Have you been wondering about the things to consider when building a website?
Are you setting up a website for your blog or are you trying to build awareness for your brand? Or perhaps you want to set up a website to sell your products or services?
Whichever it is, there are a number of things you need to know before you build a website. You can save valuable time by avoiding mistakes that can affect your business in the long run.
After sharing that having a website is better than a Facebook Page, I’d like to share the things to consider before building a website.
Building a website is just like building your home.
What is a website?
You’ll first need a location, choice of house with the number of rooms you need and a design plan to beautify your home (or an interior designer if you need help). Additionally you may need a contractor if your home requires renovation.
Likewise when you’re building a website, you’ll need a domain name, web hosting and web design (or a web designer if you need help). Additionally, you may need a web developer if you require a more complex website.
But before you jump into any rash decision, let’s look at the list of what are the main things to consider when creating a website:
11 Things To Consider When Building A Website
1. Domain name – Find out if the domain name you want is available
2. Web hosting – Choose the right web host
3. Website purpose – Define the purpose of your website
4. Web design – Decide if you need a web designer or you can DIY
5. Web developer – How complex is a website to require a web developer?
6. Layout elements – The necessary elements within a webpage
7. Page experience – The Google Search Update and why you should care
8. Mobile Friendly website – Your website should look good on a mobile device
9. SEO – Always optimize your website for search engines
10. Insights – Learning from your website visitors
11. Maintenance – Keeping your website updated
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Some of the links on here are Affiliate Links, and I may earn if you click on them – AT NO EXTRA COST TO YOU. I hope you find the information here useful. Thank you!
1. Domain Name – Find Out If The Domain Name You Want Is Available
The first of many things to consider when building a website is to know if the domain name that you want is available.
Some people may just type in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in the browser and see if any web page comes up. But usually even if there is no web page and you are seeing Error 404, it doesn’t mean the domain is available.
One way to check is through Who.Is.
The most important information is always the top 2 in the search result, Registrar Info and Important Dates. Below is an example of a Who.Is search result:
Registrar Info shows you which registered company is hosting the domain name. Important Dates show the domain name expiry and when it was first registered.
You will immediately see that the domain name is available if it has not been registered.
Now that the domain name you want is available, how do you get it for yourself?
The best option is to get your domain name together with your web hosting – which is my next point.
2. Web Hosting – Choose The Right Web Host
One of the most important things to consider when building a website is the choice of web host. In my experience choosing a web host, 3 main components help me with my decision:
- technical support response,
- security and
- recommendation.
I have used HostGator before I DreamHost. And before I decided to move away from HostGator, these were my considerations.
i. Technical Support Response
I needed to know that the web host has a good pool of agents who can assist me with any technical support required. Before I decided to jump on board with DreamHost, I asked a technical question on their Live Chat.
I asked a question related to the transfer process for the many domain names and websites of my clients’. The answer I received through the Live Chat was precise and assuring, complete with the steps to complete the process.
I have now been with DreamHost since 2016.
DreamHose Live Chat resolved most of my technical issues. Some of my tech issues which needed to be escalated to their 2nd level would have been resolved in less than 48 hours!
Last year when I had a web crisis with a client’s website which was experiencing a high influx of visitors due to its online sale. It was as if my client’s website was getting attacked instead of highly visited. DreamHost’s technical support was nothing short of amazing.
They helped me resolve the issue timely.
ii. Security
Before I jumped onto the DreamHost ship, my previous host required me to pay additional fees for assured security over my domains and websites.
My previous host became quite a nightmare for me. It was apparent to me that their technical support team expanded too quickly without much training.
You need an SSL certificate on your domain for your website to be secured. Then your site is accessed through HTTPS.
All these jargons for security!
In simpler terms, your website will have a padlock beside your domain name in the URL bar to show that it is secured.
Websites with SSL are favored by Google too. You can read more about SSL and HTTPS from this article by Hubspot.
iii. Recommendation
As with most things in life, we would usually go for services that are highly recommended. The same with web hosting, I had scoured through Google for reviews and recommendations. My websites are all built on WordPress, thus I searched for the best host for my WordPress websites.
On the official WordPress website, only 3 web hosts are recommended – and DreamHost is one of them.
For the purpose of this article, I did a search for the comparison between 2 recommended hosts:
BlueHost vs DreamHost.
