implement” steps you can create and design your website:

 

Step 1: Create a Clear Plan

Asking yourself these questions below is the only and perfect way to start your planning. This is as crucial as knowing your destination even before starting the Journey without which you are most likely to under or overestimate resources and fail to reach your target;

1. Why do I want a website?
2. What do I want to show on the website?
3. What do I want to achieve?

In clear and concise statements, plan your website, with an idea of the content (images & text) you will include.

It’s important to anticipate what type of website you will create. Depending on what you need, the outlook and efforts required for your website will be different:

 

 

As you can see, different websites’ purposes will call for different designs and layouts. It is thus crucial to have a clear idea of what you want for yourself and your business before beginning to build and design your website.

 

Step 2: Choose a platform

 

Unless you have coding skills, you need to select an appropriate platform that fits your needs: a website builder or a Content Management System (CMS).

 

Website builder

What is it? A website builder is an easy and intuitive tool used to build a website, as its name suggests. Thanks to the drop-and-drag capabilities, you can select which feature you want from a wealth of pre-built templates or gallery items to include in your design, the builder will turn your instructions into code, allowing you to create a beautiful website!

The most famous website builders are Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, and GoDaddy (among others). And before you jump your guns so quickly, everything easy and free will almost always have a downside;

What then are the advantages and disadvantages?

Advantages

• Easy and intuitive: You do not need extensive knowledge in coding to create your website with a website builder.
• Fast solution: Creating a website has never been quicker; it is now a matter of minutes to generate your website, as you only have to select and drop the features you wish to include.
• Ready-to-go templates: Even though you do not have a creative fibre, thousands of templates are ready to use.
• All-inclusive offer: In opposition to CMS (as discussed below), website builders do not require add-ins, everything you need is in the package, which makes your life easier.

Disadvantages

• Low flexibility: Because the package is already formed, it does not allow for a wide range of customization. With a website builder, you have an elementary website ready quickly.
• No change possible: With a website builder, it is it almost impossible to migrate your site to another platform should the need arise. It also means that, once you choose a builder, you are vulnerable to the costs, as you cannot switch from one to another; any change will affect you.
• Limited range of websites: Although they have thousands of templates available, website builders are limited in terms of the types of websites they offer. Depending on what you are looking for, a website builder might not provide it as an option.
• Low personality: Even with thousands of templates available, there is a chance of multiple websites using the same layout; there are surely too many websites that look the same.
• Few SEO features: In general, website builders have a limited number of SEO features that might slow your business’ online presence growth.

 

When should you choose a Website Builder?

If you do not require an intricate website with plenty of pages, website builders might be the right fit for you. Small businesses, non-profit organizations, and individuals are often the audience for such website builders.

 

 

Content Management System (CMS)

What is it? According to Hubspot, a CMS is “a software application that allows users to build and manage a website without having to code it from scratch, or know how to code at all.”

The CMS allows you to create, manage, and publish content without acquiring extensive coding skills. CMS platforms allow for more customization than website builders. CMSs permit you to download free or buy add-ins that represent endless possibilities of customization of your website (and require you to if you want to have a decent website).

When discussing CMS, most people think of WordPress, the market leader powering over statistics on the internet; our website, neuwelt. co, was built using WordPress! Other great CMSs include Joomla, Drupal plus a plethora of custom and small scale CMS existing today on the internet.

 

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

Advantages

• High flexibility: Because you have to build the website front-end from scratch, you have virtually uncut control over the website look, which guarantees a high level of customization.
• Control: With the CMS, the user has complete control over the content and design of the website.
• Low costs: A CMS has relatively low costs compared with other options. Platforms such as WordPress and Drupal are free; all you need is a domain name at an average cost of $10 to $15 per year. You can additionally add or buy extra add-ins for extra functionality should you need it.
• Low switching costs: Because a website built with the CMS is self-hosted, you can easily switch from one platform to another without any difficulties.

 

Disadvantages

• Requires skills: Although not as complicated as building a website by yourself, CMS requires a little more understanding of simple markup languages like HTML & CSS than a website builder.
• Hidden costs: Depending on the nature of functionality, Some add-ins come with a price tag, which might impede small businesses and individuals from using the CMS at maximum capacity.
• High maintenance requirements: The CMS requires regular updates and maintenance. Failing to upgrade the software consistently presents security issues and suboptimum functioning. If you are not ready to dedicate regular resources to care for the CMS, it might not be the option for you.

