How to Create a Website Step by Step [Guide]

Congratulations on your decision to create a website!

You may feel excited, full of expectations and a bit lost. Don’t panic. Making a website is as easy as ABC with Weblium!

This step-by-step guide will help you to build a site having no skills in web design, marketing or coding. It will take you only 15 minutes to read and will prevent you from making critical mistakes while creating your beautiful website.

By the way, if you need some help in creating your website, you can get everything done by our pros.

The key findings of this guide:

• what are the ready-to-use website templates and how to make your own website by using them;
• how to get your domain name and why you don’t necessarily need to pay for it;
• how to customize website templates for your business and go online successfully.

Step 1. Choose a ready-to-use website template

A ready-to-use website template is a solid foundation for your future website based on detailed research and niche expertise. It is our unique solution in the site-building industry with a big idea behind it.

Before creating a website template, we analyze at least a hundred of niche websites and implement best practices in mockups and design. Thus, all ready-to-use templates include maximum elements you may need. By removing unnecessary items, you will get a perfect structure for your future website.

Step 2. Get your domain name

Right after choosing a website template, you automatically get your domain name on weblium.com for free. You can manage a random name after buying a subscription. You may also get another domain name, for instance, mycompany.com, and connect it to the existing site.

A common practice for choosing a domain name is to use a company name.

Also, mind the domain extensions that may assist you in reaching your prospects and clients. Here are the most common extensions used for different websites:

• .com is used for businesses in all industries and regions. It is one of the most frequently used domain extensions, especially among the businesses that operate worldwide. However, it is one of the most expensive as well;
• by using us, .ca, .au, etc. domain extensions you indicate a certain country, thus presenting the area where you operate. You may also indicate a particular region by using locality domains. For the US, you may show where exactly you work in the following hierarchy: locality, state, country. For instance, the domain name for the company operating in Brunswick, Ohio will be as following: companyname.brunswick.oh.us;
• .info and .edu are perfect for informational and educational internet portals;
• .org extension is generally used for nonprofit organizations;
• .biz extension is chosen by small and big businesses for their websites.

How to get your domain name for free?

You have two ways to get a free domain name:

• use a free weblium.com domain with any plan. It means that your website URL will
  be random.weblium.com. You can customize your domain name after buying a subscription;
• buy an annual or biennial subscription and get any domain name for free.

Texts and headings

Remember that the heading is the first thing your site visitors see, so make it eye-catching. Publish unique and memorable content that reflects your business ideas and drives the audience to read every single word.

While creating content for a website, remember three basic practices offered by Jakob Nielsen, a Danish web usability consultant:

• be concise;
• write for scanners;
• use objective language.

Add Text block.

Add Title block.

Images

It’s amazing to what extent ready-to-use website templates may change if you customize their images. Relevant pictures will help to build a strong association with your brand and make people trust you. Add your own photos or use our free library with more than 200,000 images to find the best visuals for your website.

Add image block

Choose Free Photos to pick images from the free gallery.

Videos and interactive content

Your visitors will engage with your web content more actively if you add videos and other interactive content like animated images, infographics, galleries, tests and quizzes, white papers, etc.

Just think of it: 79% of marketers state that interactive content increases the number of repeat visitors and multiple exposures. So use this experience to make your website more effective.

Add Video block.

Embed video.

Contact forms

Interaction with your visitors is vitally important for running your business online successfully. By adding a contact form, you assist clients to reach you through your website. Use the leave-a-message form if you are ready to reply to received messages or call-back form if you prefer to call your clients and prospects.

Add Contact form block.

Manage Contact Form settings by adding or removing fields and changing the design.

Social icons

The recent statistics show that the numbers of active users for the most popular social networks are as follows:

• Facebook – 1.871 million;
• Instagram – 600 million;
• Twitter – 317 million;
• Pinterest – 150 million;
• LinkedIn – 106 million.

These data prove that ignoring social media would be a huge mistake for your business development. By adding social icons, you assist in promoting your business online and building trust to your company. Demonstrate the visitors that you are open to communication through the channels that they use every day.

Add Social icons block.

Manage Social icons settings by adding or removing social networks and changing the design.

Map

Add your address and a map to your website to indicate your location. It may be an extremely important factor for some industries as prospects want to reach the company that is located nearby. Think of the situation when a visitor comes to a dental clinic website and cannot find the location. He would hardly make an appointment as he does not even know whether the clinic is located in the right city.

Add Map block.

Manage Map settings by adding or removing the location and changing the design.

SEO tuning

You can make basic SEO tuning for each page of your website directly in the Weblium editor. Why do you need this? Well, to bring your website and search engines together.

Here, you could make 3 basic SEO settings:

• check how your page is optimized for a certain keyword;
• set a title for the page and see immediately how it will look like in search results. SEO experts recommend using not only the name of your company but also a brief description of page contents. You may add here maximum of 70 characters;
• set a description (snippet) for your page by describing your services or products, contacts and other important information – maximum 160 characters.

Go to Pages and click Page settings.

Select SEO tuning tab.

Web analytics

Your website must work effectively; otherwise, there is no sense in all this story. That’s why we highly recommend tracking its effectiveness.

By default, you can connect 2 free analytic tools to your website: Google Analytics or Hotjar. Remember, no coding is required! Just add tracking ID and click Connect Google Analytics buttons.

You can also embed a tracking ID of other web analytics tools manually to the code of your website in the same Integrations tab.

What’s Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is one of the most popular free tools for tracking website effectiveness across numerous parameters you need. It helps businesses to improve website performance by generating reports.

To get your tracking ID for Google Analytics, please follow these instructions.

What’s Hotjar?

Hotjar is a free tool assisting you to track the behavior of your visitors on the website. It is a heat mapping technology showing how they click, scroll, and move a mouse cursor on your website.

To get ID code for Hotjar, please refer this link.

Step 4. Go online

Now, your website is ready for launch! Activate it by clicking the “Publish” button and enjoy the benefits of your online presence. To make it more sufficient, do remember to work on your website improvement regularly.

Is that it? Yes, almost…

When you are done with publishing your website but still have not started a promotion campaign, please make sure to check that everything works correctly. Focus on the following factors that have huge importance for both ranking in search engines and your visitors:

Page speed test

Page speed is one of the most important factors that search engines take into account while ranking the web pages. Here’s why page load optimization is important and how to speed up your site.

Use PageSpeed Insights to check whether the speed of your website satisfies the requirements of search engines. A good ranking should score 85/ 100 though you still have some room to improve the performance of your site.

Content check for uniqueness

High-quality content is valued by search engines and your visitors. Use Copyscape to make sure that the content is unique. The uniqueness should never be lower than 90% as this is ruining your SEO strategy.

Test your links

Search engines, as well as your visitors, might leave your website after following a broken link. Use BrokenLinks to define and fix all possible issues.

Don’t want to waste time on creating a website yourself? Leave it to us and get a unique website, according to your preferences.Enjoy your online journey with Weblium AI Website Builder!