It’s easy to create a website! (or not)

Some time ago, one of our clients faced a dilemma: do what he wanted with his website OR seek assistance from O’Matic to meet his needs. Unfortunately, he chose the first option, thinking, ‘I can do it myself. I know how to create images and text, and the web isn’t that complicated after all!’

‘Creating your own website is easy.’

Well, yes. Some things are easy, but not everything.

Placing elements is simple, but ensuring they are in the right place requires thought and a certain amount of distance.

Since I’ve wanted to create websites, whether for my personal site or for O’Matic, I’ve faced several “problems”:

• I first wanted to test WordPress with a Lite theme that encouraged me to upgrade to the Premium version. I quickly ran into customization issues, as I couldn’t move or modify the style of the blocks (not even the color). So I had to customize it using a lot of custom CSS (Thomas, if he had been there, would have cursed me) and FTP access to be able to change images.
• I then purchased a premium theme, the current one, which contains several sample templates and allows me to customize the pages extensively.
  So it’s a success, you might say?
  Not really, because the theme is very heavy and causes my site to lose performance and speed.
• For the O’Matic website, Thomas and I worked together on it. After spending a lot of time looking at similar agency websites, I created the mock-up on Figma, imagining everything with a style guide and animations that I liked (illustrations, hover effects, animations, etc.).
  Once again, I had to deal with technical issues when Thomas saw my mock-up and said, “Yes, but no, we won’t be able to meet the deadlines.”
  That’s why we iterated the creation of our site by first creating an MVP (minimum viable product) with the necessary content and then adding content as we went along: articles, expert opinions, etc.

So… let’s start from the beginning!

What will your website be about?

As Thomas would beg you: “Don’t create a website just for the sake of creating a website!” It will be your downfall.

Think carefully about the content of your website. What are you going to tell the world and offer it?

Don’t worry, this part is actually quite simple: Are you creating a website to showcase your products? Your services? Your creations? …
Your choice will have an impact on the structure of your website.

Without answering this question precisely, your site risks becoming completely unstructured.

What is your website for?

Knowing what your website will be about is one thing, but the key is to ensure that your website has a specific goal that matches this, whether it’s selling products, generating leads, collecting survey responses, etc.

So, even before designing your website, you need to think about what your users will be able to do on it and how. This is called the Golden Path. It is simply the ideal path that your users will need to follow to achieve the goal you have set.

For example, a news site such as rts.ch aims to keep you informed about the latest Swiss and international news. Its “Golden Path” is therefore to offer a home page that displays a summary of all content with links directing you to the information you want.

What are your deadlines?

Yes, indeed! Because creating a website takes time, as there are many things to consider (just like with an app).

Perhaps you need your website for a specific date, in which case you will need to start well in advance to ensure you have the best version on the day, with the help of professionals.
If you are not limited by time, you can take your time and build your website yourself.

What will it look like?

Don’t forget about the appearance of your website! It’s not necessarily the most important thing (because if there’s no thoughtful content behind it, it will just be an empty shell), but it’s one of the top three things to think about.

A website that isn’t necessarily attractive (for example, Amazon, which, let’s face it, isn’t very sexy) will generate a lot of conversions because it has been carefully designed and tested at length beforehand (this will be the subject of another article), whereas a website with a great design will “just” be pleasant to look at.

You therefore need to think of your website as a whole, where the design should encourage visitors to explore further and be pleasant enough to keep them there.

How to attract visitors to your website?

There you go, your website is now live (yes, I skipped several steps, otherwise this article would have been much too long and Google would have given us a slap on the wrist)!

Now ask yourself: how are you going to attract users to your site? Are you going to advertise? Create content? What kind of content? On social media? Articles?

That’s a lot to think about, isn’t it?

Do you need help creating your website?

As you can see, creating your own website is not easy.

There are, of course, methods that allow you to do this yourself, but is that really the right solution?

Having the support of professionals who know how the web works will allow you to focus on what really matters to you and not get distracted and waste time at the risk of doing things wrong.

At O’matic, we love helping you bring your ideas to life, whatever they may be, whether it’s creating your website or redesigning it to make it even better.