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Website Guide: A beginner’s guide to your first website.

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Page 1: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

Website Guide:A beginner’s guide to your first website.

Page 2: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

3410

Letter from the author

Why you need a website

Phase 1: Building the Basic Website

Inexpensive services

Free services

Phase 2: Marketing Tools

Phase 3: Professional Touches

Conclusion

12

18

212633

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Page 3: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with

multiple startups under my belt, I had little experience with

websites and little reason to believe how important they

were to businesses of all types. Over the years, I have come

to appreciate websites as a work of art and wealth of

opportunities. Nothing gets your business up and

running as fast as a website. Get ready to learn the easy

steps you need to take to get your business off the ground!

Letter from the authors

Step one is simply making the commitment to get started.

This can seem intimidating at first, but realize there are

tools out there designed to make your life easier – tools

that I rely on myself to skip past most of the coding and

focus on what really matters: my business. In the coming

pages, we will identify these tools and show you exactly how

to use them. Even if you are new to tech or web design, this

guide will give you the confidence you need to get up and

running in no time. See you inside!

2

Page 4: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

Title of the book

Why your business needs a website today

While there are many critical components for the success of a new business, there

is one component that must not be ignored. That is the website that your business will

use to market your product or services. Your website can help you get a jumpstart on

your business even before you lay a chisel on your product, saving you a lot of time and

money later. Think of your website as your weathervane. It will help you steer your

business from an idea to acquiring paying customers. Setting up a basic website can

take as little as an hour and is not difficult. However, try not to think of setting up your

website as a one-time deal. It is something you will want to work on during the life of

your business. You will easily pick up new skills as you go along and not before too long

you will become well-practiced in website development.

Title of the book

3

Page 5: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

To build a website is to

construct one’s headquarters,

establish legitimacy, and develop

a brand. Great websites convey a

professional image and draw

customers in by the dozens. On

the other hand, poorly designed

websites will see higher “bounce”

rates as visitors struggle to make

the connection. Everything from

layout and design to content and

navigation structure will affect

user experience – and in turn,

affect sales and results – so it is of

particular importance to get it

right.

Luckily such a feat can be

accomplished over time. Step by

step, you will see your website

become the focal point of your

business.

When I first entered the startup

world in Silicon Valley, I didn’t really

understand how powerful websites were.

Sure, many entrepreneurs base their

business model and entire revenue

stream solely on their website. Obviously

they would want to focus their time and

attention building it out. But there are

many entrepreneurs that don’t use their

website as their stream of income that can

greatly benefit from it. Some people build

apps, hardware, and other products which

are purchased on different platforms.

Google Play and Apple’s iOS store, for

example, are the main platforms for the

majority of the apps out there. While there

are plenty of opportunities to succeed on

those platforms by climbing the rankings

and getting visible, app stores are a

are a crowded space with over a million apps to compete with. It becomes a battle for new

apps to get discovered and a missed opportunity for app developers to succeed.

Equally, the entrepreneur that sells physical products such as a fitness

accessory like FitBit, for example, would find Amazon, a popular platform for physical

products, not a great way for getting their product visible to the mass market.

4

Page 6: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

As I navigated the startup world of Silicon Valley, I came to understand that

websites are not nice-to-haves but must-haves. They belong at the very

beginning of an entrepreneur’s business lifecycle. The website is where they tell

the world what it is they are doing, why they are doing it, and how others can

learn more and eventually become customers. It is where the entrepreneurs

learn more about their customers and provides insight on how to better serve

them.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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Page 7: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

Having a website is vital to your business and is something that you want

to spend time on before you launch. This is if you are doing your business full

time or even as a side project. This is a guide that will help you get your basic

website up. Often many entrepreneurs including myself have gone through the

difficulties of having to build out a business on little capital. We are living in

unprecedented times where a business can be launched for almost nothing. It

can cost dollars a month. A reasonable price for something that is going to

bring customers to your door and money into your pockets.

A website is like a piece of real estate or a brick-and-mortar shop in a

virtual world but has some unique advantages when compared to the real-world

thing.

· Websites are low maintenance and low cost

· Websites are low risk and flexible in design and implementation

· Websites scale across the globe

The cost of operating a website can vary depending on the business. There

are so many accompanying services out there that you will think you will need

them all. You don’t. But there are a few which are great to have. Depending on

your needs, you might want to invest in some web services and hold off on

others until it makes sense. For the average entrepreneur, operating a basic

website will be negligible compared to the thousands of dollars spent on leasing

a shop, paying for utilities, décor, and labor. There are few forms and contracts

to fill out, licenses to acquire, or inspections to be made for building a website.

