WordPress Design Tips for Beginners

For your website right So when someone comes To visit your website, what are some things? That you want them to do For me. The most important thing is: they need to find all of our fresh new content on the homepage, So we have a lot of Content coming out daily, whether it’s interviews or news articles, So I want them to be able to find that and easily find the thing. That’s most relevant to them Right.

So just kinda Go down the rabbit hole of all your content. Getting the freshest first Yep And then possibly find oh cool. Here’s a related article, [, Morgan, ], Yep, yep, And then here’s another article, So that’s super important Yeah, You have a plan for your visitors, So same thing with you. When you want someone to visit your site, is it just to get information about you? Is it to call you? Is it to contact you? Is it to buy your product Whatever it is? You wan na have an idea of what that is going forward so that way, when you develop your website, that is priority number one, whether you’re designing the site or you have someone designing it for you, Okay, so I have a homepage but other than that.

What other Pages are important to have So homepage. Definitely important. If you don’t have a homepage, you don’t really have a website, so that’s kind of important, But other than that. You Want an About Us page, you want to talk about yourself and really talk about how You you help the visitor, the consumer, the customer right, The About Us, usually in typical fashion. Here’s the company’s history.

[, Morgan, ] Yeah, A lot of people may not care about that With your About page. Have it really about how you help them a Little bit of your history but more important how you help them Have a Products and Services page to really showcase what you do Have a Contact page, because that’s super important. For people to contact you And then lastly, a Testimonials page People love that social proof. You can pull reviews from Like Yelp, Google, My Business Facebook, wherever you’ve got a review plug it on the website.

And really show people that you are who you say, you are Yeah and with those Pages people are either finding you through social Or just going to Google and finding you that way, and so these are the Pages that they wan na do and they’re doing their due diligence. They wan na know who you Are why you’re an expert? What other people say about you? What product and services you offer so yeah having those Main ones are perfect All right so now another thing to really keep in mind with designing your website is you want to keep it simple And what I see a lot? Of first time, people do is they’ll, go in, they have like paragraphs and paragraphs Of their content, They wan na have everything there, Literally everything So they throw everything on their website and it’s Just a giant block of text, that’s super hard to read and I know us millennials don’t really like to Read we like to skim so it’s really tough to Understand where to go, Don’t be afraid of that white space That negative space that Basically has nothing, it helps people just see better, It helps out eyes, breathe and relax cause we’re not straining Yeah Right Yeah, What’s some other things to really keep in mind with the website? I think once you start Putting ads on your site is to limit the number of ads.

Obviously you want to Monetize your website, but if it’s just bombarding you with ads, it’s a really poor user experience. I know that I’ll find A recipe on Pinterest I’ll click on it and It’s just bombarded with ad ad ad ad, where I just say It’s the worst I don’t want to make this casserole anymore and I’m done Those clickbait-type articles right, Yep, You’re on social media, you click on it. Then it Gives you like a paragraph and I go onto page two and there’s a bunch of ads and it’s like 17 Pages for what could’ve been like half a page, Yeah, Going back to the purpose of your website, the reason you have a website is cause you’re, hoping to turn these users into clients or paying customers.

So if you have too many Conflicting messages they’re just going to go away; And you’re leaving customers sending them away because You have too much going on Absolutely and I think The as a beginner designer or whatever you’re doing, I would shy away from using ads in the first place. Until you’re established, Like you said, it’s About the user experience and if the first thing they See is just a bunch of ads they’re not going to trust you and they’re, not loyal to you.

Yet to understand like okay cool they have ads, I Already love their content, I love them. Let me help them out and maybe I’ll look at these ads, but if you’re not there, Yet shy away from them, And now, with the website too, you also don’t wan na Have just super random, conflicting colors, It stresses out the Eyes, like a yellow text on white background, just doesn’t work. You really wan na stick to Kind of your brand colors there’s a lot of cool little like complementary color wheel.