While the first article was written by a fan of Dreamhost, it has a fair comparison of the 2 hosts with very detailed tabulation of each of their features.
The other article has a rating for each feature which can make reading and easier decision-making as you read on.
3. Website purpose – Define the purpose of your website
Before even moving to the decision to create a website, defining your website purpose should be answered when asked “what to consider when building a website?”
Here are some of the many categories of websites:
- Business Website
You are a company providing services or products, you want your potential clients to find you. You may need just a informational website where you list your services or products and how your potential clients can contact or locate you. - eCommerce Website
You want to sell your products and services directly from your website, complete with online transactions for ease of purchase. Once payment has been made, you will deliver the service or product directly to your clients. - Blog Website
Write on a niche topic that you are passionate about. You want to get high traffic and paid for your site visits and views so that you can attract advertisement management platforms like MediaVine and AdThrive. - Personal / Portfolio Website
You are building your personal brand and wants your audience to know more about you. You want to showcase your works done on a professional level but attributing to your own creativity and rights.
4. Web Design – Decide If You Need A Web Designer Or You Can DIY
After defining the purpose of you having a website, you will then need to decide what to consider when designing a website and why. In my personal opinion, for business and eCommerce websites, you will need a web designer and/or web developer to help you achieve your website goal.
For blog or personal/portfolio websites, I believe you can Do It Yourself. With the vast availability of website builders and tutorials, you should be able to design your website within a weekend of hustle or a week of planned actions.
This video tutorial teaches you to create your website within ten minutes! Canva now has a website tool too.
A personal or portfolio website can just be one web page. After some time, you may then expand it to many web pages making it a whole website.
A web page can be either of these:
- Information page, where you have the details of who you are or what is your business and how to contact you – similar to a listing of a directory, or
- Landing page, where you sell a product or service on that one page.
DomainName
A website is when you have more than 1 web page linking to other pages within the same domain name or URL.
The best example is my current website – ZeeCornelius.com. At the top-right of the page, you see the menu or navigation bar where I have links to other web pages within my domain name or URL.
There are multiple pages within my website, ZeeCornelius.com that you can visit.
Choose a host that offers WordPress as a ready-built service. DreamHost WordPress plans can help you to kickstart quite easily. WordPress itself has many pre-installed themes to help you with your website.
However, if you do have a handsome budget set aside for your digital marketing, get a good web designer who can help you to achieve your ideal website’s goals.
5. Web Developer – When Do You Need A Web Developer?
So if you are thinking, you need an eCommerce website to sell your products and/or services that can accept payments from anyone around the world – that is one example of a complex website.
But that does not mean you need a web developer already.
WordPress now has an eCommerce plugin called WooCommerce to help you sell on your website. It is such a great comprehensive tool that you can follow through with the guide after you have installed the plugin.
Again, for bootstrapped entrepreneurs, building your own eCommerce website may not be easy but it can be laborious. If you do have set aside a handsome budget, do find a developer who can help you to set up your eCommerce website.
What should you consider when developing your website?
In my opinion, one would only need a web developer if you work with a huge amount of data that needs to be fetched and shown in a simple manner on your website.
If the goal of your website is more than just providing information or blogging, chances are you will need a developer to work with you. The Daily Egg has a really good infographic to help you make the decision if you need a web developer or a web designer.
6. Layout Elements – The necessary elements within a webpage
Similar to a word document, some factors to consider when building a website are these layout elements:
- a header,
- body and
- footer.
The header typically holds the logo, brand name, and the navigation menu of the web page.
The body is where your content – photo, graphics and/or video, will fill up the page. The footer will usually have your contact details, copyright terms or policies, and the sitemap.
While these layout elements are the basic requirements for website design, they will affect the way your visitors experience your webpage. And that brings us to the next thing to consider – Page Experience.
7. Page Experience – The Google Search Update And Why You Should Care
In May 2021, Google Search updated its Page Experience Ranking Signals to include more than just the Core Web Vitals.
The Core Web Vitals of a website includes Loading, Interactivity, and Visual Stability. These are important factors to consider when building a website.
Page Experience Ranking Signals affect how users experience their interactions with a website more than just the information within. In short, Google takes into consideration the user’s experience with your website.
