Building a website: How easy is it?

Wonderful World of Websites | Website Wonder Woman

Building a Website Introduction

In today’s digital era, having an online presence is essential, whether you’re starting a business, showcasing your portfolio, or creating a personal blog. If you’ve ever wondered about building a website, you’re in the right place. But how easy is it? There's no need to learn coding skills; thanks to modern tools and platforms, building a website is simpler than ever. In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the process of building a website and show you just how easy it can be.

Building a website : This image shows a computer screen and keyboard on a light oak desk. The screen shows a website image of a group of friends with navigation options below it. To the left of the screen there is a grey plant pot with daffodils growing in it.

Step 1: Define Your Purpose and Goals

Before diving into the website-building process, it’s important to understand your website’s purpose and goals, what we like to call your Website's mission! Ask yourself:

What do you want to achieve with your website?
Who is your target audience?
What type of content will you provide?

Having a clear vision will help you make informed decisions as you build your website.

Step 2: Choose a Website Builder

One of the key factors in understanding how easy building a website is, is choosing the right website builder. These platforms require no coding skills and offer user-friendly interfaces. Popular options include:

Wix: Known for its drag-and-drop functionality and variety of templates.
Squarespace: Offers sleek, modern designs ideal for creatives.
WordPress: Highly customisable with thousands of themes and plugins and the ability to use drag and drop builders and templates.
Weebly: Simple to use with built-in e-commerce features.

Select the platform that best fits your needs and comfort level.

Step 3: Select a Domain Name

3d graphic of a website page, the word DOMAIN across it with a magnifying glass over the 'do' - for building a website

Your domain name is your website’s address on the internet (e.g., www.yourwebsite.com). To make your website easy to find, choose a domain name that is:

Short and memorable
Relevant to your content or business
Easy to spell and pronounce

Most website builders offer domain registration services, simplifying the process.

Step 4: Choose a Template or Theme

When exploring how easy building a website is, templates and themes play a crucial role. Website builders provide a variety of templates to serve as the foundation for your design. Pick one that aligns with your brand. These templates are usually customisable, allowing you to adjust colours, fonts, and layouts to match your style. But, of course, if you want something totally bespoke, then just shout for some help!

Step 5: Add Content and Customise

With your template ready, it’s time to add content and personalise your site:

Create Pages: Common pages include Home, About, Services, Blog, and Contact.
Add Text and Images: Use high-quality images and engaging text to captivate your audience.
Incorporate Multimedia: Enhance the user experience with videos or galleries.

Website builders often have drag-and-drop editors, making it easy to arrange and format your content.

Step 6: Optimise for SEO

A computer with a lilac screen and SEO written on the screen. Icons representing computer jargon like 'web' and 'target' are visible on the corners of the computer

Understanding how easy it is building a website, includes knowing how to make it visible to search engines. Basic SEO practices involve:

Using Relevant Keywords: Integrate keywords into your titles, headings, and content.
Creating Descriptive Meta Tags: Write compelling meta descriptions for each page.
Optimising Images: Use alt text for images to describe them to search engines.

Most website builders include built-in SEO tools to assist with optimisation.

Step 7: Preview and Publish

Before publishing your website, preview it to ensure there are no errors or inconsistencies. Check that your site looks great on both desktop and mobile devices. Once you’re satisfied, hit the publish button, and your website will go live!

Step 8: Maintain and Update

Knowing how easy it is building a website also means understanding the importance of maintenance. Regularly update your content, check for broken links, and refresh your design to keep your website relevant. Many website builders offer analytics tools to track performance and guide improvements.

Conclusion

So, now you know the basics about building a website! With user-friendly website builders and a wide range of online resources, creating a professional and functional website has never been simpler. With a clear vision, the right tools, and a bit of creativity, you can establish your online presence with ease.

Want to start building a website today and take the first step toward your digital success?

