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  • Now, I know it might be really exciting for

  • you to jump straight into the graphic design of your website,

  • but there's actually a number of really important things that you need to

  • do before you even engage a graphic designer.

  • The first thing is keyword research.

  • I highly recommend that before you begin any type of

  • website project at all, that you start with keyword research to understand

  • what it is that your target audience is actively looking for online.

  • Keyword research will allow you to

  • identify the most important themes related to your audience, and that will inform you

  • on how to set up your information architecture. There are a number of great free and paid

  • keyword research tools out there. The most popular one is the Google AdWords Keyword Planner.

  • The second thing that you're gonna need to have is your domain name.

  • Now, you can also use keyword research

  • to inform your domain name. I highly recommend that you choose a

  • domain name that is a combination of a memorable brand name plus your keyword. However, there's

  • a number of other considerations that you'd need to make around which keywords are used

  • and how long the domain name is gonna be. And you can find out that information on one

  • of our previous episodes about 'How to pick a domain name for your business'.

  • The third thing that you need to have ready is your

  • information architecture, need to have a

  • clear idea of how you want to structure your website pages.

  • So, you're gonna have a number of utility pages that

  • typically go with any website, for example, your About page,

  • your Team page, Contact Us. Of course, you have your Products page and any product

  • categories and sub categories. You might have Services, you might have a Press page. So,

  • it's really good to have a clear idea about what those pages are and how they're gonna be organized.

  • Another thing that you're gonna need to have ready for your graphic designer is a clear

  • idea about what platform you're gonna use and if that platform comes with any templates

  • that you want the designer to incorporate into their design. So, depending on what platform

  • you use, there might be templates that you find are appropriate to power your kind of

  • business. And so, rather than going down the road of having a completely customized design,

  • we're just gonna take you down the pathway of hiring a developer to customize the template.

  • You might want to choose an easier route, which is, pick a template that already works

  • for you, have the graphic designer base their website design on this template and just modify

  • the colors or the fonts, things like that... No major changes like layout changes which

  • sends you down the full customization route which can be more time consuming and expensive.

  • Another thing that you wanna have ready is your logo. And that's important too, because

  • if you have a logo for your business already, then you want your graphic designer to be

  • able to design a website that matches the look and feel of your logo. What you don't

  • want is a website design that has certain colors and fonts that completely clash with

  • the logo that you already have. Then, you have to re-brand your logo, which might actually

  • be a little more challenging if your customers already recognize your company based on your old logo.

  • So that's it for today. Thanks so much for joining us and for more information about

  • how to build a kickass website please go to entrepreneursforachange.com.

Now, I know it might be really exciting for

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