If one day you decide your website isn’t working out, you can pretty much walk

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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away scot-free. Try doing that with a brick-and-mortar shop. Many shop owners

end up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, legal and contractual

liabilities, employees and taxes that they must pay, and a nightmare that will

scar their life.

Websites are also very flexible. You can tweak your logo at a moment’s

notice, change the main color theme of your website, update your product

description, or have a complete makeover all in the comfort of your home office

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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Page 9: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

without having to close shop for renovations. Not only that, your website can

reach the entire globe. No kidding. Some of the apps I used to develop for my

businesses have ended up being downloaded in the most unlikely places.

Yemen, for example.

I will divide up this guide into three phases. You should complete the first

phase as soon as possible. The second phase is of next priority and then the

third phase will follow at a pace that you are comfortable working with. It’s

good practice to go through all the phases and understand the entire nature of

your digital presence.

After you have established your first basic website you can then start to

plan out your entire business.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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Page 10: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

Phase 1: Building the Basic Website

The first elements of your new online presence

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Phase 1: Building the Basic Website

There are many ways to go about this but I will mention the methods that I have

personally tried and succeeded with. There are some options for you to consider

depending on your available time and resources. Choose which one you are

comfortable with or try them all out.

The best part is you can have a full website up without ever needing to code

(unless you want too)!

Before we get started you will want to get familiar with a few terms if you have

never had experience in web development before. The first term is domain. A domain

is the address or URL that is assigned to your website. For example,

http://www.yourbusinessdomain.com. A domain must usually be registered annually. A

service called a registrar provides registration services and you can have the domain

registration renewed every year automatically. Godaddy is a popular registrar and

there are a range of available services out there but each vary in quality as I will soon

talk about. Also, you will want to understand about web hosting services which store

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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your website on their servers. A good web hosting service will keep your website up

and accessible to the world 24/7 with high reliability and performance. Bluehost is an

excellent web host platform which we use for ThinkPlanLaunch but there are others out

there which I will soon explain. One thing that you can also consider is to use free

services in place of your domain and hosting. However, I highly recommend using the

inexpensive services if you are committed to the long term as they will decrease your

time involved.

Option 1: Inexpensive and reliable services

If you are willing to spend a few bucks a month and want a website that is

more reliable, easier to control, and efficient in the long run, you will want to look into

some paid services.

Domain Registration

This is your .com, .co, .me etc. They are easy to remember and give instant

credibility to your new business. Picking the right name can be tricky however since the

market for domains are competitive. Often many entrepreneurs will spend hours trying

to find the best domain for their business. Availability is usually limited and creativity is

key. Luckily there are tools available that can make the process of finding a domain

easier. GoDaddy has a nice tool that allows you to search for availability for up to 500

domains at once.

Domain registration can cost around a dollar up front as in the case of

1and1 but can also go over a hundred dollars for some of the more expensive

registrars. Also, each top-level domain (TLD) has different pricing. For example, .coms

are fairly cheap compared to some of the more exotic options such as .technology. It is

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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renewed annually but you can usually save by registering for multiple years at a time.

Choosing a registrar will depend on many factors. I have experienced

using almost a dozen registrars. Each experience was different with different

advantages and disadvantages. Everyone has different opinions on which is the best.

GoDaddy

the registrar where you are hosting your website. This is usually done through a DNS

editor where you can update your DNS records. Your DNS records are a set of

instructions that tell where your website is located among other things. Usually your

host server provider will help you through the process of changing your DNS records.

GoDaddy help support is common among the web hosting services because of its

popularity. It is rare to encounter any issues.

Changing these DNS records (DNS propagation) are not instantaneous

unfortunately. However, with GoDaddy, I am able to make DNS record changes and see

the effects really quickly. This allows me to change hosting servers, email servers or

assign a new one in the beginning and see the effects within a short time. Other

registrars are often slow and take up to 48 hours for their DNS records to be updated

throughout the world (and different locations will see DNS records updated at different

times). This can be frustrating when I am first trying to get my website set up and have

to wait days when waiting for the host server to be reached.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

You can’t go wrong with GoDaddy as a long

term solution. Registration is a breeze. What I like most

about GoDaddy is that they are quick and responsive. One of

the things you need to do when using a registrar is point

your domain to the appropriate host server. You need to tell

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1&1

1&1 is a great option for when you want to minimize your

costs and are more patient than me when dealing with DNS

changes. I’ve been able to get a domain for 99 cents. This

kind of deal is fantastic when I want to test out different

domains and ideas before you stick to it long term. When

your business relies on having many websites, you’ll want to focus on cost effective

measures for acquiring domains.

