Tag Archives: colors

5 Photography Tips for Bloggers

Posted on July 17, 2019 by Hosting

The post 5 Photography Tips for Bloggers appeared first on HostGator Blog . Visual content opens the door to retaining your readers’ attention. Creative photography can have a positive impact on building strong audience connections. With only 81% of people skimming the content they read online, pictures give your visitors another reason to stay longer on your blog. It’s another way to communicate without adding an extra block of boring text. Be bold in your blog marketing by using photography to your advantage. Try these five tips below. 1. Set Up a Simple Studio As a blogger, you’re checking off your to-do list with the essential blogging tools you need to be successful. Those tools may include a quiet place to write, a website builder , and a social media account. But what about the photos for your blog? Right now, stock photos aren’t satisfying most readers. Your audience craves original images to capture their attention. For bloggers, your studio may be your smartphone and a blank wall in a room. When you feel more comfortable, you may want to purchase a backdrop, tripod, and starter lighting kit. “Setting up a home photography studio is a relatively simple process with minimum start up costs. You can choose to create your studio in its own specific room or block off areas of an existing space and dedicate it to your photography,” says Shannon Ciricillo , an American fashion, lifestyle, and travel photographer. To boost your blog’s presence, it may be time to invest in photography. That means setting up a simple studio in your home or office to take photos.   2. Use Natural Light Light is a primary element for any photographer. The right amount of light can drastically influence your images. When there is too much light, the subject in the image becomes distorted. When there is too little light, the subject becomes impossible to see. Natural light is the sunlight. It doesn’t come from your lighting equipment. Because the light source is coming from the sun, it’s important to learn how to use it properly. The light’s direction, the weather, and the time of day can impact your photos. Plus, the direction of the light determines how the shadows fall on your subject. Here’s a short video showing how to use natural light: If you decide to shoot outside on a sunny day, try taking the subject of your photo into the shade. You want the light to shine at your subject, not behind. If you want to stay indoors, move towards a window and test out different angles. Natural light is an effective resource for bloggers. Learn as you go, and in no time, you’ll be mastering this new skill.   3. Experiment with Different Angles Seeing things differently sparks your followers’ curiosity. Shooting a photo from multiple angles provides the reader with a diverse perspective. When you’re starting out, you will discover there are several types of angles. There’s the bird’s eye view, the low angle, the eye level, and the oblique angle. Don’t feel overwhelmed to learn every angle; your goal should be to try what works for your blog. For instance, decide the emotion you want to convey in the photo. Chamira Young , an art nerd and photographer, offers advice: “Positioning yourself above your subject often results in a flattering shot. When your subject is looking slightly up at you, it can add a sense of vulnerability, intimacy, and approachability.” In the  image below , the photographer takes a close up of a plant. To mimic this shot, you’ll want to get as close to the subject as possible. And if necessary, use your camera’s zoom feature to get even closer. Depending on your subject, every angle won’t be pleasing to the eye. If you want to take a photo of a burger, you would not use a bird’s eye view angle. So, always consider your blog visitors’ point of view and their expectations.   4. Add Creative Props A photo is more than just its main subject. If you’re looking to enhance your pictures, you’ll want to invest in props. The smallest addition to an image can make a huge difference. Relevant props spark originality. They also give the image more context and character as it relates to your text. When describing specific concepts, it’s better for your blog audience to see what you’re explaining. In the  photo below , the pastries are next to flowers and slices of fruit. Visitors can infer that these tasty treats are fresh with these natural props. While props can improve your photos, it’s also critical not to overuse them. Too many props can dominate your picture, taking away from the main purpose of the shot. Your props should complement your photo, too. Think about the colors, the sizes, and the placement of the props. Readers should know exactly what to focus on in the image.   The right prop provides personality to your already beautiful images. Use them strategically to get the most benefit.   5. Shoot Photos in Advance Preparation is key when developing unique photos for your blog. While some of your pictures may happen on a whim, your best work comes from advance planning. For starters, consider your editorial calendar to map out your photo shoots. If you’re publishing only carrot dishes for your food blog next week, you should plan to get several photos using the vegetable. “It pays off to have everything planned and prepared in advance. That way, you don’t need to think up new poses and compositions or look for clothing or other props at the last minute. This will not only save you time, but also make you trustworthy,” writes photographer Majo Elias . It’s also helpful to create a checklist of what you may need. From people to props, it’ll give you a sense of how to manage your time during a shoot. Planning your photos ahead of time also alleviates the stress of the entire process. When you know your specific goals, you can take action and move on to another blog task.   Picture Perfecta Visual content adds a vivid layer of sophistication to your blog. With photography, you can transform a 100-word description into a beautiful work of art. For more tips on getting more out of your blog, check out our articles on SEO best practices for blogs , networking tips for bloggers , and improving your blog load time . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 5 Photography Tips for Bloggers

