Step-by-Step Guide: How to Build a Website from Scratch
Whether you’re a freelancer, a retail shop owner, or a budding startup, a great website design can enhance your online presence, increase your sales, and help boost brand awareness.
Source: entrepreneurhandbook.co.uk
However, when building a website, you need to consider several factors to meet your customers’ expectations, which is that it should be beautiful, easy to use, and fast.
We have created this step-by-step, comprehensive guide to help you learn how to make a website from scratch. Let’s get started!
Define Your Website’s Purpose
As with any business strategy, coding a website from scratch begins with defining its purpose. Consider your current and future business goals to effectively reap the benefits of your efforts.
Ask yourself if you want your website:
- For showcasing your works (i.e., portfolio website).
- For branding purposes.
- To attract and convert more customers.
- To automate and streamline processes (like sending automated emails).
Remember, you can have one or multiple website goals. However, good website goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
Source: reddit.com
Next, make sure your website aligns with your target audience’s expectations. It should address their pain points and highlight how you can solve them.
The best way to do that is by analyzing your competitors’ websites. Check out how they have placed different buttons & pages, their copies, and call to action buttons. This will give you a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.
Design Your Website Layout
Now that you have done the research and have an idea in place, it’s time to design your website layout.
It is one of the most crucial aspects of creating a website from scratch. That’s because 50% of consumers say thatp website design is crucial to a business’s overall brand.
Also, 38% of people visiting a website for the first time look at the page’s layout. If it is confusing or the navigation menu is hard to find, they might leave your site never to return.
Therefore, before you start to build your own website from scratch, look at other websites for inspiration. You don’t necessarily need to analyze your competitors’ sites (which is important, though). Instead, it could be any website on the internet.
You can even look at templates on website builders like Wix, Ionos, MailChimp, etc., to spark your creativity and build something your customers will love you for.
Source: ionos.com
Then, browse visual platforms like Instagram and Pinterest to find other website content ideas like color inspiration, fonts, web design trends, and layout ideas.
Once you’ve completed the research, it’s time to choose the right website builder or CMS (Content Management System).
Here are some of the most popular website builders.
- Wix: With over 110 million sites built using Wix, it clearly is the most popular website builder. Apart from an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder, Wix also offers an AI-fueled automatic website creator that automatically designs a website for your business.
- Squarespace: It is yet another popular website builder that provides industry-specific templates, color palettes, and designer fonts to cater to the needs of different businesses. It also supports a variety of third-party extensions to enhance the functionality of your website.
- Weebly: It is the easiest website builder on this list. With over 50 million sites built using Weebly, the platform offers some excellent features for businesses of all sizes. For instance, you can create a large site (more than 30 pages), get unlimited storage, and have affordable yet powerful eCommerce capabilities using Weebly.
- WordPress: If you’re looking to build a professional and highly customizable website using WordPress, you can also consider converting your design from PSD to WordPress. This process involves transforming a Photoshop (PSD) design into a fully functional WordPress theme, allowing you to maintain the unique look and feel of your website while harnessing the power of WordPress’s extensive features and plugins for seamless content management.
The right website builder for your business depends on your business’s requirements and budget.
Once you’ve decided on a website builder, use all the ideas you gathered above to design a website with certain elements that you think will suit your brand the best. However, make sure not to copy anything directly as it might hurt your brand image in the long run.
Create a Detailed Sitemap
A sitemap is the blueprint of your website’s architecture. It defines how each page on your site connects with each other. By creating a detailed sitemap beforehand, you can ensure a smooth browsing experience.
The key to success here is organizing your site in a way that users don’t have to click more than twice to move from one page to another. To do this, you will need to create a navigation menu that is visible and accessible on every page of your site.
Source: mural.co
If you are creating a single-page website, add an anchor menu that takes users to the desired section and eliminates the need for scrolling.
Here are some important pages that your website should have:
- A compelling homepage: This is the entrance of your website, and just like your home, it should be eye-catchy and beautiful. You should also strive to provide the most crucial information about your business to help visitors understand what you do.
