eb design has come a long way since the early stages. It's never been cheaper or simpler for anyone to throw up a good-looking website within days, sometimes even hours.

 

The challenge is that it takes a bit more expertise to build a website that actually persuades your visitors to take meaningful action for your business.

From Custom To CMS

In the early days of web design, you would determine your needs then have someone custom design the entire site from scratch. The proliferation of Content Management Systems (or CMS), including Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal to name a few, has drastically changed this model. We're raving fans of Wordpress.

 

With a little research and a lot of persistence, anyone can figure out how to set up and operate a CMS. Thousands of themes, or layouts, are available across the web. This means that all you have to do is choose the right layout then customize the color scheme to match your company branding.

 

For example, you can get free Wordpress themes here, or premium themes from StudioPress, iThemes, or WooThemes, among hundreds of other sources. To find themes for specific Content Management Systems, simply do a Google search (i.e. "wordpress" + "themes", "joomla" + "templates").

 

If you find a theme that meets your needs as it is, then all you'll have to pay for is hosting (assuming you build the site yourself). If you want a custom design but aren't tech-savvy, you can hire a graphic designer. 

Architecture

After you've chosen and set up your CMS and theme, the next step is to architect your site. As we detail in this blog article, there are four components of a website: 1) technical programming, 2) graphic design, 3) copywriting, and 4) architecture.

 

The technical programming is taken care of with your CMS, and you can find designers who work specifically with the CMS of your choice. This leaves text and architecture.

 

This is where knowledge of personas plays a critical role. You need pages and text to answer the questions asked by each. Specifically, you should have at least the following:

• An "About Us" page describing credentials and competitive advantages for Competitives.
• A "Get Started" page, or something similar, for Spontaneous types. Free downloads also appeal to this persona.
  
• Pages that detail your products, services, processes, methodologies, and applicable research for Methodicals.
• A "Testimonials" or "Case Studies" page for Humanists. Also include bios of relevant owners, managers, and employees for this persona.
  

Write your text to answer the questions asked by the personas. Use hyperlinks on relevant words and phrases to direct people to your pages. Make the navigation simple and intuitive. Test it on a number of your friends to find where they experience difficulty or their questions don't get answered.

Build Your Database

Capturing data from your website visitors is one of your biggest priorities. People may not buy on an initial visit, but if you can gain their trust enough to get at least their name and email address, you can continue serving them and making your case over time.

 

The trick here is to have a free download, such as an e-book, audio file, or a free trial of something. Your download must be relevant to visitors and valuable enough to draw attention.

 

For example, we spent hundreds of hours over months and paid a few hundred dollars producing our e-book on Hub Mentality. And guess what -- you're reading this email now because you downloaded it!

 

You'll need database management software, such as AWeber, to create web forms and build and manage your database.

Drive Traffic

With your website built, the next step is to drive traffic. Website traffic comes primarily from organic searches, direct referrals, links, and social networking and bookmarking.

 

To optimize your search engine ranking, there are a number of technical programming elements to take care of. This is one reason why we love Wordpress so much -- it automatically takes care of all those details for you.

 

It's also imperative that you have a blog and post articles frequently. The more you post the more relevant content search engines will find. Furthermore, it increases your chance of people across the web linking back to your site, which search engines love. Read our free e-book, The Beginning Blogger's Bible, for more information on the benefits of blogging.

 

Currently, the three most popular social networking sites are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Set up profiles on each, make friends, then wisely refer people to your website. Social bookmarking sites include Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and others. These allow people to share content. The better your blog content, the better your chances of people linking to you from these sites.

Optimize Over Time

 

To test you need to set up analytics. Google offers this free version, which works great for most websites. Set up an account, then input your website address. You will then be given code to insert into the back end of your website, either in the footer or header.

 

This will track everything from page views to time spent on your site, and hundreds of other variables. Adjust your site and watch what happens to your statistics, then further adjust accordingly.

Review

• You don't need a custom site; these are expensive and unnecessary. Choose a CMS. Wordpress rocks. Choose a good layout that works as it is, or have a graphic designer customize the design.
• Set up your navigation and write your text to cater to the four main personas.
• Use a free download and database management software to build a database.
• Blog, blog, blog. This will drive traffic, generate links, and create trust and credibility, among other benefits.
  
• Drive traffic through social media.
• Optimize your website over time by using analytics.
  

How KGaps Can Help

This newsletter is obviously a crash course. There are tons of details involved with each of the phases we've described. If you've got time but a limited budget, it should give you enough direction to pull a respectable website together.

 

On the other hand, if you have the budget and want a professional job done quickly, then we can build your website for you for as low as $2,500, depending on the nature and depth of your site. Contact us for more details and request a custom bid.

 

All websites we build include the following elements:

• A premium Wordpress theme that meets your needs.
  
• Custom graphic design.
• Programming components for search engine optimization.
• Persuasion architecture.
• Professional writing that, among other things, adheres to the "WIFM" rule and translates features into benefits.
• Lead capture strategies and tools.

All of this means that your site will look sharp, feel intuitive to visitors, convert visitors into leads and sales to increase your profits, and get found by search engines to drive traffic.

 

The following are a few of the websites we've built to give you a feel for our capabilities:

• Wealth Swing Coach
• Soul Purpose Institute
  
• Real Estate Marketplace
  
• The Center for Social Leadership
• The Coming Aristocracy
  

If you don't have the budget for us to build your site but you want more direction, we'd be happy to provide consulting at an hourly rate.