Time to Complete Module: 30 minutes
Last updated: 20 February 2025
IN THIS MODULE
Module 1: Preparation and Materials
We started by going over some essential concepts and tools that need to function as the foundation for your website and your brand as a whole. These are the foundational blocks on which you’ll build your online identity, so it’s crucial to have them locked down ahead of time.Site Identity
This comes almost as a prerequisite for your brand, but you must be clear about the identity you want to present to the world. Think of your brand as a person. Which adjectives would you use to describe them? Would you expect to find them at the pub, office, or at a formal event? How do they speak? How do they approach you? You need to keep your site identity in mind constantly as you review everything that follows. If something doesn’t fit that identity, you’re still on time to identify why and make the necessary changes.Logo
Remember, your logo is the smallest unit of information instantly recognizable to your brand. It should be simple, adaptable, and convey your identity. You should have gotten the opportunity to see it in action by now so you can reassess if it remains recognizable on smaller screens and in different color schemes.Colors
The colors should give you, on an instinctual level, a small understanding of the tone of your brand. Look at your site. If the screen was out of focus, would the screen still feel like it conveys your brand voice and tone? If the answer is no, don’t go changing your entire color scheme just yet. Try simply changing the hues of the colors you already have to see if that improves anything (dark gray and a muddied green will feel very different from black and bright green).Fonts
Same as before. Do the fonts on your site feel like they match the tone you’re going for? Also, make sure that the different fonts you use complement each other well (meaning, they don’t look poorly designed or out of place when they are next to each other).Media and Images
Your website’s images, videos, and media should be high quality and feel cohesive. Minimize stock content whenever possible – photos taken specifically for your business will always look more authentic. I’ve rejected brand proposals before just because their main website image was the same generic “team of professionals” photo that tops search results. Using a few stock images is fine, especially as you start, but avoid making them the focal point of your site. If you’ve browsed stock photo sites, you might notice we didn’t completely follow this advice for our sample sites. That’s because these are illustrative examples, and we don’t have a real marketing agency or award-winning photographer to provide custom images. However, if you’re creating a site for a real business, investing in a local photographer is well worth it.Module 2: Homepage
We spent quite some time building our homepages, and though they’re all different, there are still some common elements for us to look out for:Header
Your header is the navigational constant across all site pages, so you want it to be simple, convey your site’s identity, and allow users to move around your site quickly. Though all headers are different, they should all include your site’s logo, a navigation menu, and (optionally) an extra button. If you want to include any other elements, ensure they’re absolutely necessary, since we want to keep the header readable.Hero
Your hero is the first section that will appear on your site’s very first page. You have a lot more freedom here, but we mostly want this hero to serve two functions: convey important information about the site (either through text or just how it feels) and grab visitors’ attention to incentivize them to keep going. Once again, you’re free to explore more with the hero. Try to edit different aspects, include fun elements, videos, images, or anything else you can think of. As long as it works as a great introduction to your site, the sky’s the limit.About
Even if there’s a separate “about” page on your site, we want to include a little more information directly from the homepage. Remember that visitors won’t put extra effort into exploring your site unless you give them a reason to, so adding a section that captures their interest is a good idea.Footer
The footer is the last section on your page and will appear as a global section. The footer for your site can be as simple as a section with the name of your business or as complex as one that offers plenty of navigation and contact options.Additional Sections
Any additional sections you add to the homepage, make sure they have a reason for being there. We added several galleries to our photography portfolio, important numbers to our marketing site, and a list of services and a blog section to our local business site. Your homepage is where you’ll get to express yourself the most freely (other pages should limit their content to whatever is relevant to that page), so here’s where you want to add various sections that add value to the page – just remember not to overdo it.Module 3: “About” Page
