You have started or are planning to start a WordPress website. You obviously want to create a successful one. So what can you do to create a site that will be awesome and can be viewed on mobile devices?
This can be a challenge. How do you create an attractive site when you are not really a designer? How can you create great content that will appeal to your target user when you are not a great writer? How can you continue to add relevant content and maintain your website’s appeal over time?
There are FIVE things to help you create a great website using WordPress.
• Identify your purpose
• Leverage other people’s’ creative genius
• Set up your site navigation properly
• Plan your content
• Create compelling content.
First and foremost; you need to identify what the main purpose of your website is.Determining this will help with the other four steps. For example:
• Are you a business trying to promote your company and products?
• Are you eager to showcase your interests, hobbies or culinary skills?
• Do you want to create an E-commerce store to sell your products?
• Is your goal to create an online blog or magazine that you will monetize?
• Are you a not-for-profit organization with the sole objective to promote a cause?
• Are you a web development company that builds sites for clients?
This is hopefully an easy step if you know what you and/or your organization is all about. Still, it is important to consider as you get started planning and developing your website.
No doubt you want your website to look great and appealing. No question you want traffic pouring into your site.
Why are these questions important? Is it to make money, promote your cause, offer web development services, or you want to share your interest with the world?
Your main purpose and determining what success is for your site will drive most of the other things you will need to do to build a successful website.
Ask yourself, “Who is my target market?” No matter the nature and scope of your website, you need to identify visitors who will visit your site. It is probably obvious, but the more you understand the target visitors of your site, the better you will be able to attract them to your site.
Finally and possibly the more difficult part of step one is to identify your unique selling proposition. What makes your site different from other sites sharing the same content, or a better choice for your target visitor in comparison to other sites? What do you know how to do really well that will appeal to your audience?
OK, so you do not consider yourself very creative. No problem. An easy solution is to select a WordPress theme that leverages the expertise of a creative genius.
One of the best things about WordPress is that supports themes that can be created by a wide group of designers. Because of WordPress’ popularity, there are many creative and talented individuals or companies who have developed attractive and useful themes.
Make sure you choose a WordPress theme that will give your site a unique appearance. The appeal your website exudes is a sure method to set apart your business or your organization. An attractive website will appeal to visitors and convince them to frequently visit your site but also spend time there when they do visit
Be careful to select a theme that represents the general content of your website. Due to the popularity of WordPress, developers of WordPress themes and theme companies now beam their searchlight on trending niches, types of business Because of that, you have the opportunity to focus on those themes that align with your goals.
Always choose a theme that allows you to review a demo. Good theme providers will give you a demo site to check out how a website using the theme can look like.
Get a feel for the demo site. Can you visualize using that theme for your site? Does it provide different page layouts that can accommodate different options you may want to use? Does it provide customization options so you can tailor it to your users easily?
This can be modifying the color scheme to match your company logo, for example.
Support for mobile phones and tablets. Recent studies have shown that many more users are surfing the web using mobile devices. The old model was to create a second site to cater to these mobile users. But that doesn’t make sense anymore. Who wants to maintain two sites? The better approach today is to choose a theme that supports mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops equally well. The term that is often used is to designate supporting the full range of devices is a “responsive” website. That means the theme will automatically format the content to fit the size of the device’s screen.
One sure way to write and post content is to provide answers to questions readers might be having. What problems do they have that you solve or could potentially solve?
Brainstorm topics that you can write about and organize them. If you are planning on creating a blog, it is much easy to provide a list of potential blog topics rather than one at a time. By creating a list, you can better organize and group them. This helps you to create unique content for each blog post.
Adding images and videos to blog posts will allow more traffic to your site. They are a great item to add to any post or page.
Getting desired images and videos for your posts and contents that don't infringe on copyrights can be exhausting. You can buy images from online photo stocks. But if you have a tight budget you can improvise.
Good news! There are lots of sites on the web that offer quality images that gives you permission to use them on your website with little or no restriction.
Whew! Much has been covered here. Creating an awesome website can be a challenge, but if you break it down into bite-size chunks, it can be manageable.
Therefore, take some time to:
Identify your website’s purpose
Choose a great theme for your site
Plan your site content in detail.
Create compelling content for your target visitors with good media
Working this approach can help you create an awesome website. Good luck!
Melissa Crooks is Content Writer who writes for Hyperlink Infosystem, a mobile app development company based in USA & India that holds the best team of skilled and expert app developers. She is a versatile tech writer and loves exploring latest technology trends, entrepreneur and startup column.