Calculators out there online just do a quick, Google search and it’ll show you cool Plug in your primary color and it’ll give you some Complementary colors that look good. That’s not Going to be too overwhelming for the end user on your site, Because if you frustrate them, And stress out their eyes: they’re never coming back Now. I know with your website. You have a ton of content, so lots of experience there.

What are some best practices when it comes to content with designing your website. First off, you want Content that is relevant to you and your business And your audience, If you are a dog, groomer and You are writing about plumbing. Then people coming to Your website are not going to find that helpful and They’re going to go away So make sure that whatever your audience is coming to you for You’re writing content that you like, and you Can use Google Analytics or just ask your audience what They want to hear from you and you can start writing.

More content about that, so it’s more in line with What they’re looking for, but then also you wan na make Sure that it’s consumable, You can’t just have This giant block of text, because you wan na put everything in there. I won’t read it. No one’s going to read it, so it’s as simple as trimming it down to the core message, but if that content is really important, then Just hit that return bar and add some spaces, so that way, it’s nice and easy on the eyes Right.

It’s not an essay When you were in high school, You wan na break it up. Even if the paragraph is not the perfect form make it easy for the visitor to read. Have nice bolded Headlines or bullet points, or quote boxes, break up that content Make your English teacher mad. Okay, Just make it nice and pretty Yes, we’re going to get Some angry angry emails, but with the website itself, Too, you really wan na think about the structure.

Of the content, as well, especially on the main pages, the blog posts and things like that – definitely have to have structure, but so does like say your homepage. Now you don’t want that. Block of text in your hero, So the hero of a website, is basically that first little banner Header area that you see it usually has some type of text saying here’s how I help you a call-to-action and a nice image on The background, usually Images with your website: They have to match your brand.

You can’t just throw out If you’re a dog groomer some plumbing stuff cause That doesn’t make sense. It’s weird What about corny photos Like corny stock photos? I mean, if you don’t, have any photos. I would say that corny Photos are maybe better than a blurry photo from your phone. It’s true But maybe it’s time to invest in a photo shoot, so you can get really Nice, high-quality content and images that really show and display what your brand and your Products and services are Absolutely My two cents, A professional photographer Will definitely elevate you, especially if you’re a brick-and-mortar having someone coming to your place and take super quality.

Photos that way anyone can actually see it is great Worth the investment And now, if you have To use stock photos you don’t always have to Use the super corny ones, there are some free Resources that I like to use when I’m designing websites for clients, so pexels.Com is probably my favorite one and then unsplash.Com Is also a solid option, Basically photographers Are going on there uploading some of their Best work to get exposure and they’re giving away for free, which is super, awesome and helpful.

You can donate to them if You really like their stuff, but it really elevates your website, so it has some beautiful imagery, especially when it’s on-brand Okay, this is awesome, but what else do I need for my website Right? So with your Website you really want that purpose of it right and we talked about what Is the goal of the website? Part of that goal is Having a call-to-action and not just one call To action up in the hero, you want multiple call-to-actions throughout, So a call-to-action Is a usually a button or a link of some sort that says, learn more get now buy this product Subscribe to my email list.

Yes, Something basically telling The user to take action So again you wan na Have in the hero image, but you also wan na, have it Throughout the website itself, at the end of blog posts, I really like to have it at the top of the navigation bar upper right, just because the way that People’s eyes kind of travel around the website, It’s usually in a Z formation, so they’ll start at the top left, which usually your logo they’ll, move over and have the navigation, but then have a call-to-action right there and then they’ll, kinda scroll down, they’ll, see other content And to the right they’ll Kind of finish off, and especially if that menu Bar kind of scrolls down that call-to-action is Always there for them to see and use and take that action.

Nice Nealey pro tip guys take notes Alright. So now another Aspect of your website when designing is truly have Some sort of social share if you can say that five times fast Social share social share, Social share social share social share, woo got it. I’r impressed Pretty good She’s kind of the best So now, with the social share. I know what you’re thinking right, like that’s, not design, But design is every single Part of your website – and you really need to be Designing with purpose So how is social share? I can only say it one times fast.

