Whether you're planning a new website, trying to redesign your current website, or still stuck trying to figure out what website platform should I be using for my creative small business, there's a few questions that you should consider and start answering for yourself before you ever go too far down that rabbit hole of researching website platforms or talking to web designers or web developers. In this video, that's what I'm going to talk about. Now, it's important to consider these things, especially if you are a multi-passionate creative solopreneur, especially if you are doing all of the business things or most of the business things yourself. And this is based on my experience of working with so many different small business owners. over the past decade plus, both through my own programs, like the Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator, and through working full-time in digital marketing, including working at marketing agencies where we built websites and worked on other people's websites for them.
There are so many options out there, and there's not a one-size-fits-all solution that works best for every small business owner, especially if you're a multi-passionate creative. And so these are the questions that you should be thinking about and considering for yourself. as you're at the very beginning stages of planning a new website or website redesign. Question number one is what do you want your website to do for you? Now it's important to understand what you want your website to actually be able to do for you, because especially if you're considering moving to a new website platform, this is going to be really important.
Do you want to sell products? Is e-commerce your primary focus? Because if so, you're probably going to want to use a platform that's built for e-commerce like Shopify or big commerce, or maybe you want to sell a few things, but you're not going to have hundreds of different products and you mostly want to use it as a portfolio site.
In that case, Shopify could still work, but maybe you could get away with something like Squarespace or Wix. Is one of the goals for your website to book classes that you're teaching or sell tickets to workshops, right? In that case, you need to make sure that whatever website platform you're choosing is going to integrate with whatever tools you might need to sell those tickets, book those classes, book calls with you, whatever it is, just get really clear on what you're trying to accomplish with this website.
Now, this leads me to question number two, which is, are there specific features or specific software that you need your website to integrate with and play nice with? As a multi-passionate creative, maybe you're using something like Printful or other print on demand tools to sell your artwork or your slogans on t-shirts, right? And in that case, you're going to want to make sure that whatever software for your website you choose plays nice and integrates really seamlessly with Printful or those print on demand tools. Are you already doing email marketing to your subscribers, which you should be?
And if so, what email platform are you using and making sure that that also plays nice with your website software? There's so many different tools out there, right? There's ConvertKit, MailChimp, MailerLite, like so many. And a lot of them work with a lot of different website builders, but some of them integrate more seamlessly and easily than others. And that's something to consider in general when it comes to connecting your website platform with other pieces of software.
Even if there aren't direct integrations built in, you can often use a tool called Zapier, which is basically like digital duct tape. Even if there's not a direct connection, Zapier will often become that like duct tape between two pieces of software to make your website play nice with another tool. That said, it's digital duct tape, so if you start building a whole house or a website build of nothing but duct tape, it gets a little wobbly potentially.
So I like to look for focusing on what are the most important things that I need to make sure work really well and work really reliably in my business and prioritizing those to make sure that those are all going to play nice on my website and make sure that nothing falls apart. And this brings me to question number three, which is who is going to be responsible for updating and maintaining your website and how techie are they a lot of the multi-passionate creative small business owners that i work with want to be able to manage and edit and update their websites themselves but they're not always the most techie people and in that case i really recommend thinking this through very carefully ahead of time so that you know that you're able to manage the website platform that you're using. And this is also why I recommend thinking about this stuff before you ever talk to a web designer or web developer. So back when I used to work in a digital marketing agency, I would see this all the time where clients would come in, they had hired a web designer web developer who had built a custom website on WordPress, which is great, by the way, there's nothing wrong with WordPress. It's just that for non techie people, WordPress WordPress can be a lot of techie work.
Here's an analogy that I like to use to explain the differences between something like WordPress, which is a completely self-hosted website platform, versus something like Shopify or Squarespace or Wix which is a hosted platform so a self hosted platform like a WordPress is sort of like if you own a home and a Squarespace or Wix or Shopify or one of these hosted platform where everything's kind of taking care of you behind the scenes that's more like renting an apartment and just like owning a home or renting an apartment it's not that one is necessarily better than the other it's just that they're different for different people right like I actually prefer to rent my home and I actually also now prefer to do hosted websites for myself too, even though I spent many years running a WordPress website. So with a self-hosted WordPress website, you'll have to make sure that you find hosting, you install the WordPress software. you're going to have to make sure that you update any plugins and software updates, make sure that everything is safe and secure behind the scenes when it comes to cybersecurity, which is really important when it comes to WordPress, especially.
But WordPress is like super customizable. And that's one of the reasons that so many web designers and web developers love it. And I've used it for a lot of projects over the years, and it is really powerful, super customizable.
