How To Make Your Own Website - Zero to One

While you may be inspired to create your own website, you also may be fearful of creating one that speaks negatively about your project. The amount of confusing, poorly designed, boring websites out there might make you feel like you have no shot at making a good one. 

Fear not! This blog will give you the tools to make a strong, vibrant website that helps you achieve the goals of your project. 

A Great First Impression

In the web design world, there’s a term called bounce rates. A website’s bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on a website then immediately close it. It became an industry term is because it happens a lot, and website geeks are always looking for ways to decrease bounce rates. 

The key to keeping bounce rates low is simple–make a great first impression. When people are confused by vague language, overwhelmed by too many links, or skeptical of low quality images, they’ll bounce. So let’s solve each of those problems one by one. 

One Liner

Most people will arrive to sites through google searches. They’ll search for a company to solve their problem, open a few websites, and make a decision about which one to contact. The main reason people bounce at this stage is because of confusing language. We can combat this through a clear, simple one liner. A one liner is a sentence that explains exactly what you do, who you do it for, and how you do it. For example, if a plumbing website says “Peace of Mind,” that doesn’t let visitors know exactly what they do. A better one liner might say, “We fix pipe leaks, bursts, and clogs fast in the LA area.” Boom. This clears up any confusion about what “peace of mind” might have meant, while actually offering more peace of mind. 

Homepage Image

Your homepage image should increase clarity about what you do, and focus on the feeling people will get if they work with you. For example, our plumber friends could show a picture of a toilet on their home page, but that doesn’t create a great association for the visitor. A picture of smiling employees or customers would be better. 

If you create a product, show people what that is in your image. If you deliver a service, show people how they’ll feel by choosing an image. Custom images work best, but only if they’re high quality and well thought out. If you’re on a budget, try Unsplash or Pikwizard. Sites like this let you use any image for anything (even commercial purposes) for free.

Clean, Minimal Text

On your home page, keep your text short and your fonts simple. Keep your text size small, and only use one color. In your navigation bar at the top of your website, keep a maximum of five links. If you have more links like that, use a drop down menu, or keep them on a separate page. You can learn more about how to use text that speaks for itself in my Typographical Hierarchy post, coming in a couple days. 

Guide the Visitor

After you’ve made a great first impression, you need to guide the site visitor towards the actions you want them to take. 

Your product or service solves a problem. The idea here is to explain the problem, then position your product as the solution. A great little workflow to follow is explaining what your customer wants (the end goal), calling out the problem that could steal their end goals, then explaining how your product provides the solution. 

At the end of every page on your website, there should be a button visitors can click. If visitors read helpful information on your website, but don’t know where to click after that, they might bounce. But if you give them a button to click that could solve their problem, you make it way easier for them to buy. 

The more friction a customer experiences when buying your product, the more convincing you’ll have to do. Usually this comes down to price. If your product is $5, like a cell phone charger, you don’t need to make a huge case for it. However, if your consulting package is $5,000, you’ll need to spend a lot more real estate on your website explaining why your consulting is worth it. 

Invite Them Into A Story

At the end of the day, people are looking for someone to solve their problems. The most successful websites are geared towards the customer, and they focus on. Less successful websites focus on how great the product and service is, without empathizing with what the customers really want. A great framework that has guided me over the years is the StoryBrand framework. It’s a copywriting framework that helps you create a success story for your customers, and then position your project as the guide who will help them reach success.

Here’s the basic premise: A character has a problem, then meets a guide who gives them a plan and calls them to action, helping them avoid failure and achieve success. By following the seven ideas in that sentence, you can create convincing copy anytime. 

Want to read more about this? Check out my blog detailing StoryBrand. 

Closing

I hope these three ideas–making a great impression, guiding your visitor, and inviting them into a story–have given you enough confidence to go from zero to one. Your first website won’t be perfect at all, but the great news is you can always adjust it until it’s really good. Trust me, by following these three ideas, your website will be a lot stronger than a lot of other websites. 

Good luck out there!

PS If you want another take on what to do if your website sucks, check out this free resource I have.