5 Things to Do Before Building Your Website

One of the wonderful things about websites is that they’re not set in stone—they can change and evolve as your business grows or changes direction too.

But as you begin to design a new website, there are a few important things to do before building your site that can really improve both the site’s quality and how efficiently you can create it. (In other words, doing these things first can save you a lot of time!)

This post contains affiliate links through which I may earn a commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you. As always, these are products or services I personally use & love!

What to do before building your website

Here are five things I recommend doing before starting to build a new website for your business or organization:

1. Know your website’s purpose

Why do you need a website? Who are you hoping to attract to it? What actionable objectives are you aiming to achieve with it?

There’s no correct answer here—in fact, these questions could be answered in a wide variety of ways. But it’s important to know your answer and have clarity on the goal(s) of your particular website.

Here are some possible goals, of which your site may have several:

promote your brand
sell products
sell services
grow your email list
provide educational information
grow your client base
connect with B2B partners

Whichever your goal(s) are, you’ll want to be crystal clear about them so you can keep them front and center when designing your website.

2. Choose your website platform & template

While it’s possible to transfer your website and domain to another platform down the road, it can be quite time-consuming to do so. It’s best to do your research and start your site on the platform you envision staying with for the foreseeable future.

If you’re undecided, here’s why I think Squarespace is the best website platform for most small businesses, bloggers, freelancers and entrepreneurs (and why I design with it exclusively for my custom web design clients).

Another key task before starting to design your website is to research your template/theme options and choose the one that best supports your needs. Though Squarespace makes it possible (and relatively easy) to switch between templates after you’ve started to design, there are some elements that can get lost in translation when switching, so starting with a template you’re confident in is helpful.

Things to look for as you choose your website template:

navigation layout options (for example, do you want a button in your navigation bar?)
blog layout options
mobile layout
page layout (do you want banner images? a sidebar? index pages?)
site styling options (what you’re able to customize easily within the template)

A good starting point is to take a look around Squarespace’s template demos. They also have helpful documentation on understanding some more of the back-end differences between different templates.

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3. Ensure mobile responsive design

One of the most important elements in web design these days is mobile responsive design—you can expect about half of your website traffic to come from mobile devices.

As more and more users access your website on mobile devices, you want to ensure their user experience is just as pleasant as it is for those accessing your site on desktop.

One of the reasons I recommend Squarespace as a web-hosting platform is that all of their templates are set up with mobile responsive design, and their editing interface allows you to see/test how your design will appear on mobile.

(It’s still important to research your different template options too, as described above, because different templates display differently on mobile).

4. Check your business & domain name

Before committing to your website/business name, you’ll want to check that it’s available across several key places:

Domain: Is the domain name available? Are there other active websites with a similar domain that might be confusing? Check domain availability (and purchase when you’re ready) at squarespace.com/domains.
Legal entities: If you plan on incorporating your business as an LLC (either now or somewhere down the road), you’ll want to be sure your business name is not already taken (and that it’s not too close to an existing business name in your state). The process for checking incorporated business names varies by state.
Social names: You’ll also want to check that any social platforms you plan to use have a handle available for you—ideally, the name of your website or blog, but it could be anything else that makes reasonable sense for your business.

5. Do your branding homework

Your site needs a brand! And the process of designing your site will be much simpler and more efficient if you start with clear brand guidelines: What’s your color palette? Font scheme? Image aesthetic?

While it’s helpful to actually create a brand style guide for your business, it’s also understandable that if you’re just starting out, your brand style may still be evolving and not entirely clarified yet.

To streamline the design of your website, here are some basic branding questions that are helpful to answer:

What are my core fonts? (The happy number is usually two—one serif, one sans serif.)
What are my core colors? How will these be used throughout my site (links, buttons, etc.)?
What are the main feelings people should experience when visiting my site? How can I use color, font, imagery and layout to enhance this message?
What type of imagery will I be using to convey my message?
What will my logo be like? (Here’s more info on designing your own logo with my favorite, free design tool!)

Next steps for building your website

Ready to get started?

After doing the pre-website preparation mentioned above, here are a few helpful next steps:

Set up your website trial (here’s more about why I recommend Squarespace as a website-hosting platform).
Build & customize your website (here are 5 important things to be sure to include on your website!).
Set up your Squarespace blog (I recommend including a blog on your website, and share plenty of tips for setting one up in Squarespace).
Update your Squarespace SEO settings to improve SEO on your website.
Grow your website traffic by setting up your strategy to promote your website to new audiences.