Whether you need a site for your organization, business, or an individual campaign, here are eight steps to making a website.

Establish the goal(s)

The most important place to start: why are you making this site? Perhaps you want leads, maybe you are fundraising, or maybe you want people to order online so you can focus on fulfillment. Figure out your primary goal, or any supporting goals and write them down.

Create a website “skeleton” (aka wireframe)

Working backwards from your goal, put yourself in the position of your ideal website user. What information will they need in order to fulfill the goal of your website? Do you need to include forms, photos, privacy policies, “email now” or “call now” buttons? Try doing a sketch so you can visualize what the layout of the page might be before you start writing—you can do this on a piece of paper, or in a digital document. Let your “creative juices” flow.

Commonly, websites will include:

• Header

• “Hero” image

• Introduction (set expectations for your visitor)

• Information (anything your visitors will need to know to fulfill your goal)

• Call-to-Action: this is an industry term for “the thing” you want your visitors to do—complete a form, push a button, call you, whatever it may be

• Footer: this usually includes links to social media, your contact information (address, email, etc) and  

Curate your content (aka copy)

Okay, now you know what things are going to look like, start filling in the gaps. Do you need to add your menu? Type it out! Find the information that you have written down so many times that you’ve decided to make a website and put it online. One of our biggest tips for content: less is more. 

As the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal famously wrote: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

Find the right website tool (aka Content Management System)

Now that you know what you’re going to want everything to look like, and what functions you are going to need, find the right tool for you.  We’ve talked about this part before, so check out our blog post on How to Pick the Right Content Management System. (Small spoiler: if you’re just making a small 1-2 page site, we often recommend Squarespace to our clients)

Plug everything in.

Here is where we bring it all together— put in the content you so carefully curated. To avoid formatting issues, avoiding copy-pasting straight from software like Microsoft Word, because things can start looking a little wonky! If you developed your content with formatting, you can find free format-stripping tools (such as striphtml.com)

Make sure all the links, forms, and pages are connected

Here is where you, once again, put yourself in your visitor’s shoes and carefully look through your site with an eye for errors. 

Launch!

You’ve done so much of the work. Now, arguably, is the hardest part for a lot of people: Push the launch button! Disclaimer: not all tools will have a button, unfortunately. We just hope you choose one that does.

Make sure all the links, forms, and pages are connected (yes, again!)

It might sound like a lot, but it’s important to make sure everything is working after launch. This makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. Open an incognito browser and click all your links, fill out your forms, and make sure you don’t have a password on any of your pages where there shouldn’t be one. There are free tools online that can help you, and some paid tools if you want an automated way to run these checks on a regular basis.

Celebrate! 

You deserve it. This was an accomplishment—even the smallest websites still take time and effort. We hope you “enjoy the spoils” of your hard work. And let us know what you made; We’d like to celebrate you, too.