NameCheap

Just like the name suggests, you can get domains for cheap.

One big advantage however is that it comes with a free year

of WhoisGuard privacy protection which other registrars

charge for similar protections. What it does is it protects your private information from

being exposed to the world. When you register a domain, your information is often

provided in a WhoIs database. If you are registering the domain in your name, your

address, phone number, and email will be visible to anyone who looks up the WhoIs

database. The free year of protection from NameCheap is a great way to keep your

personal information safe.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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Hosting

Hosting packages are bountiful and the abundance often cause frustration

for many people trying to build a website for the first time and having to choose

among a large selection of options. Each hosting service can vary in price, value,

performance, customer support, and management. Also, each hosting service often

has many packages to choose from. When I worked in my startup we used some

hosting platforms that were not very consumer friendly and required specialized

knowledge of setting up servers. Luckily, many web hosting servers out there are very

easy to set up and use. Some even provide free domain registration which is a great

idea but be aware that you might be locking your domain into your web host service

which you might end up changing later requiring a transfer fee to release it to a new

registrar.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First WebsiteBy Torkild Retvedt

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server so that you can max out the performance. You can also try out some of their

great virtual private servers as well. It comes with one free domain and allows you to

host multiple domains on any plan using what is called add-on domains.

HostGator

Another very popular service is Hostgator. They are a bigger

hosting service than BlueHost, providing some added

security features on cheaper plans such as SSL. HostGator

also offers one-click installs of popular platforms such as

WordPress and Weebly (website builder).

BlueHost

BlueHost is almost the de facto web hosting service for

WordPress. In fact it is one of only three web hosting services

that WordPress recommends for its users. It has a new

updated interface that makes it easy to manage your web

hosting service. You can use its easy one-click install to get

WordPress in minutes. When I want to build a website I usually opt for BlueHost

because of its ease and reliability. Also, unlike some of the other web hosts, you won’t

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

need to worry about how much content you

upload on your website. It provides virtually

unlimited space. The cheapest package is usually

suitable for your basic website and can handle a

fair share of traffic. Should you decide that you

need more power you can easily upgrade and get

dedicated hosting which gives you your own

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Content Management System (CMS)

Great. So let’s say you have your domain and hosting set up. The next thing you will

need is a CMS system, unless you want to code everything yourself. A CMS system will

take care of all the little technical details of your website while you just focus on the

creative side. There are many services, some free, some not. WordPress is the best of

them.

WordPress

WordPress is a highly recommend route to go and probably

one of the best tools you can use for your business. You can

use it to efficiently build out your entire website. WordPress

makes creating a webpage so easy and doesn’t require you to

know any coding. While it is mainly used for bloggers, there

are many businesses that use it for their e-commerce site or for selling their own

products or services.

WordPress is also free. You can install it on your own website for free, use

BlueHost’s or HostGator’s one-click install,

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

or you can have WordPress

host your website, though the

address will be

yourbusinessname.wordpress.

com. Later you will learn of

some good themes you can

add to make it more

professional-looking.

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Option 2: Free services

That is right. Free. And there are several methods. Now this is where you

might be expecting me to tell you that while it’s possible to do it for free, it would be a

terrible idea and that serious entrepreneurs would never consider it. The truth is, using

free services to make your first website is not a bad idea and it has advantages over

paid services. Once such advantage is that you can get started right away and be up

and running in less than an hour. That brings us to the first of the free options.

LaunchRock

Launchrock is one of the most highly recommended website generator’s

out there. Its purpose is simple and relevant to the pre-launch phase of your business.

Essentially, it is a signup page generator for products that are “coming soon.” Its easy-

to-use service is also completely free. They also provide with a form for you to collect

email addresses with which will not only give you a means of contacting your

customers, but also allow you to gauge interest and how successful your product might

be. The more signups, the better.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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The full free package

The last free method will give you complete control over your website. I

don’t normally recommend this option because of its lower reliability and performance.

