Congratulations on taking the leap and deciding to build your own website!
Whether you're a beginner or a pro, we have everything you need to plan, create, publish and grow your site, blog or online store.
This Planner will help you think about your website and provide tips and ideas to inspire you. There are examples and explanations to guide you through the process of creating a top-notch, high quality website that meets all your needs.
The whole process may take a few hours, some discussions with your colleagues and several cups of coffee to go through. But don't worry, you can return to this tool at any time.
We wish you a fun time!
Fabien Pinckaers, Founder
Being clear on why you're creating your site is an essential first step to ensure your content and structure meet business objectives.
Visitors might not be interested in your products or services when they come to your site. They could want to learn something, improve their life, grow their business, find out more about you, etc. What great content can you offer your visitors? Why should they stay on your website?
It's often much easier not to start with a blank page. Take a look at your competitors
and similar companies around the world. They probably have the same objectives and
visitors that you do. How did they transform that into a website?
Try to find 3 websites that have remarkable characteristics.
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Find 3 websites that you like and write down what you like about them.
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#1
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#3
After working on this step, you may want to go back and refine your objectives or modify your visitors interests. Those 3 first steps are essentially linked, and the more time your spend on refining them, the better your website will be!
Your homepage is the most important page of your website. This is where visitors get their first impressions of you. An efficient homepage will prompt them to stay on your site, guide them towards your content, strengthen your company's branding and more.
Here are some pointers to help you get started.
Click here to unfold a Good Homepage
Find a catchy headline
Make sure anyone who visits your site understands what it’s about without too much reading.
To do that, the visible section of your homepage (above the fold) needs to be simple and straightforward. For example, use pictures of your work, screenshots of your app, a short and catchy hook.
The Banner or Big Picture building blocks are good choices for that.
Call-to-action
Add one, and only one, call-to-action to your homepage. Your homepage is
the page that gets the most visitors.
It's good practice to try to engage with your visitors on the homepage:
Contact Us, Subscribe to Get More Information, Check the Catalog, etc.
Use the Button block or the Newsletter subscription one (if Mass Mailing installed).
Add features and content
You can put more content in the intermediate section of your homepage (one
or two scrolls down from the visible section), but try to keep your
paragraphs easy to read and avoid walls of text.
For example, use pictures to help break up large areas of text by altering Text-Image and Image-Text blocks. If you prefer icons, use the Features or Feature Grid blocks.
Display social proof
Below your main banner or call-to-action, it's a good practice to put
social proofs about your products or services; customer quotes, videos,
photos of your products in actions, twitter quotes, etc.
You have many blocks available: References, Quotes Slider, Twitter Scroller,etc.
Your menu must be built for your visitors and not for your own purposes or objectives.
It needs to be organized, so that they see all the main content at a glance.
It needs to be clear, so that they get the content they expect when clicking an item.
With that in mind, try to define the structure of your main menu:
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1. Your main menu items and 2. Your secondary menu items
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Your visitors won't see the footer immediately. Use it for links you don't want in your main menu (e.g. social media, terms and conditions, privacy terms, etc.).
Click here to unfold a Good Footer
Now try to write down you footer structure:
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3. Your footer titles and 4. Your footer links
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You can set a custom domain name (e.g. yourcompany.com) for both the website and your emails. Your website address is as important to your branding as the name of your business or organization, so put some thought into changing it for a proper domain.
Here is a checklist of actions to help you launch a new website efficiently:
Initial Teaser
Before launching to the masses, it's good practice to tease around 100 of
your contacts. Start with your friends, colleagues and family. Whether or
not they're interested in your business, they will provide you with some precious feedback.
Avoid using a mass survey, it's way more efficient to have personal discussions with everyone. If you engage with them in the reviewing process, they will even help you promote your website.
To get an external assessment of your website, you can also submit it to peek.usertesting.com for a free evaluation of the usability of your homepage.
The big launch
Be announced on the Flectra Twitter account
We like to hear from people using Flectra to build their website. Tweet us
@flectra a reference to your new website. We will retweet it (we have 30,000 followers) and feature it in our different communications.
It’s time to grow your traffic!
One way is by optimizing your indexing on search engines like Google naturally, without paying anything. The earliest you show up in the search, the more visitors you get. This strategy called SEO involves several actions.
Use relevant keywords
Adding relevant and popular keywords (e.g. business name, location) tends to improve your ranking in search engines and consequently increases your traffic. Do it:
Reference your images...
If you are an artist or a photographer, you can potentially bring in a lot
of visitors by referencing your images so they are displayed in image
search engines, like Google Images.
To do that, add keywords in picture's description.
... and your location too!
Millions of people use Google Maps everyday. Whether you are a restaurant
or a huge business, you have no excuse not to register your location in
Google Business.
Start a blog
Search engines loves websites that get new content regularly. An excellent way is publishing blog posts. If you have the time and dedication to write good articles, check out our Blog application to get started.
Be linked by trusted websites
The more websites that link to your website, the more Google trusts it to be worthwhile. Here are some tips:
Use Google Webmaster
Google Webmaster will help you:
You can also pay for a sponsored indexing and place advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries. This is called SEA.
Advertise
If you have a small budget to advertise your website (around $100), you
should start a Google Adwords campaign.
Advertise a keyword if you answer YES to the three following questions:
Make sure the Advanced Options are set to your country and language.
Translating your website into other languages is the best way to broaden its audience.
There are so many ways to communicate with your customers, visitors and prospects that it's sometimes difficult to know what to put your energy into. Here are some advices on what to focus on next.
Use contact forms Install now
Send mass mails Install now
Reach your customers and prospects on a recurring basisPublish events Install now
Organize and publish events to meet your prospects and customersDiscuss live Install now
Launch a forum Install now
Publish documentation Install now
Congratulations, you're done!
We hope this planner helped you to create your website.
Don't hesitate in
sending us an email to describe
your experience or to suggest improvements!
- The Flectra Team