 

When should you choose the CMS?

A CMS platform is ideal for individuals and businesses that require more detailed and intricate websites, such as e-commerce businesses. Those will be the readiest to dedicate time and resources to maintaining the website. Ultimately, although the initial time and money investment are higher than for the website builder platform, you will save money while ensuring in-depth control and customization of your website especially should you choose to integrate new business functionality that requires third-party system integrations.

 

Step 3: Choosing a Domain (and a Host)

Perhaps you have a business and you took great care in selecting the most suitable name that both represents your values but also projects certain promises to potential clients. Similarly, after you’ve checked off steps 1 and 2, it is not yet time to start building.

You’ll need to concentrate on the name or address you’ll give to your website. Having an easily identifiable, memorable and precise domain name plays a very big role in improving your website traffic.

 

How to choose a Domain?

The best piece of advice we can give is: to keep it simple.

People need to find you easily, thus for an organization, opt for something as “basic” as its name, followed by the extension (such as www.BusinessName.com).

The choice of the extension is also important. Try to use the common .com, .net, or .org extensions, unless you must use another like the localized ones e.g. .ug, .ke, .tz or .rw for Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania or Rwanda. All these a great possibilities.

 

How to choose a Host?

Well, this is for those who chose the CMS platform, as website builders do not require you to select a host. Most people rank BlueHost and Hostinger as the best hosts. Other instances such as HostGator, GoDaddy, InMotion Hosting, and GreenGeeks are also good hosting providers.

In our experience, having a more dedicated and familiar company doing your hosting has always been the best choice. You need to choose to host based on the support, contract flexibility, cost and package offer. At Neuwelt, we offer quality hosting services for all website sizes on our regularly maintained servers.

 

Step 4: Start Designing

You can now start designing your website. Choose a theme on your CMS platform or a template on the website builder.

Be careful to be consistent throughout all the pages: it should feel like one website, not four websites in one.

Think about the font, the colour, the size, the layout, and the style of writing before beginning to have a clear idea. Remember that the website is the window to your business, thus design something that represents your company’s image.

With the CMS, you can add as many pages as you want but remember that more does not – always – mean better. Focus on creating quality and excellence for your pages and put only the most relevant pages on the main navigation bar.

Here are the pages that you cannot miss on your website:

• Homepage
• About Us page
• Services/Products page
• Contact page
• Terms and Condition page
• Privacy Policy page

Those 6 are must-haves on your business website, but you are free to add more (blog, FAQ, etc.). Moreover, this structure is fitting for a corporate website. Depending on the purpose of your website, some of those pages might not be relevant; for instance, an individual might only include the equivalent of an “About Us” page, which is largely sufficient.

Step 5: Customize and Optimize

The journey does not stop after you designed the website. Concerning CMS-built websites, you should optimize them by adding plugins. There exist thousands of different plugins with hundreds of variate functions, so it might be overwhelming to know which to add. Here is a selection of functions you would like to start with:

• Contact form plugin (such as WPForm)
• SEO analysis plugin (such as Yoast SEO)
• Security plugin (such as iThemes Security)
• Backup plugin (such as UpdraftPlus)
• Performance optimization plugin (such as WP-Optimize)
• Google Analytics Dashboard Plugin (such as MonsterInsights)

Other great plugins exist to help you improve your website, such as a plugin that provides pre-made templates for Privacy Policy, Terms, and Conditions, as well as GDPR pages.

Be careful to not add too many plugins. Indeed, the more you add, the slower your website will become. A slow website does not make the users happy thus, focus on indispensable plugins to optimize your website without deteriorating the website’s quality.

 

Step 6: Secure your website

Both CMS and Website Builders are regularly targeted by cybercriminals from which you must protect.

• Install an SSL certificate
• Implement multi-level login security
• Maintain a regular backup schedule
• Keep all software up-to-date
• Use a web application firewall (WAF)

Implement those security measures to ensure that your website is less vulnerable to cyberattacks.

 

Step 7: Launch it!

After going through your website and checking if everything is ready, it is time to show your hard work to the world!

 

Bonus Step: Keep an eye out

Now that your website is up and running, it does not mean that you can sit back and relax. Having a website means tracking its performance, checking for any bugs, updating the pages to improve its performance, and keeping an eye out for any attack.

Now you are ready to improve your online presence!