Creating a Website: How To Create a Beautiful Site

Posted on March 19, 2019 by Hosting

The post Creating a Website: How To Create a Beautiful Site appeared first on HostGator Blog . When creating a website, aesthetics aren’t everything – but they definitely matter. Have you ever visited a website that was cluttered, had colors that clashed, or a design that made it hard to read and navigate? Your response was probably to click away and go looking for another website to visit in its place. If you don’t know anything about web design, but you know it’s time to start that website you keep thinking about, you’re probably wondering to how to make a website that will both look good and accomplish your goals. For aspiring website owners that don’t know how to code and don’t have the budget to hire a designer (or would simply rather not spend that money), the best answer is to use an online website builder . Why Create a Website with a Website Builder? Website builders are a fast and easy way to get started with a new website or blog. And this is one case where taking the easy route doesn’t mean sacrificing quality. You can create a truly beautiful and effective website with the right website builder. Here are three benefits to using a website builder . 1. You can use website templates designed by professional designers. Any good website builder you consider will include a number of attractive templates that have been designed by skilled web designers. That means you get to take advantage of their skills without paying top dollar, like you would if you hired them on your own. In most cases, the designers that create templates for website builders will have knowledge of web design best practices and incorporate them into the templates they create. Even if you don’t have a good eye for visuals or website UX (user experience), you can trust that the people who created the template you start with do. By starting with a good template, it’s easy to build a website that looks beautiful and makes a good impression on your visitors. 2. You don’t have to learn how to code. Coding languages are complicated and intimidating to anyone that doesn’t already know them. And even some people who know how to code find it challenging. But you can skip over dealing with all that completely.   Choosing the best website builder for your business or site saves you from having to learn to code . And notably, it means you’ll also never have to deal with coding when making later updates. People that hire a designer to build their website will still have to struggle with HTML down the line when they need to make additions and changes. With a website builder, every future update will be simple.   3. You can make the website your own. The templates are a good starting point, but you don’t want your website to look just like all the other websites created from the template you chose. Don’t worry. You still have room to add your own style and make sure the end results look beautiful to you, while still being intuitive for your visitors. You can change out colors, add and remove different elements of the page, and move things around with simple drag-and-drop website builder functionality. Starting with a template provides a good shortcut, but from there it’s entirely up to you what you choose to do with it. How to Create a Website with a Website Builder If you’re sold on the idea of using a website builder, then it’s time to get started. These are the steps to building a beautiful website using a website builder. 1. Choose your website builder. First things first, you need to choose which website builder to go with. You have a number of options to choose from, and making the right choice now matters. Many website builders make it hard to keep your website if you move to a new product down the line. When looking for the best website builder for you, consider: Ease of use – You don’t want to spend hours learning how to use your new website builder, and you shouldn’t have to. Many website builders provide intuitive editing tools and resources to help you get familiar with the product right away. In particular, look for drag-and-drop functionality which makes editing easy for anyone, no matter the level of skill. Cost – Some drag-and-drop website builder options are free, but most that offer the kind of functionality you’ll need will cost somewhere in the range of $5 to $40 a month—and that’s an ongoing cost, you’ll be paying for as long as you keep your website up. Make sure you choose an affordable website builder you can pay for now and in the months and years to come. Mobile compatibility – Many of your visitors will be coming from mobile devices, so your website needs to look as good on a small screen as it does on a computer. Make sure your website builder provides easy options for making your website mobile friendly, such as responsive templates. Number of templates –  When you start from a template that comes pretty close to what you want your website to look like, the job of customizing it will be easier. The more options you have, the easier picking the right template will be. Media features – If you ever hope to include video or audio on your website, consider what options a website builder offers for adding them. SEO features – Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important tactic for making sure people are able to find your site. While there’s a lot to doing SEO effectively, a good starting point is having a website builder that offers SEO features that make on-site optimization easier. Image library – Finding good images is a big part of creating a website that looks great. A website builder that provides an image library can make the process much faster and easier whether that be for your small business or personal blog. Analytics – Easy access to website analytics will help you track the success of your website over time. Consider what analytics options your website builder offers. Figure out what your main priorities are in a website builder and find one that provides everything you need. 2. Select your favorite template. Creating a website with a website builder starts with a template. Look through the different options available to find one that’s a close match to what you have in mind for your site. Don’t just think about the one you like the look of the best—you can easily change a lot of the visual elements of the template you choose. Think about which one has the closest structure  and layout to the website you want to create. That will make bringing it in line with your unique vision easier. 