How to Build Your Own Website | A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

If you are about to kick off your business or you think it is the right time for your business to have an official website, here is our proposed 4-step process of web building that you can carry out on your own.

This simple guide will help you create a cost-saving and effective site that actually works.

Step 1 – Know Your Customers

Don’t jump into building your website as soon as you have a business idea. You should take a close look and know clearly who your audience will be. In other words, create a customer profile before establishing a website. In order to have a site that really works, you need to know exactly who it is that your website serves and which content appeal to them.

You should be very specific about your target customers. Here are some questions you should ask yourself:

• • Who are your perfect customer’s ages, jobs, locations, and incomes?
  • What are their interests?
  • What are their needs?
  • What are they struggling with?
  • What do they expect to get from the products/services they buy from you?
  • To what extent do your products/services help them solve their struggles?

Remember that the more specific the better!

Now that you have a solid foundation about your target customers, it’s the right time you started creating your website.

Step 2 – Build Your Website

Many small businesses choose to create a social media account on Twitter or Facebook instead of building their own business websites. This choice is surely cost-saving and easy to implement. Unfortunately, it might be a serious mistake.

What they are doing is commonly known as digital sharecropping. They build content on platforms that they do not own. The more content they create, the more profits these platforms reap.

Although these social media platforms do bring you exposure to your target audience and add value to your marketing mix strategy, you must make sure that you have a media asset that you actually own and can control.

But that is not the only reason why you should have a website for your business. Consider the following benefits your business can gain if you have a well-build site:

• • Create a professional brand image
  • Drive traffics and convert them into sales
  • Drive traffics back to your site through social media
  • Establish SEO strategy

Now that we are on the same page about why building a website is a must for your business, let’s go into the main part – the guide to creating a business website on your own.

Buy a Domain

If you need to buy a domain name and want to set up secure WordPress hosting, your go-to choice is GoDaddy and HyperHost. They have great customer support that can guide you through all necessary steps via a phone call.

There are two choices for you at this stage – you can either do everything yourself or hire a professional designer.

If you decide to do everything yourself to minimize the cost, there are various WordPress pre-built websites (or themes) you can choose from. Most of them are free with some premium features. Either way, it wouldn’t cost you too much. We suggest you visit Envato Market and Studio Press to have a look and choose the theme that you like best.

Next is the technical part. If you are not very good at this part, you can always go to Fiverr to hire a freelance dev to help you set it up. With just under $500, you will have your site ready within 2 days.

To have a more professional and custom site, you can go with the second choice – hire a designer. This choice will be much more expensive, but trust us, it will be worth it.

Step 3 – Create Content for Your Site

Writing content regularly is one of the best ways to show your knowledge of the industry and establish your business as an industry expert. When your audience reads your content which contains helpful tips, insights, and solutions to their needs, they are more likely to put their trust in your products/services.

Creating regular fresh content brings you traffic from search engines. Search engines like Google scan your website content to figure out what your site is about and rank it in Google for different search keywords.

Once your site is indexed and recognised by Google, you can shift your focus to keywords that you want to rank for. To put it another way, it’s time to SEO your website.

However, don’t just write for SEO purposes. SEO posts assist your website to be ranked higher and discovered by more audiences. But the quality of your content is something that keeps your audience reading and coming back for more. Thus, you should keep a balance between content for SEO and content for readers.

Step 4 – Make Your Website Multilingual

When your business expands and you target different overseas markets, you should consider localizing your website into new languages. This process is called website localization which involves the adaptation of your site’s language, designs, SEO elements, and other functionality for a new target market.

Here is an overview of what you need to do for a website localization project:

• • Define the target markets and languages to localize your site into
  • Decide which elements and items need to be localized
  • Choose a suitable website localization partner to work with
  • Internationalize your site
  • Prepare website localization resources

We have to be honest with you that this process is far from easy, quick, and cheap. However, with all the advantages it brings, it is still worth all your money and efforts. For a step-by-step guide on website localization, you can read our free 40-page whitepaper here or talk to GTE Localize’s website localization experts.

To Wrap Up

Having your own site built is just the beginning. Once you have a well-built site and start publishing content, you should be thinking about weekly newsletters, podcasts, social media activities, and backlinks. And many more actions are required to help you attract more clients and reap more revenue. There will be no instant miracle so be patient with your website building.

If you need assistance from a reliable website translation partner, look no further than GTE Localize. With a network of 1200+ website translation experts and native linguists around the world, we offer budget-saving solutions to bring you closer to your global audiences.

Book a 1:1 free consultancy with our experts and get your project kicked off today!