- About Us page: If you want to build trust with potential customers, an “about us” page is a must. Highlight who you are, your team, what you stand for, your values, and other important things you think your customers should know.
- Contact Us: People don’t usually want to purchase from businesses they cannot reach. Therefore, a dedicated contact us page that includes your phone numbers, email addresses, social links, and other ways to reach out to you is necessary. You can also consider adding these details to the footer of your website.
Additionally, you can consider having:
- A blog: It allows you to add fresh content to your site regularly and gives your visitors a reason to come back to your website. When done right, blogs also help you improve your search engine rankings and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
- An informative FAQ page: By answering all the frequently asked questions, you can significantly reduce the support tickets, improve the resolution time, and increase the chances of conversion.
No matter how many pages you add to your website, make sure that they are interlinked and don’t confuse your visitors. A detailed sitemap also helps search engine crawlers understand your website structure, enabling them to properly categorize and rank your site.
Create Compelling Content
Now that your website design and layout is in place, it’s time to show your copywriting skills. Again, the better your content, the more the chances of conversion.
From the header to the product description, you need to craft each website element with extra care. The good thing is, you can always go back and change the text to generate better results. In fact, it is recommended to update it often to send signals to search engines that you’re still active.
If you are not sure how to write persuasive copy for your website, consider hiring a copywriter with experience in writing for your industry. This will give them an upper hand when creating content for you.
That said, here are some best practices to follow:
- Content should be easy-to-read and written in a conversational style.
- Always keep your audience and their goals in mind.
- Highlight the main points of your services to ensure visitors don’t miss anything.
- Eliminate any unnecessary words.
- Use active voice as much as possible.
- When writing headers, avoid jargon, abbreviations, and technical terms. Make it as simple as you can.
- Keep the CTA (Call-to-Action) above the fold.
Here is an example of a brand following all the best practices of web content writing.
Zoho CRM has crafted an easy-to-understand header that highlights how you can benefit from its product (i.e., provide a better customer experience). The text below the header complements it and provides additional information. On the right side, you can find a small form to get started.
Source: zoho.com
Choose a Domain Name
Choosing a domain name is one of the most vital steps to building a website. Also known as your website address, a domain name is how people will remember your business. It is recommended to choose a domain that includes your brand name, e.g., “www.yourbrandname.com.”
However, there are several best practices to follow when choosing a domain name:
- Keep it as short as possible: If your brand name consists of multiple words, consider using a shorter version of it in the domain name, e.g., J&J for Johnson & Johnson.
- Make it easy to spell: Your domain name should be easy to remember for people to visit it directly. Try not to use esoteric or made-up words.
- Choose .com: Unless it is more appropriate to use another extension (.co, .net, .edu, or .org), choose a .com domain extension.
- Avoid numbers and hyphens: They just make it harder to remember your domain name and increase confusion.
- Research the domain name: Check if a similar version of your domain name already exists (maybe with a different extension). If it does, check if you can choose a different name, or else you might confuse your customers who end up landing their website instead of yours.
Pick a Scalable and Secure Website Hosting
The website hosting provider offers the services necessary to host your website on the internet. You connect your domain name to the hosting provider, so when your customers enter the URL on their browser, they are redirected to your website.
Source: webhostingsecretrevealed.net
Even if you’re a small business, it is crucial to pick scalable and secure website hosting. They cost anywhere between $2-$100+ per month, depending on the provider, storage, and the kind of support you choose.
Here are some tips to help you choose the right hosting plan for your website:
Shared server: You can get a shared server for as low as $2 per month. However, we don’t recommend choosing a shared server because it involves sharing your server resources with other websites. This can affect your site’s performance, and if any of the websites in your shared server is hacked, your site might also get infected.
Dedicated server: This is the most expensive option of all three. It could cost you anywhere from around $100 to $2000, depending on the technology and storage you choose. When you pick a dedicated server, the server will be dedicated entirely to your site. This means the chances of getting hacked are minimal, and your site’s performance will be top-notch.