As an entrepreneur you should be the type that values time over money. You will spend

more time with the following services. If you are curious do read on but take caution

and prepare to make a transition to using paid solutions.

The first step is to get a free website domain. There is one catch however.

You will not get a .com. Instead it would be a .tk which is a domain for the country for

Tokelau. It is totally free and easy to get. Access it by visiting dot.tk and registering for

a new website. When you register the first option will ask you for a URL to forward to

domain to. You can put any URL you want in there for now, but to be safe, pic a random

URL of an image file that you get off of Google Images. Complete the registration and

you are ready for the next step. Alternatively, you can go to freenom.com and get a

domain with other TLDs like .ga, .ml, etc.

Step 2 is the harder part: getting free web hosting for your new

domain.

Web hosting services store your website on their servers. They keep their

servers online (or try to) 24/7. If you go the route of wanting to get your own website

domain and building your site from scratch you can try out free web hosting services.

I’ve had some experiences trying to use a few free web hosting services.

They helped me out in a pinch before and proved to be an effective short term solution.

I wouldn’t recommend using free web hosting in the long run however. The free web

hosting service that was the most reliable for me seems to no longer be in operation. I

used free hosting from hourb.com. It seems as if it is no longer in operation and that it

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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Page 20: Website Guide - ThinkPlanLaunch...Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Before I was a serial entrepreneur in the IT industry with multiple startups under my belt,

was actually a reseller of 0hosting.org which doesn’t allow for any new registrations.

When it was operating the service was hit or miss depending on which

hosting server their assigned to you. The free option assigns a shared server that hosts

other websites. This is a huge disadvantage specifically for free hosting services. For

shared hosting there are many websites that are hosted on these free servers and their

IP address is shared with yours. If any of the other websites are flagged as spam or

malware, your site might also by recognized as spam or malware. This hurts your

search rankings and also some browsers might automatically block your website. This

wasn’t always the case and I did have some success for a couple of months

Another service I used was 000hosting.org. It seemed to work on and off

and I didn’t like it as much as hourb.com. There are other free hosting sites out there,

but don’t count on them being reliable. I ended up going with the paid hosting service,

Bluehost. They are cheap, reliable, and I can host multiple websites on one account for

free through their add-on domain handling. Since I knew I would be making many

websites in the future it made sense to pay for something that would save me a lot of

headache later. Of course, if you aren’t ready for the commitment, I do recommend

these free options. Once you are more comfortable head over to Bluehost and get a

hosting package with them, use the free domain and one-click WordPress install.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

Phase 2: Marketing Tools

Finding and building your audience

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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

Phase 2: Marketing Tools

Provided that you were successful in getting your basic website up you are now

ready for the next phase. This is where you will implement tools that will allow you to

know who your audience is, where they are, and the best way to reach them. You will

also build a following by activating your website visitors into repeat visitors which will

eventually lead to sales. This is by giving them the option to subscribe to one of your

marketing channels.

Email has been proven, time after time, to be one of the most effective channels to

reach your subscribers. Other options include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more.

The more channels you can grab visitors the better.

Financially, marketing tools range from free to modest costs. Ultimately, your

marketing tools will be worth every penny because they will optimize your business

and will lead to more sales, revenue, and profit.

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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

Websites have become the face

of most modern businesses. In

fact, many websites host the

actual product or service which

itself is at the core of the business

– such as with today’s increasingly

popular Software as a Service

(SaaS) solutions. Even in cases

where the product is not based

around online software, however,

most websites still act as a central

point of connectivity between a

business and its customers. This is

just as true for a one man show as

it is a huge corporation.

Your opportunity awaits in this

connectivity where you can learn

more and more about your

customer. They will happily be

thankful that you can tailor your

site so that it suits their interests.

Service 1: Market

research - Google Analytics

Google Analytics is often

considered the universal service for

analyzing your website visitors. It is

free and relatively easy to install. You

can insert the provided code directly

onto your website or if you are using

services like LaunchRock or WordPress

you can add it by providing your

unique ID in the settings or with a

plugin.

What Google Analytics does is

give you insight on who your visitors

are, what they are doing and how

many of your vistors are doing what

you intended them to do. Something

as simple as purchasing an item on an online store is actually a fairly

complex process with multiple decisions for users to make and multiple

pages for them to navigate. By using Google Analytics you can understand a

user’s behavior and make decisions on how to improve the site for the

user, making it

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your site useful. It also tells you what product or content to focus on by showing you

which pages have high activity. There is really no reason not to use Google Analytics for

your basic website.

