The Five Point Checklist For Jump-starting Your Website
Themes, email lists, growing engagement and more…
This post was originally published on https://theresonantvoice.com/jumpstarting-website/
In the last post, we discussed the mindset, determination and other prerequisites that you would need prior to starting your journey as an online creator (Click here to read it).
In this article, I am going to tell you what to do once you start.
I have been living as an online creator for the past three years and the reason why I struggled for so long is that I missed some key aspects that every online creator must have. For a long time, I didn’t realize the importance of email marketing. I was not willing to openly ask for engagement. However, in the end, all of these turned out to be huge problems that cost me a lot of valuable time.
So if you are a beginner, make sure you don’t miss any of these five things.
So let’s jump in.
1. Get an appealing theme for your website
This is the most important thing for any website. People don’t bother to read an article on a badly displayed, irresponsive webpage, no matter how good the content is. Readability is the most important factor. Your webpage must be well displayed on both computers and mobile devices.
Just make sure you check out these five things before finalizing your design.
- Make sure you have readable fonts and font sizes.
- The page should be responsive to mobile devices.
- No unnecessary designs and decorations.
- If you have ads, make sure they don’t make your content seem obscure.
- Make it easy to share and comment on your content.
Make sure you follow these and don’t go for any overcomplicated designs, be simple.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” — Leonardo da Vinci”
If you are using WordPress (which I highly recommend), check out this list of free simple themes that you could start with.
2. Have an active email list
The majority of the business done by online creators happens in their email list, not on their websites. This is because of two reasons,
- Website visitors don’t stay permanently, they come and go.
- There is no way to communicate with your website visitors on a more personal level.
This is where the importance of email kicks in. By having your visitors to subscribe to your email list, you can make them stay there permanently (until they hit unsubscribe, that’s unfortunate 😢), and can establish a deeper relationship through regular emails.
What I have learned from my last three years in blogging is that my email list is equally important as my website. So make sure you don’t miss out on this.
If you need a more detailed guide to managing email lists and email marketing check out this issue of Tradecraft magazine.
3. Tell people about it
It is really hard to start a website and keep creating content for a zero audience. That might also turn out to be a big mistake as you won’t be getting any feedback on the things you create.
So do this, tell at least ten of your friends, colleagues or family to sign up for your email list (if they are interested) and become your beta readers. From now they will be the first to see your content as they appear on your website.
The benefits of doing this are:
- Can avoid the boredom of creating content for a zero audience.
- Will have an idea about who your readers are so that you could deliver what they want.
- You can get feedback and start improving right from the beginning.
So go on, tell others about your website and make at least ten genuinely interested people subscribe to your email list. You can create a beta list with your Email Service Provider to give your beta readers early access to your content through email.
4. Focus on your content
While working on their websites, it is very common for people to drift into spending a lot of time perfecting their themes and layouts and they lose focus on their content. Always remember, Content is the king. People come to your website for your content. No one will ever come just because that plugin you used was really cool. So don’t spend a lot of time perfecting your themes and plugins, start simple and focus on your content.
However, there are certain aspects of your theme that you should focus on, like readability and responsiveness that I mentioned in #1. But avoid going beyond that (ignore this if you are starting a website on web development 😊).
5. Ask your readers for engagement
This is something that most of us don’t care about. We always complain that our blogs are not getting enough engagement, but never bothers to ask our readers to share the content or leave a comment. The truth is that there is no harm in saying,
“If you find this useful, share it with a friend or colleague who could get some value out of it.”
Or just ask,
“What are your views about [the topic of your article]? I would love to see them in the comments.”
It’s simple, if you want engagement, go on and ask for it. That’s pretty harmless.
That’s it, the five things to do, once you start as an online creator. Just make sure you don’t miss them, it will save you a lot of valuable time and money in the long run.
Do you feel like I missed something? Go on. Share them in the comments. I would love to know what they are.
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