How to Build a Website from Scratch
A manual for creating a website that engages users and transforms them into customers.
What Aspects of Building My Website Should I Outsource?
You can outsource any aspect of website building:
- Brand Design: Such as your business colors and fonts, company logo.
- Web Design: Like the structure and layout of your website.
- Implementation: Your website using programming languages, frameworks, a CMS like WordPress, or a website builder like Squarespace or *Webflow.
- Content Creation: For your website like copywriting, images, or video.
- Website Marketing: Using search engine optimization (SEO).
- Social Media Marketing: With ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.
- WordPress building: Select and configure themes and plugins.
Creating a website that converts users into customers takes some experience. I highly recommend hiring a person that oversees and coordinates all mentioned aspects of building your website if this is the first time you are working on an online presence.
Where Can I Find Freelance Web Designers and Developers?
The easiest way to find a freelancer is through:
Freelancers specialize in one or two website-building techniques, so having an idea of how you want to build your website is an advantage. Simply searching any of these platforms for the word website displays thousands of freelancers that offer website-building services, so you want to narrow this down to queries like Website WordPress or similar.
I recommend reading my articles about website builders and WordPress first to get an idea of the pros and cons of each website-building technique.
What Should A Brief for Website Designers and Developers include?
The brief is the most important preparation you need to do to outsource a website successfully.
A web designer or developer brief could look like this:
- Basic business information: what do you do? Where do you operate?
- Website goals: what do you want to achieve with your website? This could be more leads, sales, or information about your products.
- Target audience: Who are your customers and what problem are they trying to solve?
- Brand specifications: Do brand components like company logo, font types, or colors already exist?
- Any important legal information that should be displayed on the website.
- Any images you have.
- Any text and other content you want to display. Describe the content if it does not exist already.
Hand this as a brief to your web designer and I guarantee you that you will save on web development costs!
Read my article about great web design first, especially the paragraph about your website goals, to form some ideas abut the desired structure of your website before reaching out to a consultant.
What Are the Steps to Evaluate Web Design Freelancers?
1. Portfolio Check
Search for freelancers on Fiverr, Upwork, or Freelancer.com. Look at their portfolios: do they have experience in building websites for clients in your branch? You can also ask for links to the websites in their portfolio to check whether the websites actually exist or to reach out to their clients and get some feedback about working with the freelancer.
2. Does the Communication Work?
Next, send each of them a quick description of your website project and by when you need it done. Reaching out to a freelancer gives you input for your second evaluation:
- Does the freelancer respond to your questions?
- How timely does he or she respond?
- How much effort does she put into her answer?
- Is the answer a generic "I can do this" answer or more detailed?
- Is the freelancer available for questions during your office hours?
What is the Price of a Website Designer?
A freelancer's day rate largely depends on the cost of living at the freelancer's location and his or her experience. A freelancer from the Philippines is probably less expensive than somebody from New York City. A transparent offer usually includes the number of iterations you will get for a given price. Do not forget to ask about the price for any maintenance work on the website, like WordPress updates. Don't forget to check whether all taxes are included in the offer.