The additional attributes that make up a Page Experience now include Mobile Friendly, Safe Browsing, HTTPS, and No Intrusive Interstitials. These are all technical jargon set by Google.
Basically, Google Search now ranks your page experience based on these:
- Core Web Vitals: Your website should load quickly with ease of interactivity for the visitor, and the layout should be stable upon fully loaded
- Mobile Friendly: Your website should be optimized for mobile browsing
- Safe Browsing: Your website content is not misleading
- HTTPS: Your website should have SSL and a padlock on its domain name
- No Intrusive Interstitials: Your website has no popup images blocking your main body or your website content
8. Mobile Friendly website – Your website should look good on a mobile device
One of the components of a website’s Page Experience, is Mobile Friendly. With 67% of the world’s population are now mobile users, your website should look just as good on a mobile device as on a desktop computer.
Having your website design looking good through a mobile device should be one of the most important answer to “what are the things to consider in creating a website?”.
If you are designing your website yourself, platforms like WordPress and Canva now make it easier for you to design your website for both desktop and mobile devices. Web designers should also be able to design your website to be responsive for mobile view.
It should not be difficult or expensive to create websites for mobile devices anymore now that we are going into Web3.
9. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – Always optimize your website for search engines
SEO is something I have heard of in the past two decades of being a techie. But it is only in the past two years have I really dive into it. SEO is a tool you need for search result success.
Using the correct keywords that relates to your products and/or services will bring you the right visitors to your website. SEO should always be one of the factors to answering what to consider when creating a website.
Before you go quick on searching for SEO experts or agencies to help you, let me tell you that I learnt all things SEO from this SEO Blog Post Training by Aisha Preece. It’s the best training for someone who never knew what SEO is. Aisha provides actionable steps for you to achieve by the end of the training.
10. Insights – Learning from your website visitors
One of the things that is often overlooked is to learn from your website visitors. Looking into the insights of your website will tell you if you are attracting the right visitors. You will also learn where your visitors are coming from.
This will then allow you to make a more informed decision for your next website update.
You may use Google Analytics to have the access to your website’s insights.
11. Maintenance – Keeping your website updated
The most overlooked factor when building a website is maintenance. Website owners often think that once you have a website designed and published, that is it.
Do you know how costly it is to neglect your website once it’s been published? It’s like leaving your home unkempt for as long as you live there. Imagine piling up dust and trash – that is the same thing that can happen to your website!
Websites that are neglected and not maintained invite bugs and hackers alike. Also if you are using WordPress, there are constant updates of the software as well as plugins that run your website. The constant maintenance is required to keep your website running smooth.
With life’s pace going at much faster these days, information may also be outdated and needs to be updated once in a frequent while.
If you are not able to check on your website’s backend monthly, try to housekeep at least every quarter of the year.
FAQs
What are 5 important things you should know when building a website?
1. Core Web Vitals: Your website should load quickly with ease of interactivity for the visitor, and the layout of your website design should be stable upon fully loaded
2. Mobile Friendly: Your website should be optimized for mobile browsing
3. Safe Browsing: Your website content is not misleading
4. HTTPS: Your website should have SSL and a padlock on its domain name
5. No Intrusive Interstitials: Your website has no popup images blocking your main body or your website content
What are the 5 types of websites?
1. Business Website
You are a company providing services or products, you want your potential clients to find you. You may need just a informational website where you list your services or products and how your potential clients can contact or locate you.
2. eCommerce Website
You want to sell your products and services directly from your website, complete with online transactions for ease of purchase. Once payment has been made, you will deliver the service or product directly to your clients.
3. Blog Website
Write on a niche topic that you are passionate about. You want to get high traffic and paid for your site visits and views so that you can attract advertisement management platforms like MediaVine and AdThrive.
4. Personal Website
You are building your personal brand and wants your audience to know more about you.
5. Portfolio Website
You want to showcase your works done on a professional level but attributing to your own creativity and rights.
What type of website should I make as a beginner?
You should always start with your own personal website. What are you passionate about that you can share with others to help them? If you can talk about a certain topic which you have personal experience on, and you are able to help others – that should be the website you make as a beginner.
Conclusion
There you have it, 11 things to consider when building a website.
There are definitely more other factors but these are the basics that you need to consider before you to begin building your website.
I hope the above has helped you better understand the things to consider when building a website. All the best in building your website!
