Today, WordPress runs approximately 33 percent of the entire internet. With countless developers who introduce better features to the system and a loyal user base, this number is only expected to go up.
While the idea of working with computer code or software seems like a daunting task, but the good news is that setting up a WordPress website is actually pretty straightforward. Like everything else, while it does have a learning curve, once your site is set up running, it is a piece of cake.
You may have your domain name sorted out, but before you actually jump into setting up your own WordPress site, there are a few things you need to think about, first. Here are six things you must know before you create your WordPress site:
Your Goal And Objectives
First things first, you need to put yourself in your target audience’s shoes and understand why they would want to visit your website. By knowing why the site is essential to your audience, you can focus on what results you’re hoping to achieve through it.
Understanding the primary goal of the website and the objective it’s supposed to fulfill helps dictate the strategy and design for the site since this understanding will fulfill your audience’s wants and needs.
While many believe that the number of page views, visitors, and social media followers are goals that should be set before creating a website, these goals are more in line with your marketing strategy and come into play once the site is up and running.
Consequently, here are a few goals you should try to achieve with your WordPress site:
- Position your business as an industry leader
- Generate leads
- Build a brand
- Expand your email list
- Increase sales
By setting your goals, you can set, for example, the following objectives:
- Achieving a specific target of online sales
- Obtains conversions from a subscription form for new leads
- Reduce the bounce rate
How Your WordPress Site Will Be Used
By understanding the ins and outs of your website and knowing how it’s going to be used by potential visitors, you can add features and plugins that they’re likely to be used by your visitors. You should aim to create a seamless user experience that makes using the website simple.
Your focus doesn’t just need to be on what your visitors are going to do; it’s about how they’re going to do it, too. Whether they’re required to sign up for events, fill out a form, submit a contact form, purchase products or services, or sign up for a course, you need to have the necessary infrastructure in place to make these objectives possible.
What your website will mainly be used for will determine the total cost and the resources you’ll require while building it.
Your Target Audience
Let’s get one thing straight: you cannot attract everyone to your website. If you try to do so, you’ll end up with a very general website with too-broad messaging and fail to establish a connection with your target audience.
Hence, it’s vital for you to know who your website is targeting, since understanding your target user’s persona while allowing you to tailor the website according to your customer, thereby boosting conversions.
What Your Audience Is Looking For
Closely linked to who your target audience is what they’re looking for and it’s crucial to ensure they’re needs align with what you’re providing. To know what your audience is looking for, you should know:
- Problems they’re facing
- Solutions that could solve these problems
- What they’re hoping to achieve
When you are sure of the exact phrases or keywords your target audience will potentially use to search for products, services, or solutions, you can incorporate those keywords to your website. By optimizing your site for search engines, such as Google, and incorporating WordPress SEO plugins, the chances of it showing up on those engines organically will increase.
What You’re Offering
Of course, there is no point investing time, money, and effort into a WordPress site if you don’t have your offerings sorted out. Here’s a list of what you could potentially offer on your website:
- Physical products such as clothes or shoes
- Digital products such as software or music
- Online courses or memberships
- Services such as graphic designing
- Webinar registration services
What you’re essentially offering on your website will impact the plugins or software you’ll eventually select since they affect the way your site is organized and structured.
What Your Competitors Are Doing
There’s nothing that tells you what your business should do more than what your competitors are doing and what’s working for them. Once you know where your business stands in the minds of your consumers, you can work on your current brand positioning and improve or adjust the positioning to cater to your brand better.
By keeping your competitors in mind, you can ensure the design of your website sets you apart from them and breaks through the clutter.
What Your Marketing Plans Are
Just because your website is up and running, doesn’t mean you’ll automatically draw visitors to it. How you plan on marketing, it is a crucial aspect you should sort before you create it.
By having an idea of the marketing plan, you can determine what the role the website will play in it.
For instance, if you’re planning on using social media ads or pay-per-click ads, then the content and messaging on those ads need to match your sales content to boost conversions. On the other hand, if you’re planning on using lead magnets to build an email list, the website needs to have a pop-up box so visitors can fill in their details.
How You’ll Measure Progress
Your work doesn’t end once your website is set up; you need to keep tracking and measuring your progress to determine how well your website is doing. You can consider using Google Analytics to review data, use goal tracking for onsite conversions, add plugins to track website analytics, or integrate third-party software to your site.
Creating the perfect WordPress site is, by no means, an easy feat. In fact, it takes a significant amount of time and effort regularly to ensure you’re keeping up with trends, advancements, and any issues that might come up.
The perfect website is a combination of useful services and plugins and has the infrastructure in place to handle any problems. With the right start, though, you’ll be able to build and run a top-notch website in no time.
Do you have any suggestions on what one needs to know before building a WordPress site? Sound off in the comments below!
You must be logged in to post a comment.