If you’re a Do-It-Yourself-er you probably love to jump into projects head first and learn along the way. You feel a great amount of pride when you step away from your finished deck, garden, or oil change, and see that it is done well. If DIY is just in your blood and you can’t help it, you’re going to eventually want to design and build your own website (if you haven’t already).
We all started somewhere, and I would heartily applaud your efforts! Just few questions… What is that website doing for your business? Is it doing everything it should to instill trust in the visitor? Is it professional and can its functionality meet or rival those of your competitors? If your answers make you feel a little sheepish, you might want to rethink the merits of keeping your creation online.
Before you give away all your HTML for Dummies books, there are some things that a DIYer like yourself should be doing to make your website the best it can be!
Things You Should Do Yourself
1. Collect feedback from your clients and employees about what they want to see on your website, as well as how it should function.
2. Organize your site before it gets developed, so that you know what pages you’ll need, and how it should work.
3. Get familiar with any third-party services your site will be integrating with, like Constant Contact, Aweber, PayPal, affiliate management and drop-shippers. Though you’ll get some recommendations from your web design firm, it’s better if you have already determined what will work best for you and your company.
4. If you’re going to have a portfolio of projects, you should go through your before and after photos to select the ones you feel show off your work.
3. If you’re going to have a Content Management System (CMS), learn basic HTML that might help you to add links, text formatting, and images with confidence.
4. Again, if you’re getting a CMS, learn basic image editing. You should know how to resize, crop and adjust tones of your images so they look their best when you post them to your site. There are a lot of free programs that you can use online to help you do this easily:
5. If you’re going to get a shopping cart, find out if there is any documentation on it and start learning about it. This way when its time for you to start importing your products, writing descriptions, putting items on sale, and tracking inventory, you’ll already be familiar with how everything will work.
The above list is a good helping of activities that any DIYer can feel great about accomplishing, and your website will be better off for it. When it comes to the rest of the work though – web design, development, copywriting and photography – if you want a professional product, you should leave it for the experts.
Did You Already Do It Yourself?
If your creation is not producing results for your business, we can help you bring your site up to par, and get it on the right track so it’s converting viewers into leads. Then you can get back to learning how to make your own desalination unit.
About the author: Jeune Ortiz is VP of Marketing and Creative Director at future-ink. With more than 20 years of experience in graphic design and marketing, Jeune brings extensive knowledge and creativity to each website and internet marketing solution to grow your business.
Share/Save
Leave a Reply