Our super simple Website Express is the best way to get started. WordPress used to be known as super flexible but really complicated to set up and use. However, all that's changed and to make it even easier we have taken all the set up part away!

By purchasing Website Express you simply sign up for a years free hosting, connect to your domain name (if you already have one and we can help with this) and your website is magically installed and ready for you to start building - with all the tech setup taken care of you can dive right in!

And with Divi's starter sites it's even easier. Just type in what your website is about, choose a template and it will create all the pages for you, ready to put your content into. Website Express also comes with a how to video course on how to use the site!

Get a Website Express!

Help ChatGPT find your website a laptop with a megaphone coming out of the screen

I know that sounds ridiculous, but spend a few minutes browsing small-business websites, and you will see why it matters.

For example: A homepage might say: "Helping you achieve your goals." That's great, but what goals? Who are you helping?

A web visitor might work it out from the logo, photographs and navigation. Machines have less tolerance for ambiguity.

Compare that with: " We provide commercial cleaning services to offices, schools and healthcare businesses across South Wales."

Suddenly, there's much less to decipher. Who are you? A commercial cleaning company. What do you do? Clean commercial premises. Who for? Offices, schools, and healthcare businesses. Where? South Wales.

Clear website copy isn't unsophisticated copy. If you want to help ChatGPT find your website, clarity can be a big advantage.

3. Create Proper Pages for Your Main Services

One mistake I regularly see is businesses trying to squeeze everything they offer onto one service page. Imagine a building company offering extensions, loft conversions, kitchen renovations, and garage conversions. Giving each important service its own useful page creates far more context than mentioning all four in a short bullet list.

A strong page can explain:

what the service involves;
who it is suitable for;
common questions customers ask;
the process;
relevant experience;
examples of completed work;
geographical areas covered.

This is not only useful information for potential customers, but also useful for conventional SEO and will help ChatGPT find your website and understand exactly what your business provides.

However, a word of caution. The important word here is useful. Creating 30 near-identical pages simply to target 30 slightly different phrases isn't the answer. Websites are ultimately for people, so create pages because you have something worthwhile to tell them.

4. Answer the Questions Your Customers Really Ask

3d speech bubbles with Q & A in them for Help ChatGPT find your website blog

This is where good blog content becomes particularly valuable and can help ChatGPT find your website.

People often interact with ChatGPT and other AI bots in a conversational way. Rather than searching for something like: "loft conversion Cardiff", they might ask "Do I need planning permission for a loft conversion in Cardiff?" or "Is my house suitable for a loft conversion?". You get my drift.

Think about the questions customers ask you on the phone, in emails, during quotations, or at meetings. Those questions can become extremely useful website content. And don't limit yourself to just obvious FAQs. Some of the best content comes from the questions that require actual expertise to answer: comparisons, costs, pitfalls, misconceptions, alternatives, and situations where one option is better than another. That is where your knowledge becomes valuable. Put that into blogs, and it will help ChatGPT find your website.

5. Don't Just Say You're an Expert - Demonstrate It

Almost every business website claims some variation of: "We pride ourselves on providing a professional, high-quality service." The problem is that anybody can write it. Evidence is much more persuasive.

If you want to help ChatGPT find your website and understand why your business might be a credible source, then you need to give your website substance.

That could include detailed case studies, named authors with relevant experience, customer reviews, original photographs, accreditations, qualifications, awards, research or data you've produced, and genuinely knowledgeable articles/blogs.

A case study saying: We recently completed this project for a client in Newport", isn't particularly informative. Explain the problem. What did the customer need? What did you recommend? Why? What difficulties arose? How did you solve them? What was the outcome?

That is useful information for humans, and it gives search and AI systems considerably more context about your real-world expertise.

6. Make Your Location Clear

Naturally, this is particularly important for local businesses.

If you are an electrician serving customers across South Wales, make that clear on your website. Your address, service areas, and contact details shouldn't require detective work to find.

