Gone are the days when having a website was a big deal and only limited to big corporations and businesses. As time has progressed, owning a website is as easy as making an account on Instagram but requires a tad more professional knowledge and commitment.
There are a number of reasons you might want a website for yourself.
- It could be as a personal blog
- It could be for your e-commerce business
- It could be just for a portfolio
- You may be thinking about starting a news website
In most cases, having a website boosts the chances of bringing business your way. After all, it showcases whatever you put up, and you may be pleasantly surprised by how quickly a good website can create a customer base.
The presence of your business in whichever platforms you have access to will increase conversions. This is because customers are looking for answers. If they search your business and don’t find an official website, you’re at a higher risk of losing them to your competitor who addresses their problem first.
Do You Even Need a Website?
To figure out whether your business needs a website or not, answer the following questions:
- Are you looking for more clients or customers?
- Do you want to showcase your products or services to a larger audience?
- Are you looking for ways for potential customers to find your business?
- Are you looking for others to donate to your non-profit organization?
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, we suggest you have a website for your organization.
Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
What do you do when you are looking for a product or a service?
- You ask your family and friends.
- You conduct a Google search.
- You check out local listings.
In any of those cases, you would like to know more about the suggested business. You would ideally like to know what the company is about and what it does, and you would probably check the company’s reviews before you decide to engage with the company.
A website allows you to showcase your products and services, show reviews and testimonials, and enable users to get in touch with you 24/7.
Having a website for your business will not only make your and your customers’ lives more accessible, it will also save time and increase your profit margins. If you focus your energy on making the experience of shopping better and easier for your customers, you will never go wrong.
According to Fit Small Business, approximately 71% of small businesses have a website. Having a website is not only essential for your business’ name and brand awareness, but it can also help you generate leads and conversions.
Should I Build My First Website Myself or Hire Someone to Do It?
You might find yourself asking this question, but the good thing is that it is an easy one! Think about it, is your time more valuable than what you would pay a web developer?
For example, a general physician may best utilize his or her time towards treating patients rather than pondering with code and figuring out website themes.
There are several other factors to determine if you should build a website yourself:
- Do you have the funds available to hire web developers and designers?
- Do you know the basics of building your own website?
- Can you create a professional website with all functionalities?
- Do you have the time?
- Can you write clear-cut SEO-optimized content?
- How quickly do you need a website?
Building a website by yourself depends on your priorities. Hiring a web design agency or a website developer is usually the choice made by businesses because they have too much on their plate.
Other than that, people prefer to spend their time managing finances, resources, and customers instead of building and maintaining a website.
With that being said, if you have the time and want to work on your own website, one of the best tools that you need to learn is building WordPress website development. Through WordPress, you can create an amazing website for your business all on your own.
Last but not least, building your own website (which requires no coding at all) is highly budget-friendly. You can build and manage your own website for as little as $35 annually.
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Is WordPress a Good Platform for Developing My First Website?
Yes, WordPress is a fantastic platform for developing your first professional website. Many startups and businesses are unaware of the benefits of WordPress or why they should use it to build their first website. If you’re one of them, here are a few statistics to put your mind at ease.
According to the Hosting Tribunal, there are approximately 64 million users currently using WordPress. Other than that, more than 400 million people visit WordPress websites every single month. Building a WordPress website is an ideal platform, especially for beginners.
1. WordPress Is Easy to Use
WordPress is one of the most easy-to-use platforms for website developers all over the world. WordPress can help you easily manage your site even if you are not a technically sound individual. This has contributed to making WordPress a popular website development tool.
You just have to choose the domain name, make an account, choose a plan, and voila, you can get started with taking your business online.
2. WordPress Is Safe to Use
Website security is an essential concern for every business. However, don’t stress too much as WordPress is one of the safest platforms globally, and it is not easy to crack the security system by even the most experienced hackers.
There are numerous WordPress security plugins that can protect your site from malware.
3. WordPress Is Flexible
WordPress is constantly updated as per the latest trends and user needs. This is one of the reasons why the platform is a favorite amongst startups and small businesses.
It offers various free and paid themes for different categories that you can easily use while building your WordPress website. The platform is also filled with several customization options, making it easier for you to choose the ones relevant to the theme of your website.
It also allows you to add different plugins so that you can add the desired functionality to your website.
However, be careful as adding more plugins will add more code that a browser would have to load, which, as a result, can slow the website down.
4. WordPress Makes Optimization Easier
WordPress is an SEO-friendly platform and makes SEO and on-page optimization easier with Yoast Plugins and SEO Plugins. You can then use these plugins to improve your website content according to search engine guidelines.