3. Choose your color scheme. So much of creating a beautiful website as a business owner or blogger will depend on the colors you choose. You want to be consistent with the colors you use across the website—if someone clicks from a page that’s green and blue to one that’s red and black, it creates a confusing experience. And you want to make sure you stick with colors that look good together. Creating a color scheme as one of your first steps will help you achieve both those goals. You’ll know which colors to stick with for your backgrounds, fonts, images, and various page elements. If you don’t really know how to select colors that look good together, you can find a number of free resources online to help. Browse sites like Design Seeds and Color Hunt for inspiration. And the tool Coolers lets you pick a color you like, and see a wide variety of automatically generated color schemes that include it until you find one you like. All of these resources helpfully provide the color codes for each number, so you can easily find them in the editing tools of your website builder as you work. 4. Create a style guide for your site. As with your color scheme, creating a style guide for your website early on will help you make sure your style is consistent across the site and everything looks the way you want it to. This doesn’t have to be anything too long or complicated. It can be a basic list of notes on the stylistic choices you want to use on your site. Consider things like whether you want your elements and buttons to have rounded corners or sharp ones. Do you want all the pages on your website to maintain the same basic layout? What coloring do you want to use for backgrounds, text, links, and buttons? What font do you want to use, and if you want to use more than one, what contexts should you use each in? You can get some inspiration by looking at examples of other style guides , but yours can be much simpler than anything the big brands put together. It should simply serve as a guide you can revisit anytime you’re working on a new page and need a reminder of how to keep it stylistically in line with the rest of the site. 5. Define your website’s goals. While this part doesn’t have to do with making your website beautiful, it’s an important step in creating a website that’s effective. Everyone that creates a website has something they want to accomplish. In order to do so, you need to be strategic in creating a website designed to meet your goals. Spend some time clearly defining what those goals are. You’ll definitely have one overarching goal—for a business owner, that will be making new sales, for a personal website it could be connecting with people through blog posts ho care about the same things you do. In addition to that, you’ll likely have a number of smaller goals that contribute to your primary one: getting noticed by the right people, gaining traffic, and building an email list are a few possible examples. When you approach your website design with clear goals in mind, you’ll do a better job of making a website that’s in line with what you want it to be and do. And you’ll know how to track its success after it goes live. 6. Clarify your messaging. We’ve talked a lot about visual design so far, but the wording you choose will be just as important to accomplishing your goals as the visual aesthetic. The written content you include on your website (called copy in marketing parlance) has to do the heavy lifting of telling your visitors what the website is about and why they should care. You may find this easier if you take a little time to look at similar websites and see how they describe themselves. They can serve as inspiration to help you clarify your own messaging, while also making clear what’s already being done. Ideally, you want to differentiate yourself from other websites and communicate to visitors what makes yours unique. Write out your unique value proposition (UVP), a line or two that describes what your website has to offer and how it’s different from any other site. You can put the UVP directly on your website’s homepage, and it will also help guide you in the copy you create for the rest of the site. 7. Decide on your website’s pages and organization. Another important factor in keeping your website effective is making sure it’s intuitive. You don’t want to overload your visitors with too much information on one page—that’s both confusing and bad for SEO. So figure out how to divide everything you want to share into a number of pages that are each devoted to a manageable amount of information. When you have an idea of the different pages you’ll create, think about how to best organize them in a way that will make it easy for your visitors to find what they’re interested in. Figure out a few main categories your different pages fit into. These will probably be your main menu items. If your website will be fairly simple and only have a few pages, this step shouldn’t be too complicated. If you expect your website to grow into something much larger that has dozens or hundreds of pages, then it’s even more important to define a clear website architecture now that you’ll stick with moving forward.   8. Get to work creating your site. Now that you’ve done all the advance prep to figure out what you want your website to look like and say, pull up your template and start making the necessary changes. Make sure you stick with your style guide, color scheme, messaging, and organization plan as you work. It can be easy to get carried away with making changes that look good in isolation, especially when a personal or business website builder makes each little tweak so easy. But you did all the work in those steps for a reason and your website will be more user friendly, beautiful, and effective if you follow the guidelines you created for yourself. 9. Run it by someone else to get a second opinion. When you spend time working on a website, you get too close to it to see it the way someone else will. Before you push it out into the larger world, find a friend you trust to be a set of fresh eyes for you. They may be able to spot minor errors or let you know if the navigation is a little confusing. Listen to their feedback and make any changes they recommend that you trust will make the website better. Unleash Your Beautiful Website After all that work, your website is ready for a larger audience. Secure website hosting (if you haven’t already) and publish it to the web. Creating a website is exciting. Seeing something beautiful you created yourself (even if with the help of a solid template to start) is certain to instill pride and give you a sense of accomplishment. Now you can start reaching people with your message and working toward your goals. If you’re ready to sign up for a hosting service and create your own website, please contact HostGator today. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Creating a Website: How To Create a Beautiful Site