Virtual Private Server (VPS): A blend of a shared and dedicated server, VPS costs between $20 to $50. In VPS, a server is partitioned to act as multiple servers. This means you will be using a shared server in which you will be allocated certain resources that ensures your site performance doesn’t suffer while making it more affordable.
- Ensure that your hosting provider offers phone and live chat support. Email support usually takes too long to get a problem resolved.
- Check the security methods the provider uses to keep the server secure. You should look for features like SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol), SSL certificates, and daily backup options. Also, make sure that they perform regular security maintenance. SSL certificates can also be a new purchase from third-party providers at the time of renewal. A reputed SSL provider can give you many discounts on your purchase. There are few reputed providers including resellers like Sectigo, Comodo, GlobalSign, Thawte. A website owner can choose the type of SSL based on the number of domains or subdomains. For example, A security for a website with several subdomains can be fulfilled with a wildcard cert, for example, you can buy a wildcard SSL Certificate from SSL2BUY– an authorized partner that can provide a low-cost price for your choice of SSL certificate.
That said, here are some of the leading hosting providers:
- GoDaddy
- DreamHost
- Bluehost
- SiteGround
Optimize Your Website for Search Engines
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the practice of optimizing your website to increase its rankings for relevant search queries. This will give you more exposure and help attract customers organically.
Source: searchenginejournal.com
And SEO starts with website design. So, when you create a website from scratch, implement SEO best practices to improve your rankings.
Here are some tips to help you get started:
- Ensure your website is easy to navigate.
- Create user-friendly URLs. For instance, for the about us page, your URL should look like “www.yourdomain.com/about/” and not something like “www.yourdomain.com/afue98nf/.”
- Use one H1 tag and multiple header tags (H2-H6) on a single page.
- Ensure your website loads quickly.
- Use internal links throughout your site to make people stick to your website for long.
- Link your website with your social handles.
- Use title tags, image alt tags, and the meta description properly.
- Make sure your website looks great on all devices, irrespective of its size.
- Use keyword-rich anchor texts in inbound links.
Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
When you’re learning how to make a website from scratch, you cannot miss the most important part: making your site mobile-friendly.
Google considers mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor. That’s not it. Mobile accounts for 54.8% of web traffic worldwide. This means, by making your website mobile-friendly, you can increase your chances of ranking at the top of search results and attract more customers.
When coding a website from scratch, follow the web design best practices to make the site responsive. If you’re using a website builder, choose a responsive theme so it stays mobile-friendly right from the beginning.
Install Webmaster Tools
Just like with any other machine, websites also run into problems. You need to identify and solve them as soon as possible.
Install Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track metrics like:
- Daily, weekly, and monthly visitors to your website.
- The number of views on individual pages.
- The average time spent on your site.
- Crawl errors on your site.
- Broken links on the site.
- Keywords that bring users to your website.
Google Search Console also allows you to submit new pages for indexing. This helps rank the pages that you’ve uploaded recently.
Create a Website Maintenance Plan
Building your own website from scratch is just the beginning. In order to have a successful site that ranks higher in search engines, you need to maintain it.
Source: digians.com
Here are some website maintenance tips for small businesses:
- Check webmaster tools for any errors once every fortnight.
- Learn about your audience using Google Analytics to better cater to their needs.
- Run security scans to ensure your website is free of malware.
- Continually post quality content to keep your website afresh.
- Allow visitors to give you feedback on your website so you can improve them.
- Monitor your competitors to see how they’re upgrading your website and what you can do to outrank them.
- Take a backup of your website in multiple ways at least once a week (earlier if possible).
Conclusion
Building a website from scratch may not be as simple as you first thought. However, if you follow the steps to build a website as mentioned in this article, you will have an excellent chance of succeeding in creating an efficient website for your business.
Have any doubts? Share them in the comments section, and we will address your concerns.