Service 2: Email Marketing Service - Aweber

Ask any startup guru and they will tell you that one of the

most effective marketing tools out there is a good email

marketing service. There reasons are that it typically has the highest conversion rates,

is cross-platform (across devices), and relatively low cost compared to the alternatives.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

Aweber is the best with MailChimp

being a close second. If you set up your first website

with LaunchRock, you will hopefully be amassing a

list of future customers using their free plugin to

capture emails. Alternatively, if you are using

WordPress you can use a number of plugins to

easily embed an Aweber sign up form on your site.

If you have the ability to code, you can just copy and

paste a snippet of code in the right area.

easy for them to navigate and complete their goals which in turn helps you complete

your goals as a revenue-generating business.

It is a very powerful tool that can accelerate your website development by

showing you what is working and what is not. Also, it can save you a lot of money by

telling you which customers you should target. Specifically, who are the people that

find

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Service 4: Engagement Software - SumoMe

SumoMe is a great free tool that you can add on your

website to help build your email subscriber list,

analyze your website visitors’ behavior, get your

visitors to share your site on social media, and more.

Installation is easy. You can add the code directly to

your website or template builder that supports HTML editing, or, if you are

using WordPress, you can download and install the plugin.

The essential tool provided is the list builder. When a visitor lands on your

website and they don’t end up signing up and giving you their email, a nice little

box pops up and gives them the chance to sign up one last time before they

leave the site. It is triggered when the plugin detects the user is about to leave

and gives you a chance to get some extra subscribers you wouldn’t get. You will

probably have seen it on our site, thinkplanlaunch.com.

Another cool add-on is the heatmap tool. It shows you where the visitor

focuses their attention when they visit your site. You might see where they are

reading, where they are clicking, and how you can improve your site to make it

easier for them to complete your goals.

Lastly, once you’ve entered Phase 3 of this guide, you can turn on the social

sharing tool. It makes it easy for your users to share your site with their friends

on social networks. If your content is amazing, your visitors are only one click

away to making your site go viral.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

Phase 3: Professional Touches

Credibility, reliability, and trust

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Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

Phase 3: Professional Touches

So you have gotten your website up, connected it to some marketing apps. Now

you are in the position of taking it to the next level. Phase 3 is where you will need to

establish trust, prove your credibility, and have a reliable site for your visitors. This

mainly touches on the design of your website and monitoring its performance.

The design of your site will be judged by your visitors immediately. Does it look

like a legitimate site? Does it seem trustworthy? Or, does it look like a spam site filled

with information that is untrue or unreliable? Having a professional looking design will

elevate your site to make it look like it belongs to a well-established business rather

than a fly-by-night operation.

Also, is your website always available? How do you know? For your business time

is money and there are tools available that will help give you peace of mind.

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Professional Templates and Themes

There are many outstanding website templates and WordPress themes

available for free. Usually they get the job done. However, when you are building a big

site, you’ll want to consider using professional templates and themes. They can save

you time and money (if you later need to hire a full time designer/developer).

Professional themes for WordPress offer many extras that are essential to

making your site look professional. Beautiful icons, e-commerce support, flexibility,

customization, and more are included in your premium theme package. The themes

usually come with support too so in case you need some extra help, you can easily get

access to a support team right away.

Divi by Elegant Themes for WordPress

ThinkPlanLaunch is built off of an Elegant Themes’s package

called Divi. It is amazing. Before I got into WordPress, I used

to code entire websites. Usually this took a lot of time,

planning, and collaboration with other designers and

developers. The results that I could achieve were great, but,

with the great expense of time and effort, which was somewhat of a guilty victory. Time

is your most valuable asset and Divi has given me back a lot of time. I wish I came

across it years ago.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website

What makes Divi stand out is

it’s simplicity, the website builder tool

that is preloaded with many templates,

and flexibility. Divi is a website in a box. It

takes literally minutes to build out an

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entire website, whether it is a commerce site, personal website, company website,

branding site, or even product promotion site. Of course you will need to replace the

preloaded text with your own and maybe change a few icons.

The page templates that it gives you are all tested out and based off of

other successful websites. You just need to plug in your own words, images, and color

themes.

Either way, you can simulate your entire website experience with the click

of a few buttons. Trying to do that by HTML editor takes a lot of time. Even worse,

trying to test it out using HTML takes forever. Using Divi, you can make alterations easy

make your site adaptable to the analytics data you will collect.