These SEO plugins can also provide you with information to optimize crucial SEO components such as
- Heading tags
- Meta tags
- URL
- Content
- Image optimization
5. WordPress is Affordable
Lastly, the factor which makes WordPress the ideal platform for website development is its affordability. WordPress is one of the most affordable CMS available, making something as expensive as website development easy on the pocketbook, which is essential, especially for startups, entrepreneurs, and small business owners.
There is a very minimal cost required to maintain a website on WordPress. It also provides many features and functionalities, including different plugins, themes, and tools.
WordPress is incredible, aside from the fact that it is free and straightforward to use. It is also extremely powerful and capable of accomplishing almost any task.
Not only that, there are several tips, tutorials, publications, videos, and even entire companies devoted to helping you in developing and maintaining your WordPress website.
Building a WordPress Website – Step-by-Step
As discussed above, building your own website is not a very difficult task when you have something as convenient as WordPress.
It doesn’t matter if you are a complete beginner; in this guide, we will walk you through the website basics thoroughly to show you how you can build your very own WordPress website with just a few easy steps.
Step 1: Pick a Domain Name For Your Website
When making a new website, picking a name is one of the most fun aspects of the whole procedure.
A domain name is simply the name of the website. Unlike the thousands of people who have the same name as yours, a domain name belongs to one website only.
With the website name, you have complete freedom. You can pick any name you wish while building WordPress websites.
The name of your website should revolve around
- The name of your company.
- Your tagline.
- A phrase associated with the niche you belong to, but with some added words.
In short, a domain name should
- Be brief: To make it easy to remember.
- Be brandable: Something unique, nothing else that is already in the market.
- Be easy to type: You don’t want people to wonder how to spell the name of your website.
- Include niche-related keywords: For example, if your business idea has anything to do with jewelry, it would be an excellent idea for your business to have “jewelry” mentioned somewhere in the name of your website.
If you want to know if the domain you want is available, there are multiple tools available where you can check the availability.
Other than that, if you have absolutely no idea about which domain name you want to select, don’t worry! There are several domain name generators available on the internet.
Step 2: Purchase Your Domain Name and Hosting
Once you have selected the web address people will use to find you, the next thing you have to do is register it and purchase a hosting package.
There are hundreds of companies that can register a domain name for your website. There are also numerous companies that can sell you a hosting package. Your website may be a full revenue source for your business or not, but ensuring that the hosting is secure and online 24/7 all year is what you must do. Hence, an all-inclusive hosting service is what we recommend. It comes with the following features:
- A secure layer to protect against malware and hacks
- Fast Servers
- Ability to handle heavy data transfers
Step 3: Get Familiar With WordPress
Use the credentials you set in the previous step to log into WordPress and familiarize yourself with its user interface.
The WordPress dashboard is one of the first screens you will see when you log into the administration area of your blog. It is the place where you can customize, set, or uninstall anything on your website.
The WordPress dashboard consists of
- Posts: You can go here to create your blog posts.
- Media: This allows you to upload and manage your images and other media files.
- Pages: This will enable you to create sub-pages.
- Comments: This will allow you to moderate the comments of the audience.
- Appearance: This allows you to change the design of your website. It also allows you to customize certain elements that are currently being displayed on your website.
- Plugins: You can install new plugins here.
- Users: Here, you can manage the accounts that can access the admin panel of your site.
- Settings: This allows you to change the main settings.
Step 4: Choose a Theme
What is a theme, and why is it essential for my first website, you may ask? A theme is like a “template” that you can populate with your content and tweak it according to your liking.
WordPress comes with a number of its own themes; you can demo each one until you find the one that best fits the vibe of your website.
To install a free WordPress theme, follow the steps mentioned below:
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Select “Appearance,” then choose the “Themes” option. This option will take you to the theme dashboard.
- In the theme dashboard, you can browse different themes under “Recommended,” “Trending,” and “All Themes.” You can also use the search bar to search for specific styles or features.
- Demo the themes you find exciting, and then hit “Activate This Design” to activate it. The theme is now in use on your website!
Pro Tip! If you want a website with excellent performance and that will work better in the long run, choose a theme that is lightweight and doesn’t come with a bunch of plugins to make it work correctly.
The free themes are just the tip of the iceberg; there are numerous paid themes that you can find on different theme stores, such as
Even though there are thousands of paid themes out there, if this is your first website, then free themes are great for you.
You can also do some basic customizations to make the theme look more appealing.
To start the customization process, go to Appearance → Customise. Here you can fine-tune several things.
Here are some of the changes you can make:
- Set up your homepage.
- Change the site title. The ideal title is either the name of your business or anything else related to your business or niche.
- Change the colors/background image.
- Add your tagline. You can also add a few other words explaining what your site is about (or altogether remove the section).
- Change the button text.
Step 5: Add Content
This is a highly crucial step in the making of any website. Make sure that your content is SEO optimized. You could have the best content in the world, but it will not mean a thing if nobody can find it.
