Lara Schmoisman:

So today, we want to talk about those rookie mistakes that you can make when you are starting your own website, their first website, and I want to talk about five of them, five of them that I still got, my first website was in 1999. That was a long time ago. And I was fascinated about all the technology. But what we have to do back then was I had to talk to a developer.

And as you know, in the website, that there is two parts, the front end and the back end, the front end, we have so many limitations, what you can do or what you can see. And in the back end, we also have limitations, plus my limitation in communicating with a developer, or later on a designer who wants to work on that I want them to work in the website. So that’s the first thing I need to tell you is what you want to do on your website, you want to know what your website for.

And don’t try to do it over fancy. Or try to do more that you need. Because technology evolves a lot. So you need to know what your website you need today and make a strong website. So you can then build on top of it if you need to. And if you need to grow. Otherwise, my always recommendation is do a simple website, do it. What do you need today, don’t try to create a huge business from one day unless you have the funding and you will have that ecosystem support. And you’re going to have advertising and a lot of money to develop your website and your business. If you’re starting a small business, start a small website, which shares what you need. That’s the first mistake I see people doing and trying to overdo it and get all these results going on the website. And then it’s either technology that gets out there that outdated or your website, your business and grow in that direction, or you realize that you need to change things. So that’s my first mistake that I seen a lot. And my recommendation was go simple, go basic, but go strong. Second thing, know your technology, what technology you’re going to be using, you can be there different kinds of website, there are a lot of platforms, how they are done with yourself. I never recommended that because building yourself a website is not making a strong website. And so what are you going to use, you’re going to use a completely website that is going to be developed from scratch, you’re going to use a WordPress, you’re going to use Shopify,

I do have my favorites, but I’m not going to talk about that. Today, I’m going to be talking about what you need. And what you need is to know what the technology is for. If you’re going to be a website for ecommerce, probably you will look into Shopify vs WooCommerce. Both are amazing platforms, but they have different limitations both our content management system Content Management Systems means that you can change or modify things is not everything you do in in code. The difference is that the WordPress is open source content management system. So it can be modified by code. If you work with a developer, just talk to them and see the pros and cons and analyze for that. If cost is an issue. Shopify, you need to remember that the apps are probably anything you need to add is apps. And each app will cost you money. WordPress probably is one time fee.

depends on what you need in your website to talk to your developer, find someone that you trust and that they can ask their questions. So make sure that you know what you need for your website, what is the conversion that you’re going to be using for your website. So I are going to need a lot of apps that they can add up in cost a lot. Or you’re gonna have a simple transactional website that you can use it for a theme and then it will be fine and you’re not going to keep adding things. So it’s evaluating all those things, don’t hear the rumors that people say WordPress is better or Shopify is better just look for what you need. And look at the pros and cons.

There are mistakes I see. And three things that I third thing I think it’s really important to know. And again, when I started my trajectory with website idea nowadays, so I had to make sure that we can work functionality with looks. And we then have data or do you have the experience that we have today, and is about the user experience, anything we do in your website, from the patience to the functionality is about user experience, how people will use my website, how people will navigate my website, it’s about making the least amount of clicks possible. That is super important.

It needs to be an easy to use website, don’t think about what you like, think about your audience, and who is your audience and how you will access your website. Which brings me to the next point. The next point is that er mobile needs to be your website needs to be mobile friendly, it needs to be responsive, not everyone has the same phone, not everyone has the same tablet or the same monitor, you need to make sure that your website adapt to each device. And people can have the same experience, which you might need to be doing different websites, looks and feel depends on where you open your website. Again, talk to your developer, if you want to have conversions is super important that you have a website that is responsive, and that people can have a good experience, see how everything ties together. And the last by not list. And I hate that I cannot I don’t have people here, I think everyone had a hard time getting into it. I promise to fix this for next week. The fifth thing that I want to talk to you is about metrics, you need to make sure your website has all the important tools inside unit connected with to Google Analytics, Search Console, whatever metrics, you will need to have it from day one, you need to make sure how your website is acting what. And this puts me also in something that I also will build over the years. And it’s SEO, we talk about this for many, many years, your website needs to be SEO ready. So whatever.

You need to be able to capture all those metrics. How many people come to your website? How much is the bounce rate? How much is people staying in the website, they’re signing up for your email, you need to make sure that you can get all your metrics in place. So you can understand your audience better. If they are a part of the website that people are not going, why you need to ask yourself that. Is it worth it to keep it in the website? Or should we modify it and put something else? It’s there because we were not interested where people can not cannot have access to it from the website. So all of those are revelant relevant questions. And those are the five things that I wish I knew. When I start working on website and the five things I always make sure all my websites have. So I’m sorry that we’re not live one more time in the group. I promise I will fix it for next week. But please leave your questions below and I’ll make sure that I’ll get back to them. Talk to you next week.