How to Get More Views on Product Videos for Your Online Store

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Hosting

The post How to Get More Views on Product Videos for Your Online Store appeared first on HostGator Blog . In a chaotic world where everything from technology and fashion to weather patterns seems to be in a constant state of rapid change, one statement will always be true: You need product videos for your online store. Why? Properly tagged and marked up videos can improve your site’s SEO , cause shoppers to spend more time on your site, and, yes, boost your conversions . Producing videos is easier now than it’s ever been, but production is just one step in the process. If you want more people to watch your videos, share them, and buy what they’re seeing, there are a few more steps you’ll need to take. Know Your Numbers Start by knowing how many views your product videos get now in a typical day, week, or month. It’s one thing to say you want more views, but your efforts will be more effective if you set a goal based on your current views in a set time period. Also, think about where people are seeing your product videos. If the only place they’re available is on your site, it’s easy to track view counts, but your potential audience is limited. Add your product videos to your social media marketing mix if you haven’t already – just make sure you track views on each platform as well as on your site.   Be Your Own Toughest Video Critic Set aside some time to re-watch your product videos and see how they perform on this checklist.   1. First impression Does your adorable video of a puppy playing with your custom chew toys have an adorable thumbnail image, or is it just a blurred frame? Most platforms will automatically pick a thumbnail image for you, but you can usually change it if you need a clearer shot of your product. After you’ve uploaded your video, go into the editing tools for your post and you should find an option to choose a new thumbnail image. People are much more likely to click on a puppy than a blur.   2. Background Is the background for your product videos a neutral color and free of clutter? This can be as simple as a white wall, to keep viewers’ focus on your goods and not the stuff around them, especially if your products are small items or highly detailed. If there are hands in the video modeling jewelry or showing how something works, are they clean and well-manicured? This bag demo video shows how to keep the focus on the features , without distractions.   3. Clarity Background aside, is your product easy to see, with proper focus, steady camera work, and good lighting? Remember that your video has to stand in for customers getting to touch the product before they buy, so make sure there are close-ups and lots of angles.   4. Length Most people won’t watch more than 60 seconds of a video, and that’s Instagram’s video limit anyway, so don’t go over the minute mark unless you have a very good reason. Also, don’t feel like you need to fill 60 seconds just because. This video for an eyeshadow palette runs 17 seconds and does what it needs to do by showing off the colors.   5. Orientation Does your product video display in portrait (vertical) format on phones? While most platforms, like YouTube, still favor landscape orientation, vertical is becoming the preferred format for mobile users. Mobile is now where most videos get watched , so go ahead and cater to that preference on your site and on platforms that favor vertical video, like Instagram. In fact, IGTV is building its brand on the fact that all its video content is vertical , so this trend seems durable.   Once your videos get two thumbs up on this checklist for watchability, it’s time to check some technical things that can affect your videos’ searchability and reach.   Make Your Videos Easy to Watch and Find Use the right video format. There are so many video file formats out there, but the only one you need to concern yourself with for product videos is MP4. That’s the preferred format for YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and pretty much every other social media platform. If your current videos aren’t in MP4 format, there’s a whole slew of free online video conversion tools you can use to convert them to MP4 for easier social sharing. Many of them also allow you to add watermarks and compress your videos to upload faster and start playing for viewers as quickly as possible.   Mark up your videos for SEO. You already know to tag your videos in your social media posts so people can find them, but you’ll also want to make sure you’re using the meta tags on your site to tell search engine crawlers what your videos are about. Meta tags are important for SEO, and so is schema markup, which is a library of user-friendly code snippets that categorize content for Google. Kristen Hicks has covered everything you need to know about getting started with schema markup for better video results in Google searches, like featured videos and video thumbnails.   Once your videos are critiqued, improved, tagged, and formatted, it’s time to start sharing them more widely. Again, make note of your views, click-throughs, and conversions now so you can track your improvement over time.   Where and How to Share Your Product Videos Besides your store’s product pages and blog posts, there are lots of places to share your videos. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter all let you upload video directly, and you can pin YouTube videos on Pinterest. That doesn’t mean you need to post on all of these sites, though. Focus on the platforms where your customers and people like them spend their time, and don’t worry about the rest. You can also include product videos in your marketing emails. If you do this, it’s important to make sure that you code those emails correctly . That way, if the recipient’s email client doesn’t automatically load the video, they’ll see something other than blank space. If you sell or cross-list on a marketplace like Amazon, eBay, or Etsy, you can upload your product videos there as well.   More Video Views, More Sales Over time, you’ll get a clearer picture of which videos do best and which channels deliver the most views, click-throughs, and conversions. You can use that data to keep improving your videos, delivering videos that your customers like, and making more sales. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How to Get More Views on Product Videos for Your Online Store