It's a lot like owning a house, right? If you own a house, you can knock down walls, you can put up a swing set in the backyard, you can paint the- the walls. You can do all of that stuff. But when the plumbing breaks, when the toilet backs up, when the dishwasher fails, you have to fix all of those things. Like you have to call a plumber if you can't fix it.
Running a self-hosted website like WordPress or one of those other similar platforms, it's going to be a lot like owning a house. There's pros and cons to it. On the other hand, something like a Shopify for e-commerce or Squarespace or Wix or one of these hosted platforms, you don't have...
quite as much customization possibility, but you don't have to worry about all of the back-end software updates and security updates and all of that stuff. It's kind of all taken care of for you. Kind of like as a renter, you can just call your landlord and they should fix your plumbing if the toilet backs up.
So for most solopreneurs, especially, or micro small business owners, I really recommend finding a hosted platform. If you are focused on e-commerce, Shopify can be a really great one. BigCommerce is another good option. If you only need more of a portfolio type of site and you don't quite need hundreds of products for sale, you could use something like Squarespace or Wix. I recommend if you're going to be the one editing things and maintaining it.
Play around. A lot of these have free trials. So get in there, see what feels comfortable for you.
If you're the one maintaining it, that's what matters is that you're going to be able to actually get in there and edit things. Now, of course, the exception is if you have a really close friend or a live-in partner or roommate who is super knowledgeable about all things WordPress or some other platform. Go for it.
I have one of my students in the Badass Creators Marketing Accelerator who's this exact example. She has her website built on WordPress with WooCommerce, but she has somebody who's very close to her who can make sure that all that stuff on the back end is taken care of. Question number four is what content and information are you going to want to put on your website? Now, you don't have to have this figured out all at once before you start looking at website platforms or talking to web designers and developers, but it does help to start thinking about this because this can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of building a new website or redesigning a website.
If this is your first website or if you're going through a major redesign, a good web designer or developer can often help you flesh these ideas out, but the actual copywriting of your product descriptions or your about page bio, the photography that you're going to need. gathering all of that stuff up can take a lot of time. Now a lot of web agencies will have copywriters or photographers and other folks that they can pair you up with to help take care of some of this, but it'll often come with added expense of course, and it'll usually take extra time.
So the more you can start thinking ahead of time, what kind of content and information and words and photos you're going to want on your website and gather all that stuff up, the faster and easier and smoother your web design project is going to be. And related to this, my fifth question for you to consider is what pages or areas of your site are you going to want your website visitors to navigate to? So just like it will help make things so much smoother and faster if you can have some idea of the kind of information and content you want on your website, it's also going to make the process easier if you have some idea of the main pages and areas of your site that you want to have.
Even if you're building a website yourself with a platform like Shopify or Squarespace, it's really helpful to consider what parts of your website are the most important for people to get to. For professional web designers and developers, when they're thinking about what that top navigation on a website is going to look like, what that footer navigation at the bottom of a website is going to look like, and all of the information that's going to be on the home page or any main page of the website. They often use something called a wireframe.
Now one way that I I like to approach this for myself, especially when I'm designing my own websites, is to do this with paper, to step away from the computer where things can get a little overwhelming sometimes, and to really just think about what is the most important information that I want somebody to see if they land on my homepage, for example. Now, I'm a very visual person, a multi-passionate creative, right? So I like to grab a piece of paper. This is like a longer legal size piece of paper to kind of mimic the longer flow of a web page.
And you can see I kind of just have super mocked up like a logo. This would be kind of my main navigation. Kind of think about if it's an e-commerce site, maybe over here your shop is your most important or something.
You can look to other websites, both competitors, websites that are similar to you in your industry, or very different websites from you. Look all over the place. Make notes about what you do and don't like when it comes to other websites, how you navigate those websites, the information that they have, the way that their navigation is laid out.
That can be really helpful. And then to step away and think about all of that and kind of just draw it out on paper, right? Like maybe you want a button at the top. Maybe you know that on your homepage you want a little blurb about you or your company and a really beautiful photo. You know, whatever it is, I feel like it just really helps to step away and do some of this work away from the computer to gain more clarity about the goals and intentions of our websites.
So I could nerd out all day about websites and website design and search engine optimization and conversion optimization and all this good stuff. But... I'm gonna cut it short here today.
If you have more questions, drop them in the comments below. Let me know what you thought of this video. If you want to learn more about me and my program, the Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator, head over to badasscreatives.com.
Putting together my website. I'm doing website stuff today.