Themeforest – Wordpress theme and HTML template market

Themeforest is a marketplace for premium WordPress themes and HTML templates. It

has a lot of professionally designed and well-thought out themes for you to choose

from. A lot of big sites use the themes and templates from Themeforest.

Avada for WordPress

Avada is the most popular premium WordPress theme. It is also very versatile like Divi,

great for e-commerce, and has great support. Like Divi it has a builder tool so you can

construct web pages without needing to code or do anything special. It is an excellent

option for making your site look more professional.

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X Theme for WordPress

X is another popular, versatile premium WordPress theme. I have had the

pleasure of using it extensively. What I like about this theme is that it is preloaded with

different styles that you check out and play with. It is great for when you want to get a

website up but don’t have any particular design ideas in mind. X is great at showing

you want you can do with your theme.

ThemeForest Market for HTML

If you have decided to go full HTML then you should strongly consider

using a premium template. Themeforest has a large library of templates that look great

and were designed by professionals. You will just need to alter the code to reflect your

site wordings and images. If you have some skills in HTML this could be a good option.

In my case, despite my HTML coding abilities I still prefer WordPress because of its

speed of getting websites up and running. However, if you need a customized page, do

consider these templates as an option.

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Design work

The look and feel of your website is important to adding to your credibility

and professionalism. Design alone can determine sales as people really do judge books

by the cover. In the case of apps, I’ve learned that the app icon design is often one of

the most important elements to getting it downloaded. While it would be nice to have a

full time designer available at any moment, I have learned that hiring a designer full

time isn’t necessary for everyone. In many cases, having a designer is a luxury. Unless

your business is on multiple platforms (web, apps, print, media, etc) or you are

engaged with several stakeholders (customers, partners, affiliates, investors, etc) you

really don’t need a full time designer.

What you can do is get design work done at a fraction of the time and cost

through agencies both online and offline. 99 Designs is a great resource from

customized, professional design work. You can get logos or entire web design packages

with proposals for you to choose from all without hiring a single designer. It is

something to consider for the long run. One good logo might be just enough to add an

element of professionalism to your site. You can also use it on your social media pages,

printed materials (pamphlets, business cards), and emails.

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, Instagram, Pinterest, and even Snapchat

and Vine are often considered for social media marketing. Before you sign up for any of

them, do consider how they will be used in your overall strategy and make sure you

wording, logos, themes, and designs are consistent.

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Uptime Monitor - Pingdom

Many entrepreneurs might gloss over this service but I highly

recommend it because it has save me a lot. Pingdom is a

website monitoring tool that will notify you by email, SMS,

Twitter, and more if your website goes down. You can get one

website monitored for free. The peace of mind it can give is

amazing.

I have had instances where I would go out to pitch to investors and to my

horror find out that my website went down before I headed into a meeting. This is not

only embarrassing but can also detract from your credibility. Imagine your first-time

customers clicking through to see your site and not get through. Same with putting up

expensive ads.

Web hosting is not perfect. You generally can look at a websites reliability

by judging its uptime or the amount of time the server is running and your website is

accessible. Ideally you want an uptime of 100%. This is usually not obtainable due to a

number of reasons. Power outages, natural disasters, overheated servers, human

error, and others can cause a server to go down. Having an uptime of 90% is abysmal.

Even something as seemingly high as 99.8% is actually a little concerning as within a

year, a server with an uptime of 99.8% will experience a downtime of 17 and a half

hours. Imaging if Amazon was down for 17 and a half hours. They would lose so many

sales.

Protect your website with an uptime monitor. I recommend Pingdom

because it has been reliable to me and hasn’t given me false alerts like some of the

other uptime monitors I’ve used.

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If you have made it through phases 1 to 3 congratulations. You have

established your online presence and built a strong foundation for your

business. Hopefully you have picked a great new domain name, found a great

web host, and set up your marketing tools. With a professional-looking site,

your website visitors will be delighted to explore your website and hopefully

become your customer.

Your website is a powerful asset for your business. It is part art and part

science. Your visitors will let you know how they feel about the site through your

analytics, feedback, and social networks. The next steps would be SEO, driving

traffic to your site, and advertising considerations.

If you want a full list of resources talked about in this eBook as well as

some more that we use on ThinkPlanLaunch, be sure to visit

http://thinkplanlaunch.com/resources/.

Website Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to your First Website Graphics by FreePik.com

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