5 Reasons to Set Up Your Email List with Constant Contact

Posted on February 4, 2019 by Hosting

The post 5 Reasons to Set Up Your Email List with Constant Contact appeared first on HostGator Blog . Email marketing plays a critical role in engaging your customers. It’s an opportunity to build a quality relationship beyond website visits. With the help of email, small businesses can level the playing field against their large corporate competitors. Sending a personalized message to each subscriber opens the door to more revenue. However, your team needs the right platform to facilitate the behind-the-scenes action. Constant Contact makes it possible with its powerful features and benefits. Ready to take your email marketing to the next level? Here are five reasons to use Constant Contact today. 1. Customizable Templates Small businesses run on limited resources. It’s not feasible for your team to know every aspect of email marketing. So, when it comes to designing email templates, your team may get stuck on what to do next. You all may decide to send plain-text messages or stick to the cookie-cutter templates. Constant Contact gives your small business more options with hundreds of customizable templates . Each template is easy to edit with a reliable drag-and-drop experience. Your team can personalize the colors and fonts to match your brand. Research shows that 46% of all email opens  happen on mobile devices.  Therefore, it’s imperative to build mobile-responsive email designs. But no worries, Constant Contact handles the heavy lifting for your small business. Moreover, templates should coincide with your intended message. From holiday designs to event invitations, your team can fit the right design with the right copy. No more generating templates from scratch, too. These reusable templates offer flexibility for every campaign. Forget the hassles of creating your own templates or hiring an expensive designer who can. With Constant Contact’s customizable templates, you get high-quality designs at your fingertips.   2. Targeted Campaigns In email marketing, it’s not good enough to just send any message to your subscribers. An irrelevant email gets quickly ignored, leaving your customers confused and frustrated. Personalization is important when developing your campaigns. You want every message to have a purpose and offer value to the recipient. As  Forbes contributor states: “All your email messages should offer some value to your users. That could be showing them your best content, offering discounts, or letting them in on news they won’t find elsewhere—whatever it is, it needs to mean something to your target audience.” Segmentation helps you deliver the right message to your consumers. Your segments may differ because of your marketing goals. You can send specific emails based on purchasing behavior, shopping habits, or even geographic location. Constant Contact’s click segmentation feature lets your team automatically add a subscriber to a list every time the contact clicks a link, a button, or a clickable image in your email. You then can send more targeted, behavioral messages. Avoid the trap of placing your subscribers inside a marketing box where they all receive the exact same message. Instead, your team should aim to customize the inbox experience with smart email marketing automation .   3. Contact Management As your small business begins to grow, you’ll want to keep accurate records of your contact list. Performing a regular check of your contacts ensures everyone in receiving relevant messages. A healthy email list is one free of inactive subscribers who haven’t opened your emails in a long period of time. For some companies, this period may be six months or one year. List maintenance acts a safeguard. Your goal is to connect with interested buyers desiring to hear about your products and announcements. If you already possess a list, Constant Contact offers the option to upload it from Excel, Gmail, or Outlook. Still in the list building stage? No problem, the platform also lets you add new contacts from your Facebook page and website. Contact management is essential to your small business operations. Rather than forget or neglect it, take action with Constant Contact.   4. Performance Tracking Before email became a legitimate marketing tool, companies sent out random emails to announce an upcoming sale or remind subscribers about a local event. No one really thought about measuring the effectiveness of each campaign. Over the years, tracking the performance of your emails has become a major aspect of email marketing. Teams are evaluating everything from open rates to click-through rates to bounce rates. Constant Contact provides real-time tracking to observe who’s opening, clicking, and sharing your emails. The in-depth reporting allows you to measure campaign performance over time and see who is engaged and who isn’t. Take a simple approach to improve the performance of your campaigns. John Grimshaw ,  analytics and data manager at DigitalMarketer, offers his advice: “An easy way to improve click-through rate is to avoid over-selling your products or services through email and instead focus on getting people to click your link. The body of the email only has one job: sell the click.” Performance tracking is crucial to understanding your small business’s email marketing efforts. Constant Contact makes measuring your impact easier.   5. Loyalty Incentives For small businesses, customer retention is a key part in sustainability. You want customers to stick with your brand, rather than purchasing one item and never seeing them again. Loyalty is often earned in the customer relationship. It’s unrealistic to assume if a customer buys from you once that they will repurchase. You need to offer something in return to entice them to revisit your brand. Offering loyalty incentives is one solution to maintaining your customer base. An incentive can include anything from a 10% coupon on the next purchase or a special invitation to an exclusive event. With Constant Contact’s PLUS plan , your team can create a mobile-responsive coupon within an email and track when it’s claimed, shared, and redeemed. This tactic helps boost referrals to your small business. Keep your customers coming back for more with loyalty incentives. Email is the vehicle to drive engagement and sales.   Email Marketing With Confidence Leveraging email marketing will equip small businesses to compete in today’s marketplace. With Constant Contact, your team can save time and money with customizable templates and targeted campaigns. Skip all the hassle and add  Constant Contact to your email marketing toolkit. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 5 Reasons to Set Up Your Email List with Constant Contact

