Building a house is a lot more work than it may appear…as is building a website. The strategies behind home construction and website development are not all that different from each other. When you take the time to build it right from the “ground up”, your investment will last; if you take shortcuts, problems will arise, you’ll find yourselves in the middle of the 1980’s movie, Money Pit struggling to repair a hopelessly dilapidated website. Let’s take a look at some similarities!
Building Your House= Building a Website
Just as every house starts with a blueprint, every website starts with a sitemap…
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1. Digital Blueprint= Sitemap
As with a house, without an initial plan and strategy in place, your website can result in a construction mess. Organize your digital blueprints (aka: sitemap) to prevent a frustrating and confusing experience for visitors. A sitemap will define the structure of your website including features, size, hierarchy and more.
Now, it’s time to get building!
2. Map Your Address= Domain Registration URL/IP
Next you need to get your home address so people know where to find you. Similarly, buying a website domain name will point to your patch of online land you’ve built your website on Earth known called the World Wide Web.
Just like the location of your house determines its value now and in the future, choosing a URL that fits your business matters just as much. As the old saying goes, “LOCATION, location, location.”
3. Lay the Foundation= Web Hosting
Take your blueprints and begin to lay a solid foundation on a patch of land. Homeowners know that once a foundation starts to go, you’re literally sinking. That being said, you want to build them both correctly at the beginning otherwise you’ll be facing large repair costs. Just like a solid home foundation, you need to find a solid online web hosting to place your website on and call home.
4. Build the Framework= HTML
Every house has rooms, and each room has a purpose containing different furniture and appliances. Similarly, each website has pages (comparable to the rooms in your home). This is your HTML which organizes elements of a webpage with structure.
5. Infrastructure Wiring and Pipes= Back-End
What you don’t see definitely does matter. Yes, you want a trendy house, but if the behind-the-scenes problems arise, like a busted pipe, you’re facing big repairs. Just as contractors take care of wiring and piping, web developers the server side data like browser compatibility, load times and responsiveness.
6. Style Your Rooms= CSS
Every room has a different purpose with a different style and different furnishings. Same goes for the words, images and video filling up the pages of your website. These are your CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which define how elements should look.
7. Bells and Whistles= JavaScript
Just as you can interact with different things in your home- set the thermostat, start the coffee pot, turn on the fan; you can have interactions with a website. JavaScript handles all your bells and whistles like clicking on text, filling in forms, animation, etc. Just like your smart appliances, you can have rules and logic to help it determine what happens next!
8. Housewarming Party= Marketing
Now that your home has been built and designed to perfection, you need to invite people to come and see the finished product with a housewarming party! You want people to get equally excited about your new website launch; invite them to check out the updated design, show off its functionality and give them reason to come back for more. To ensure success, you need more than just a press release. A solid marketing plan covers pre- and post-launch activities such as email newsletters, social media campaigns and blog posts (in addition to that killer press release).
9. Home Maintenance= Website Maintenance
You’re proud of your home. It’s a symbol of your success…but your dream home can turn into a disaster if you don’t keep it regularly maintained. Imagine living in a home for 5 years and never dusting off your shelves…that’s a lot of cobwebs! The same goes for maintaining your website to ensure it’s up to date and working properly. Prevent pitfalls, keep up with the latest trends and boost your online brand.
10. Remodeling= Website Refresh
And when the time comes that you’re ready to remodel, your digital blueprint is more important than ever. Adding or removing pages requires a strategy in place to architect a purposeful experience from the ground up and give your audience what they want.
Get Your Curb Appeal with Click Appeal from CMDS
Creating curb appeal is key to getting noticed in the neighborhood; it’s what separates your home from all the others on the block. The same applies online- building a rock solid website is just as important as an attractive exterior with killer click appeal. We’re talking great first impressions with clickable navigation, strategic structure and inspirational visuals. Contact CMDS to learn more about building a strong website today!