You would like to create a website for your private or professional project, but you have no previous technical knowledge? This is no longer a problem. But there are a few things you should think about before you get started. Our guide homepage, blog& Co explains how to set up your own web presence, what you can do to make your site easier to find on the web – and what steps you should take if your site has been hacked.
Know your target group
Your own website is one of the most important building blocks when it comes to publicizing a project or venture. But do you really need a big web presence?? Sometimes it makes much more sense to keep it one or two sizes smaller. First check the online affinity of your target group: Would they really search for your offer on the Internet?? Is this channel really the right one?
Example day-mother: A woman wanted to offer her services on the Internet and had a small website created for this purpose. Unfortunately in vain, because hardly anyone visited the website. In personal conversations with the mothers, it quickly became clear that they came to her exclusively through recommendations from other mothers and not via the Internet. Even if customers did not become aware of the company through recommendations, a note on the bulletin board in the children’s garden was much more helpful.
Sometimes a Facebook page is enough
Most likely, most young parents in general are very Internet-savvy and have no problems with modern technology. In your role as "mother" or "father", however, other preferences take effect than in the role of "department manager" or "fan of a series". Here personal recommendation counts more. A Facebook page with the most important information (contact details; area where the services are offered; quotes from satisfied customers) is enough here.
This is what our guide offers
You will learn with the help of our book Homepage, Blog& I will show you with practical and easy to follow examples how you can
– how to reach your goal in a short time without any previous knowledge,
– create a Facebook presence,
– Create your own blog,
– Plan, build and equip your own website with important common functions,
– Make your site user-friendly and optimize it for search engines.
We explain,
– how the internet works,
– what is behind terms like CSS, FTP, IP, TCP and TLD,
– how the source code of a website is structured.
How much self-marketing is necessary?
If you are a doctor, a master craftsman, a private tax consultant or something similar and have to deal with customers (or patients), a little self-marketing can never hurt. But if your calendar is full of appointments, if you are well connected in your area through personal recommendations, or if you have regular customers whose orders you can definitely rely on – why bother to plan, pay for and maintain an elaborate web presence?? Here an individual, but low-maintenance web business card with the basic information is sufficient.
Arouse interest
If you create a website to promote a product or service, you should describe your offer in such a way that it will also attract the interest of a buyer. If the value of your product or service is not obvious at first glance, you should first add an informational web page to the store page that describes your idea and arouses interest.
Independent. Objective. Incorruptible.
Cooperate instead of copy
Imagine you would like to sell model railroads. This is where setting up your own online store comes in handy. However, there are already providers on the Internet who specialize exclusively in the sale of things, for example eBay and Amazon. It may be wiser to create an account on these platforms and sell your products there, because this is usually free of charge for the provider (he only pays a sales commission) – and above all, the site is ready to launch in a few minutes.
Idea and strategy
Before you start, you need to clarify some questions:
- What is the purpose of the online presence??
- Do you want to present yourself?
- Do you want to promote a product offer?
- Do you want to create a community where like-minded people can exchange ideas and experiences??
- Do you want to advertise a service?
- Do you want to sell products?
- Want to offer support and help?
What types of online presence are there?
There are numerous types of online presence – it does not always have to be your own website. A small overview:
Facebook. The social network has 1.8 billion active users worldwide, most of whom move within Facebook several times a day. Only con-sequentially, you can also maintain your own online presence here. Advantageous is of course that you don’t have to care about infrastructure, hosting, domain names and the like. Disadvantageous, however, is that one is found worse and the advertisement for the own presence can become really expensive. In addition, you must adhere to the numerous restrictions on the design that Facebook imposes on its users (more on this in our guide Homepage, Blog& Co).
Web business card. This term has come to mean a small, simple online presence that simply serves to present a person or a company on the Internet. However, the differences to the "real" or "big" web presence are fluid. These kind of mini-websites usually consist of only one or a few clearly structured pages that present the company – or the freelancer/self-employed person – accordingly. The web business card is something for people who spend very little time and money on their online presence, but still want to look serious. In our guide we explain how you can create a web business card very quickly yourself.
Landing page. The "landing page" serves to prepare a concrete content simply, in order to make a fast first orientation for the user possible. If a user clicks on an advertisement or an entry in a search engine, for example, he is automatically forwarded to the corresponding landing page.
Online store. As soon as a user clicks on a product or service on a website. If you want to describe and/or sell services, it is called an online shop. This is usually backed up by a store system that allows you to manage your products, set up payment and delivery methods, and manage your orders.
Homepage, Blog and Co.
Home-pages as well as blogs and modified forms of them are websites that do not follow the criteria mentioned above. They usually have more complex structures of main and sub-pages and gather many contents such as texts and media as well as further functions such as comments, user management, etc.
Home-page. Strictly speaking, the term only stands for the start page of a website, i.e. the page that is displayed the first time it is called up. In colloquial language, however, "home page" often refers to the entire web presence of a person or company
Blog. A blog (derived from the English "weblog", "net logbook") is an online diary – although the topics can be very varied and entries do not necessarily have to appear regularly. The operator is usually a person (or a group of persons) who presents their personal, deliberately subjective opinion.
Whether you want to create a home page for your company, a blog for your vacation report or just a Facebook page: With our guide homepage, blog& Co find the best variant for your project. The book has 176 pages and is available for 16,90 Euro (E-Book: 13,99 Euro) in test.de-shop to have.
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