Regardless of what your website is for, an “about” page is a must. Try to put that brand voice to the test in this section. In our examples, the voice was grandiose and self-assured for an award-winning photographer, down to earth and friendly for a local flower shop, and competent and clear for a local marketing agency. As you might have noticed, the “about” page was not an enormous block of text for any of our sites. Though we want to convey important information, we also want to break it down to make it more digestible for our visitors. We can do that by breaking up the text with visual elements like images, videos, and galleries. Though bragging always feels good, remember that the purpose here is not to exalt your virtues but to connect with the reader.Module 4: Contact Page
No website exists entirely online. I mean… they do, all of them. But what I mean is that unless you’re creating a forum (in which case… wrong guide, buddy), at some point, your interaction with visitors will leave the realm of the digital and into face-to-face meetings for brick-and-mortar businesses, or deliveries for online shops, or on-site communication for CV sites. The contact page is there to make that transition seamless. We want to avoid adding unnecessary sections to this page to keep visitors focused on connecting with our business. Clear communication is essential, so add fields to the contact form like “What service are you interested in?” or “Preferred time for a return call.” This page should make it easy for visitors to convey their message accurately and efficiently.Module 5: Services/Products Page
If you want to nudge undecided visitors into becoming customers, it’s always a good idea to expand on the services that you offer. Remember to add high-quality copy and images, and be as precise as you can be about exactly what you’re offering. Social proof will be an exceptional tool for conversion here, so if you can share inspiring stories about what your business has done for others in the past, it will make getting new customers a lot easier. Make sure that this page includes the entirety of your offering. The time to be brief was back on the homepage, so assume that if anyone has made it this far, they want to know in great detail what it is that you can do for them.Module 6: Additional Pages
There’s a portfolio page for our portfolio site, a “cases” page for our marketing agency, and a gallery for our flower shop. The only thing these pages have in common is that they go further into what makes each of these businesses great. Since I can’t cover all the bases of what you might create additional pages for, here are just some general recommendations:- Make sure each new page has a specific purpose. You’re free to add pages as you wish but don’t try to add a “miscellaneous” page or sneak in a video gallery into your “products” page. Remember, we’re trying to keep this as organized as possible for the user, so they should be able to find whatever they’re looking for in a couple of clicks.
- Hierarchy. Adding too many pages to your menu can make it cluttered. Instead of placing everything in the main menu, prioritize key pages and use sub-pages where possible. For instance, if you want a separate page for each videography shoot, group them under a “My Shoots” section rather than listing each individually.
- Consistency. Feel free to explore design elements, colors, and presentation. But remember that, as a rule, if you were to show any random page from your site to someone else, they should be able to tell that it belongs to your site right away.
- Quality. Finally, if you add 40 extra pages and sub-pages to your site, that’s on you. But remember that the quality of each page should match that of the homepage. Don’t think that because you’re building a smaller section of your site or one that might not get as much traffic, you won’t have to put the same amount of care and effort into it.
Module 7: SEO
SEO is complex, but remember that the goal is simple: we want the people who need your services the most to be able to find you. SEO is a continuous process, so I’m sorry to say there’s no magic SEO bullet you can apply once and be done with it. As long as you follow the instructions in Module 8, you should already be heading in a good direction. To reiterate, we followed these steps to ensure that your site is primed for SEO success:- Menu. Make sure that your main menu offers easy, complete navigation to the rest of your site. Don’t forget to design the menu to match the rest of your site.
- Internal links and buttons. Make sure that there are no broken buttons on your site (buttons that don’t work or lead nowhere) and that you’ve correctly linked all the adequate text. Between the menu, buttons, and internal links, all sections of your site should be accessible from all others at no more than 3 clicks of difference.
- Metadata. Remember, the search algorithms read the metadata first and use it as a main source for indexing, so be concise, clear, and thorough. All pages on your site should have an SEO title and meta description, and all images should have alt tags.
- Slugs. For all pages other than the homepage, you want to add a slug at the end of your URL that clearly indicates where the user is on your site.
- SEO Checklist. SEO for your whole site will be a robust undertaking, so it’s good that Wix offers a built-in tool to help you cover your bases. After you’ve optimized as much as you can for SEO manually, head over to Wix’s SEO Checklist to cover what you missed. Don’t start promoting your site until you know for sure that you’ve completed this checklist and indexed your site to Google.