How has that really changed your website? Well, for our website. We want people to. We do a lot of blog posts, news articles we wan na share our interviews and so having those buttons at the end of every article is crucial because we will have Article that will go viral and that’s really the goal. If you’re writing content, that is a blog post or whatnot, you want, as many people To see it as possible, so having that option that At the end of the article, they can just click and share it to their favorite.

Social network is key. If you don’t have it you’re missing out on potential new viewers and new users who can find you and your Business and your content With social shares, it can be on, like the left side bar of Like your blog page, you can have it in the widget Area on your right side bar, you can have at the bottom of a blog post. Usually people have it in Either the header or the footer, The more places you can Add it to your website without it being overwhelming the better You wan na, make this as easy as possible for someone to really love your content.

Wan na share it with the world Now another aspect that you Really wan na keep in mind and a lot of again a lot Of people don’t think this as designing the website. Is planning for SEO SEO is all about the website design and what you put into it. What are some things to keep in mind when really designing for SEO Yeah? So you have this Website you want it to be found, and there are certain Things that you have to do when building and designing your website so that way, Google and Other search engines can actually find and read your website.

[ Nealey ] Right So the first one is your source code. There is certain ways that you need to structure your website, so that way the crawlers can find it. An example. Are the image alt tags? Google is not a human It doesn’t really know what your images are. About it’s a robot right, Yep And so you have to go in and put text to describe hey. This is a picture of a dog being groomed. So that way, Google Knows that this picture this website is relevant.

For those search terms, So again, this all goes around. You have to structure your website in a way that Google wants But then also your content, you have to have your key words in there, that’s relevant to you and your business so where you’re located Yes, What your products and Services are your business name, make sure all of that is found in the content of your website, cause that all helps with your SEO And if you want even more Of a deep dive about SEO click this article right here and we can go into it even more Now super important When designing your website is to make sure that It is mobile friendly, Everyone has a mobile phone.

Gone are the days of the early 2000s when literally everyone Was on a desktop Yeah now, not only does Everyone have a mobile phone or a tablet that they’re Using to look at your website, but all the different phones Have different dimensions So all the screens are Different sizes and there’s just a lot so having a mobile, responsive, Site solves for that And most WordPress themes Have some sort of responsiveness that’ll make it look good? No Matter what device you’re using almost all website builders do as well, so you wan na make sure You keep that in mind, cause over half of Searches on search engines are coming through mobile and if your site is not mobile, optimized you make me zoom.

Oh the worst. I am never coming to your website or doing Business with you ever And lastly, you wan na make sure it works, no matter what browser people are on. I know some browsers have Some funky different settings right. So what might look good in Chrome may not look good in Internet Explorer if you’re still using Internet Explorer Edge. Edge Edge now Or if you’re, using Internet Explorer upgrade to Edge Firefox, make sure just test it out.

Just download the browsers. Really quick, go to the website. Go to different pages. You wan na QA these things to make sure that you’re not putting someone else’s experience down because they happen to Have a favorite browser, So these are all really great tips, but where do I go to find What’s new and modern and to see what other people In my industry are doing with their websites, Do you have any tips or ideas Yeah? I have lots of suggestions here.

I know designing website, especially when it’s not your forte or something you do everyday. It’s hard to really get Those design juices flowing So sometimes it’s good To see just inspiration check out other websites and you can go online and just start searching random. Websites, if you want, but I have two recommendations – that these sites really just Highlight kind of the best of the best, The first one is awwwards.

Com and the second one is behance.Com. Now both have all sorts of just graphical design-type aspects, but they do have website just examples and basically sites of the day that you can kinda check out And start picking apart, like cool. I really love this feature or I really like how this looks and mold it into your own site Kind of take the best of everything and make your own Alright Nealey. Thank you so much.

Those were fantastic tips. On how to get started with WordPress, I think if you follow those you’re going to have a killer website Absolutely and you helped out a lot which has helped me so I don’t have to come up with as much content. What can I say, But let us know your favorite Tip in the comments below and while you’re there Smash that like button and subscribe to this blog, so you get all these episodes first.

This is The Journey We’ll see you next time,

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