DIY Website Building Mistakes to Avoid

Posted on January 4, 2019 by Hosting

The post DIY Website Building Mistakes to Avoid appeared first on HostGator Blog . You need a website. If you have a business (or are thinking of starting one), a website is an absolute necessity for customers to find you and for you to show your legitimacy. And if you have art or content you want to share with the world, a website is the easiest path to getting your stuff in front of other people. Building a website used to be something that felt out of reach to a lot of people. Learning to code and design a website from scratch is a big job that requires time and skill that most people just don’t have. But even if you can’t afford to hire a web designer or devote time to learning how to code, you can create a website. DIY website building is now accessible to just about anyone – no coding required. With the right tools, you can build your own website within hours. But if you’re not careful, you can still fall prey to mistakes. Keep reading to learn more about how to do DIY website building right, and which DIY website design mistakes to avoid. How DIY Website Building Works You may be wondering, “ What is a website builder ?” and “How can I use it?” DIY website building is all about using the right tools. The main thing you need is a good website builder that has features that match your needs and an intuitive editor you can learn to use without much effort. Most website builders come with a number of website builder themes that give you a template to start from. Once you select your template, you use the editor to change out all the elements and details you want in order to make the website fully yours. With a good editor, you can easily:      Change the colors of each part of the page      Sub in new backgrounds      Upload new images      Add media like videos or music      Change out the text for your own      Add buttons and forms      Drag and drop different elements of a page to where you want them      Add a map of your store location      Add a shopping cart and check-out features for an ecommerce business The more you customize the template you start with, the more your website turns into something that’s uniquely yours. The right website builder makes designing a website for your business or personal project a fast and easy process. You can go from zero to a finished website in a matter of hours.   Website Design Mistakes to Avoid Website builders make DIY website building possible, but they don’t come with automatic knowledge of web design best practices. If you create your website without doing some basic research, you may find yourself guilty of one of the common website design mistakes to avoid. To help you steer clear of that fate, here are a few of the most important website mistakes to watch out for when building your first website.   Mistake #1: Building your website without clear goals Every website has a purpose. If you’re designing a small business website , building an eCommerce store, or starting a blog or podcast for fun – there’s a reason (or several) you’re putting time and money into creating something other people will see. Before you really get into building out your site, take time to work out what those reasons are. Write down what goals you want your website to accomplish. Do you want the website to drum up business for your online store? Do you want to build a community of followers who love teapots as much as you? Do you want to gain enough traffic blogging about something you love to start making money from ads or affiliate marketing links? In addition to defining the main goal(s) of your website, you’ll also want to clarify the primary goal of each page you add to the website. Most websites shouldn’t have the same goal for every page. For example, an eCommerce business website will have some pages where the main goal is getting customers to make a purchase, but may have others focused on building trust in the brand or getting new email subscribers. Having clear goals in mind as you design your website will ensure you build each page to better meet those goals.   Mistake #2: Focusing exclusively on the desktop experience Users now spend more time browsing the internet on mobile devices than they do on desktop. If you build a website only works well on a desktop, a significant number of your visitors will have a bad experience and leave. Making your website  mobile-friendly  isn’t optional ­– at least not if you want visitors to show up and stick around. When using a website builder, one of the easiest ways to create a mobile-friendly site is by starting with a responsive template. Responsive websites provide all the same information and visuals on any device you use, but rearrange how it all shows up to ensure the page looks good no matter the size of your screen.   Responsive website templates are already set up to work on any device your visitors come from. All you have to do from there is test out your final design on mobile devices to check that all the changes you made to the template still work well on all device types. Your mobile visitors should have no problem reading the text or clicking on a link. Testing gives you a chance to confirm that all your buttons and text are big enough.   Mistake #3: Not making your website your own The great thing about starting with a template is that a good amount of the initial work is done for you. The not-so-great thing about it is the possibility that hundreds of other websites out there could be using the same theme you are. But that’s only a problem if the end result of your DIY web design (and theirs) still looks a lot like the template you started with. If you take advantage of all the customization options a website builder makes available, you can create a website that’s truly unique. Be willing to switch up colors and move things around. Load original images and media, and fill in all the text with writing that tells visitors who you are and what you do (more on that part later). Even if you’re starting with someone else’s design, by the time you finish, you want it to be yours.   