Your About and Contact pages can reinforce where you are based, while individual service pages can naturally explain areas you cover. However, avoid creating dozens of thin location pages where the only difference is swapping one town name for another, like "Electrician Newport", "Electrician Cardiff", and "Electrician Cwmbran."

That's not useful content. If a location genuinely warrants its own page, give the reader something specific and worthwhile.

7. Build Your Reputation Beyond Your Own Website

Your website doesn't exist in isolation.

If you claim to be a leading expert in your field but nobody else on the internet appears to know you exist, that's not a particularly convincing signal. Therefore, I want you to think about your wider digital footprint.

Are you listed accurately on relevant professional or industry websites? Have local publications mentioned your business? Do reputable websites link to you? Are there genuine customer reviews? Have you contributed expert comments or guest articles elsewhere?

You see, digital PR, quality guest blogging, and traditional link building still have a place. However, the aim shouldn't be to scatter links across hundreds of low-quality websites to help ChatGPT find your website. On the contrary, it's to build a recognisable business with a credible online presence.

8. Write Content Worth Citing

Graphic woman sat at a computer with pages of content coming out of it

This may be one of the biggest opportunities created by AI search.

If everybody writes a generic article called "10 benefits of X", then there is very little reason for any search or AI system to favour yours above the others. To help ChatGPT find your website, you need to give it something better:

Share your experience.

Explain what customers commonly get wrong.
Compare two approaches and say when you'd choose each one.
Publish original examples.
Answer awkward questions.
Discuss pricing honestly where possible.
Challenge a commonly repeated piece of industry advice if you disagree with it – and explain why.

The internet doesn't desperately need another 800-word blog saying the same thing as the previous 100 ones. What it does need are people who actually know their subject sharing information that isn't available everywhere else. Tricky, yes. Impossible, no.

9. Don't Forget Traditional SEO

As I mentioned right at the beginning of this article, trying to help ChatGPT find your website doesn't mean forgetting Google and other search engines. In fact, as I'm sure you've realised by now, many of the fundamentals overlap.

You still need a technically sound, crawlable website with logical navigation, descriptive page titles, useful headings, strong internal links and well-written pages focused on genuine customer needs. Ultimately, your content should make sense to a person first; I always stress this to my clients. There is little to be gained by contorting every single paragraph into something you imagine AI or search engines want to read.

Cater for your customer. Ensure your website clearly explains who you are, what you do, where you operate, and why you know what you're talking about. That's what they need to know, and by doing that you are already building a much stronger foundation for both traditional and AI-driven searches.

Help ChatGPT Find Your Website - But Write For People

Help ChatGPT find your website a 3d graphic of a person in front of a laptop with books and text

AI is changing how people discover information online, but that doesn't mean websites suddenly need to be written for robots. Quite the opposite. After all, humans, your potential customers, are asking ChatGPT the questions. So, if you want to help ChatGPT find your website, you must make it clear, informative, and more authoritative for the people you're trying to reach.

Follow the guidance listed above. None of it is particularly technical (save point 1); it is simply about making sure you have good website content. The difference is that today, a well-written website isn't only helping a potential customer decide whether to contact you; it may also help ChatGPT find your website and decide whether or not to list it in response to a query, ultimately driving fresh traffic your way.

If you would like help reviewing your website content, or creating quality blogs that appeal to both humans and bots, please do not hesitate to get in touch. My name is Heather, and I'm The Content Creator.

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A bit about the author

Heather founded The Content Creator nearly three years ago, combining her love of writing with a genuine passion for helping small businesses and solopreneurs get seen online. She supports her clients with everything from website copy and SEO to AI search visibility, newsletters and social media, taking the stress out of creating content that not only sounds like them, but helps their business grow.

If you need a helping hand with any of these areas, Heather is your go-to girl! We can speak from experience, too, because she works on our own website, helping us keep up with the ever-changing world of SEO and AI search and making sure our content continues to work hard for our business.

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