You can add content and posts to your pages, and adding them is incredibly simple:
a. Pages
The themes that you select will contain different pages; thus, you have to edit them according to the needs of your business.
You can add an “About Us” section and talk about the story of your business. You can also add a “Contact Us” page to make finding you easier for your customers. Other than that, you can also add a “Testimonials” page to showcase your reviews.
To add a new page, go to Pages → Add New.
b. Posts
Here you will find your entries listed in chronological order, either on your blog section or on the homepage.
Step 6: Install Plugins
Plugins are website basics, a way of installing features that WordPress doesn’t already include.
Plugins are to your website what apps are to your phone. Like apps, you have to pay for some, while there are some you can get for free. Just like themes, the plugins featured on the WordPress plugin directory cost nothing.
However, third-party plugins are the ones that you have to pay for.
In other words, plugins extend the functionality of your website by adding some essential features. Some of the best (and free) WordPress plugins are listed below:
- Yoast SEO: This plugin will help you optimize your website, making your website more accessible to search engines.
- MonsterInsights – Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress: This will help integrate your site with popular traffic analysis solutions.
- Optimole: This plugin helps you optimize your images.
- Wordfence Security – Firewall & Malware Scan: It helps to improve your site’s security.
- Contact Forms by WPForms: This plugin allows you to add an interactive form to your site. This will allow users to contact you directly.
Installing plugins is extremely simple. Go to your WordPress dashboard → Plugins → Add New.
From there, enter the plugin’s name that you want to search, click on “Install,” and then “Activate.”
Pro Tip! Use as few plugins as possible for the functionality you need. Remove all unused plugins, and be sure to check if the plugins are compatible with each other and the theme you have chosen.
Step 7: Make your site public
You’re done! It’s time to make your site public. We’re pretty sure that now that you’re done building a WordPress website, you want search engines to be able to find and index your site.
To ensure that is the case, head over to Settings → Reading and ensure that the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” box is unchecked.
Pros and Cons of Starting a New Website On Your Own
Pros:
- You will learn a lot about building a website from scratch.
- You will be able to improve your knowledge.
- Your website will have all of the exact functionalities that you want.
- It is affordable.
Cons:
- You have to make yourself aware of the website basics before attempting to build your own website.
- The process is time-consuming: it can take several days, weeks, and even months to create a website with the exact features you desire.
- You have to take care of all the details of your site.
- You have to solve all the issues on your own that arise while you are building your website.
- If you are using WordPress to build your own simple site, you will require a lot of plugins for additional features, which can slow down the speed of your website.
- The themes and plugins constantly need to be updated.
If you start something from scratch, you make something completely new. Even though it requires considerable effort and time, for many businesses, it is definitely worth it.
However, be careful about certain things as they can impact your website speed, such as
- Using too many plugins
- Using themes that are not well supported
- Using bloated themes
- Using large images
- Using a lot of wording on a page
- Using unreliable hosting
Page speed is vital to your site; as a business, while building WordPress websites, ensure that your site is fast-loading so that users don’t get too impatient and decide to leave. This can cause you to lose revenue as they won’t be able to see what you have to offer.
Is WordPress Web Development the Best Option for Me?
WordPress is a great content management system due to its affordability and simplicity. It lets startups and small businesses get started online by allowing them to build their business site.
Suppose you want to save yourself the effort, time, and headache associated with building and managing your site. In that case, you can always get in touch with WordPress web development professionals and alternatively have your site developed professionally.
Benefits of Hiring a WordPress Web Development Professional
In many cases, it is better to hire a professional or experienced team to get a job done without any errors. Professional web designers are knowledgeable and follow the latest trends to make your site user-friendly.
For the success of your business on the internet, it is crucial that your simple site looks professional and pleasant for users.
A WordPress web development professional will create an SEO-friendly site for your business. Thus, you will be able to focus your energy on your business and will no longer have to worry about your website’s ranking on search engines.
Following are some benefits of hiring a WordPress professional:
- Your website will have a great first impression
- Your website with have a better, more unique design
- Your website will be compatible with the latest mobile technologies
- Your website will be trustworthy and reliable
- Your website will have faster speed
- You will save time and effort
- Your website will provide an easy and pleasant user experience
Take Away
Your website is an extension of your business. When starting a new website, ensure that your website is professional, fully functioning, and loads up quickly to provide your current and potential customers with a pleasant user experience.
The best thing about the whole process in this guide is that you can set up your website all by yourself using one of the most budget-friendly solutions available for you, i.e., WordPress.
However, we understand that websites can experience technical issues and may require a lot of management from a professional. Getting your website done professionally on WordPress will improve its speed, stability, performance, and security and ensure that your site is mobile-friendly.