Mistake #4: Designing the website for yourself This could be confusing when paired with the last mistake on the list. We just told you to make it your own, but that doesn’t mean to design the website as though you’re the target audience.  Chances are, you’re not. Your goal isn’t to build a website that you think looks nice. You want a website that your visitors will like. And more specifically, you need your target audience – the visitors that you most want to find the site and stick around – to like it. Before you start designing your website, take some time to think about who your ideal visitors are. Do they have some general interests in common? Do they fit into any specific demographic categories? When you can picture who you’re designing your website for, you’ll do a better job creating something that will appeal to them.   Mistake #5: Organizing it in a confusing way You want every visitor to your website to have an easy time finding whatever they’re looking for.  Consider website organization best practices that require s organizing all your website pages in a clear and intuitive way. If your website will be fairly small and simple (say, 10 pages or less), creating a clear organization for the pages you create may be pretty easy. If you’ll have a larger website with a lot of different pages, then you need to figure out a few top-level categories to sort them into that will be useful for your visitors. For example, if you run a business that sells board games, then your top level categories could be something like genre (Trivia Games, Adventure Games, Horror Games, Fantasy Games, etc.) or something practical like number of players or the age group the games are for.  These categories would help your visitors jump more quickly to a choice that suits their preferences. Think about what your visitors will be looking for when they come to your site and figure out categories and menu items that help them quickly and easily find it.   Mistake #6: Not designing with a visual hierarchy Remember the goals you defined for each page of your website? As you design each page, the main thing you want your visitors to do or see should be near the top of the page. The less important information that you still want to include can go further down. The reason to organize each page with your most important information up top is because some of your visitors won’t bother scrolling down, so you want to capture their attention as quickly as possible. This is even more important for your mobile visitors. They see even less of the page on their devices and have to do more scrolling to get to the information further down on the page. By creating each page with a visual hierarchy in mind, you increase the chances that your visitors will see your most high-priority information.   Mistake #7: Having an inconsistent style If you spend some time browsing other websites, you’ll notice that different pages of the same website will be recognizably connected by a visual style. This provides a visual signal to visitors that you’re still in the same place. Even as you jump to a new page, you’re experiencing the same brand. If you click on a link and find yourself on a page with an entirely different color scheme or menu, then you’ll assume you’ve left the website you’re on, right? To keep your website experience consistent and avoid that kind of confusion, make sure that each page you design on your website looks similar to the others. You want a consistent color scheme, a matching menu and footer, similar images or illustrations, and consistent fonts and formatting. If you have a logo, putting it in the top left corner of each page is another good way to ensure your visitors always know where they are. Create a basic style guide for yourself before you start and stick with it. In a website builder, if you start working on each page by copying one you’ve already created, keeping the same visual style should be pretty easy to accomplish.   Mistake #8: Using stock photography You need images for your website and stock photography is the easiest and most affordable option. But stock photography has some real downsides. It looks generic. You could end up using the same photographs your visitors recognize from other sites. And a number of research studies have found that original photography simply gets better results. You should consider using professional photos for your business website if you want to develop memorable and original website content. If you need to use some stock photographs to get started in order to get your website out there, that’s better than not having a website at all. But make a plan to create original photographs or images to replace the stock images when you can. Your website experience will be better for it.   Mistake #9: Not optimizing your images Speaking of images, every one you add to your website provides some good SEO opportunities. Take a few seconds each time you add an image to make sure:      The image is sized well (if it’s too big it could slow down your page loading time, if it’s too small it could look fuzzy and make the page look bad)      Your image filename includes your target keywords      You add image alt text that includes your target keywords It doesn’t take long, but it makes your images optimized for SEO .   Mistake #10: Rushing the copy If you’re in a hurry to get your website out, then you may be tempted to just throw some words together that tell your visitors the basics of what your website is. This is a mistake. You don’t just need placeholder text that tells visitors the basics of what you do – you need copy that will convince them to care and take action. If you’re creating a business website that will help you make money, hiring someone with expertise in website copywriting is likely well worth the cost. If that’s out of your budget or you’re building a website for a personal project where bringing a professional in doesn’t make sense, then do some research into copywriting best practices . Some website writing tips to keep in mind:       Clarify your unique value proposition. The most important thing your copy needs to do is communicate to your visitors what you do and what makes you different from similar websites. This information needs to go high up on your home page and shape the messaging you provide throughout the rest of your website.       