You are a coach or a consultant or a small business owner and now you want to take your business online.
Probably you want to create a course site or a website where people can sign up for your one on one coaching or group coaching, probably you want to start selling your products or services online.
Let me be captain obvious for a minute and say that you need a website to do all those things.
Before that download the printable blueprint in the pdf format. We will use it for the next steps.
The two options you have with you are either develop the website yourself or hire a web developer or an agency for that matter.
The second option is costly and time-consuming. Because you need to vet good web developers then tell them your requirement and wait for them to complete your website.
How about you develop it on your own?
You think it’s difficult, because, well, you are probably not a techie. To be honest, you don’t have to be a techie to develop a website.
Particularly when you are using WordPress. You can read more on that here.
Although you can develop a website on your own, you should not go straight-away to the development part. That’s the avoidable mistake.
What’s wrong with going in without a plan
It’s an old saying when you fail to plan you plan to fail.
What exactly happens, is you have seen quite a few websites of influencers or let’s say successful people in your domain.
We try to copy one part from one website, the second
part from the second website and so on.
What you get at the end is a not-so-good cocktail.
You cannot fit a BMW’s front door to a Merc’s front door just because it looks good to you. It has to fit properly.
If that was the case, the World’s best football team would have all the best players only. And they will win all the time.
You also know, that’s not the case. It’s a team that gels well, where each player has a certain role to play will win a lot of matches.
Same goes for website
You cannot just mix and match various things just because they look good. And when you don’t have a plan you tend to just mix and match.
Never ever copy other websites
Each website has a personality. Particularly, a personal website. (No kidding! Captain obvious strikes back!!)
When you copy another person’s website, you lose your personality. Don’t do that.
So what to do?
You must have a plan to start with. A Blueprint. So, today I am going to talk about how to plan your website.
Step 1
First of all, decide what pages you require on your website. Whether you require an about us page, a contact us page, a blog page, a services page or a products page. The homepage will always be there.
Every page on your website should be important and should contain some useful information. If you don’t have any blog post with you then creating a blog post just for the sake of it, is not helpful for your business.
Don’t do anything just because others are doing.
Step 2
Once you have a list of pages, start designing them. How?
Good question little grasshopper!
Take a pen and a paper and start drawing each page. Where the menu should be? Where the logo should be? Decide image placements, content placement, the footer and everything else.
Decide what should be the colour palette, decide the fonts.
Here is a sample for you
You can use Google Fonts to check out various fonts. And use Adobe Color to decide colour palette.
Don’t write copy in this step. Don’t write headline, subheadline or anything at all.
Step 3
Now write copy 😀
Your designs will have only placeholders. There won’t be any actual copy. In this step, you need to fill those placeholders.
Similar to designs you just created, don’t copy the copy.
You want your copy a personality.
Your first copy will be sh*t AF. But very few people have actually written the first draft well. Honestly, even I am still learning it.
And there is no issue with that. We learn with each step. So, don’t worry and write your copy.
Use MS Word, Apple Pages or Google Docs to store the various drafts. You yourself will see an improvement in you.
Your foundation is ready
You have a ready blueprint with you. Now, the design is not in your head, it’s on paper. The copy is not in the head, it’s saved on your computer.
All you need to do now is select a tool using which you will develop your website. You can choose WordPress, Weebly, Wix, SquareSpace or something else you are comfortable using.
Go ahead and start creating a blueprint for your website. All the best 🙂
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