Focus on benefits you offer the visitor (rather than features). When you put a lot of work into developing a product or project, you tend to think of it in terms of what you did. Your copy needs to shift the focus away from what you did and toward what you can do for your visitors. For example, if you sell a reading light, talking about its brightness is a feature. Saying it makes it easier to read in bed without waking up your partner is a benefit because it solves a common problem your target audience has.       Keep your language simple and clear. If I weren’t taking my own advice here, I could have said “don’t use multisyllabic flowery language needlessly when there are more conversational words that work.” Same sentiment, but with more (and longer) words than needed to get the point across. Don’t use more words than you need and try to use language all your visitors will understand.       Use CTAs.   You want your visitors to take some kind of action, so tell them to. Calls to action are the phrases you use to get visitors to act, like “click here” or “learn more” or “sign up today.” Make sure that every page on your website explicitly tells your visitors what you want them to do.       Proofread ! Don’t let embarrassing types typos through. It makes you look sloppy and creates confusion for your visitors. Always read over your copy at least twice before publishing.   Mistake #11: Improper formatting Part of writing well for the web is getting the formatting right. People skim when they read online. Good formatting makes it easy for them to find the information they need as they quickly skim through your pages. Good formatting for the web includes:      Dividing your writing into sections with clear headings and subheadings      Using numbered lists and bullets where appropriate (kinda like we’ve done here. Meta, huh?)      Using bolds and italics for emphasis This will make your copy easier to read, gives you more opportunities to optimize your pages for SEO, and makes it easy to draw attention to the information you most want your visitors to notice.   Mistake #12: Not enough white space Nobody online wants to encounter a wall of text – your website isn’t a novel. White space makes your website look cleaner and less cluttered. It gives the words and images more room to breathe. Provide plenty of spacing between paragraphs and sections on your page. Some of the formatting options just shared will help with this, but just following those tips may not be enough. As you’re designing each page and deciding what will go where, make sure you leave space between different elements on the page. And “white space” doesn’t always literally mean the color white – if you have a green background, leaving space between the text, images, and other elements of the page still counts even if it looks more like “green space” to you.   Mistake #13: Forgetting on-site optimization You’re primarily designing your website for humans (and the humans in your target audience, more specifically). But for those humans to find your website, you need to incorporate design best practices for SEO . Do keyword research to learn the language your target audience is using when they search for what you provide.  Choose a primary keyword and some secondary keywords for each page, and incorporate them into a few main parts of the page:      The URL      The title tag      The headings      The image alt text      The meta description On-site optimization is just one part of doing SEO, but it’s the main part that’s in your control. It doesn’t take that long to make updates to each page that give it an edge in the search results.   Mistake #14: Skipping user testing You can try really hard to get inside the head of your target audience and create a website just for them. But you can’t know how they’ll respond to it without putting it to the test. The best way to find out if your website is intuitive and useful is to have some people test it out through usability testing . Try and find someone in your target audience if possible, whether they’re a current customer or a friend that fits the demographics. Ask them to browse the website for you and try out some of the actions you want visitors to take – filling out a form, making a purchase, looking for a specific page.  Their experience will show you if there’s anything that isn’t quite working with the way the site looks now. And be sure your user testing includes different devices and browser types. If everything looks great in Chrome, but something doesn’t load right in Firefox, you want to know about it.   Mistake #15: Showing no personality Your website will be your main face for your online presence. It should represent you. Don’t create something that’s dry and business like. Find ways to let some of your personality shine through on your personal or eCommerce website. It could be in the colors you choose, the media you add, or by including jokes or casual language in your copy. Don’t think that people will only take your website seriously if you make it bland. Being professional and having a unique personality aren’t mutually exclusive. Figure out how to let some of your more fun and human side through.   DIY Your Website – The Right Way DIY website building doesn’t have to be a lot of work, but that doesn’t mean you should be lazy about it. A website builder makes it easy to look good, but take some time to make sure your website will also work to achieve your goals and resonate with your audience. Doing the work to avoid these web design mistakes is a good start. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

Posted in HostGator, Hosting, VodaHost | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on DIY Website Building Mistakes to Avoid