Whether you’re planning a new website, a website move or a website redesign, OR you're still stuck at trying to figure out “What website platform should I use??” ... There’s a few questions you should consider & answer for yourself BEFORE you ever talk to a web designer or developer or go too far down the rabbit hole of researching website platforms.
This is ESPECIALLY true if you’re an artist, maker or multi-passionate creative solopreneur and you're doing almost ALL OF THE BUSINESS THINGS yourself!
In this video, I cover the 5 questions you should be asking yourself and getting clarity on BEFORE building or redesigning your website.
This is based on more than a decade of experience working with TONS of artists, creatives & small business owners, both in my full-time day jobs in digital marketing and through my own program, the Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator.
Ready? Let’s get right to it:
#1: What do you want your website to DO for you?
It's important to understand what you want your website to actually be able to do for you. Especially if you're considering moving to a new website platform this is going to be really important.
Do you want to sell physical or digital products on your website? Is e-commerce your primary focus?
If you’re building a website primarily for selling your handmade products or artwork online, you’ll probably want to go with a platform that is designed specifically for ecommerce, like Shopify or BigCommerce.
Or maybe you want to sell a few things, but you're not going to have hundreds of different products. Maybe you mostly want to use your website as a portfolio site. In that case, Shopify could still work but maybe you could get away with something like Squarespace or Wix.
Is one of the goals for your website to book classes or sell tickets to craft workshops that you're teaching? If so, you'll need to make sure that whatever website platform you're choosing will integrate with whatever tools you'll use to sell tickets, book classes, or schedule calls with you.
Whatever your goals are, it's important to get really clear on what you're trying to accomplish with your website BEFORE you start the process of building it or choosing a website platform.
#2: Is there specific software you need your website to integrate with, or features you need it to have?
Are there specific features or specific software that you need your website to integrate with and play nice with?
As a multi-passionate creative maybe you're using something like Printful or other print on demand tools to sell your original artwork or designs on t-shirts, stickers or mugs. In that case, you're going to want to make sure that whatever software you choose to build your website with plays nicely and integrates seamlessly with Printful or whichever print on demand tools you're using.
Do you already use an email marketing platform like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Mailerlite or Klaviyo? If so, evaluate how easily the website platforms you're considering will work with your email marketing platform.
There are so many great email marketing tools out there, and some of them integrate more seamlessly than others with different website platforms.
Here's something to consider in general when it comes to connecting your website platform with other pieces of software:
Even if there aren't direct integrations built in, you can often use a tool called Zapier which is basically like digital duct tape.
Even if there's not a direct connection between a tool like Printful or Klaviyo and your website platform, Zapier can function like duct tape between two pieces of software to "zap" information from one platform to the other. Zapier can help your your website play nice with other tools.
That said, it's basically digital duct tape, so if you start building a whole house or your whole website out of nothing but duct tape - it may get a little wobbly.
So I recommend focusing on what are the most important things that you need to make sure work really well and really reliably in your business? Prioritize those to make sure that the things that are MOST important to your business will work really well and that there aren't big risks of having everything fall apart.
#3: How tech-y are you? And who will be responsible for updating your website?
Will you be the primary person responsible for editing & upkeep of your website?
If not, who will take care of updating and maintaining your website, and how tech savvy are they?
A lot of the multi-passionate creative small business owners that I work with want to be able to manage, edit and update their websites themselves. But what if you're not super tech savvy, or you just don't want to worry about learning a bunch of new tech stuff?
In that case, I really recommend thinking this through very carefully ahead of time so that you know that you'll be able to manage the website platform that you're using.
This is also why I recommend thinking about this stuff before you ever talk to a web designer or web developer.
Back when I used to work in a digital marketing agency I would see this all the time:
Clients would come in and they had already hired a web designer or web developer who had built them a custom website on WordPress.
(Which can be great by the way - there's nothing wrong with WordPress, it's just that for non-techy people, WordPress can be a lot of techy stuff to manage, and can feel overwhelming for some creative small business owners.)
What’s better? Self-hosted websites like WordPress vs Hosted websites like Squarespace or Shopify?
Here's an analogy that I like to use to explain the differences between something like WordPress which is a completely self-hosted website platform versus something like Shopify, Squarespace or Wix which is a hosted platform.
A self-hosted platform like WordPress is sort of like if you own a home and a hosted platform such as Squarespace, Wix or Shopify (where everything's kind of taken care of for you behind the scenes) is more like renting an apartment.
Much like with owning a home or renting an apartment, it's not that one is necessarily better than the other. It's just that they're different for different people, and they serve different needs.
I actually prefer to rent my apartment, and I also now prefer to use hosted websites for myself. (Even though I spent many years running a WordPress website!)
With a self-hosted WordPress website, you'll have to:
find & pay for hosting
install the WordPress software
update any plugins
make sure the WordPress software stays updated
make sure everything is safe & secure behind the scenes
Cyber security is especially important when it comes to Wordpress. (I learned this one the hard way, many years ago!)
But on the other hand, WordPress is super customizable and that's one of the reason that so many web designers and developers love it.
I've used WordPress for a lot of projects over the years, it is really powerful super customizable. It's a lot like owning a house, right? If you own a house you can knock down walls, you can put up a swing set in the backyard, you can paint the walls, you can make all sorts of changes.
But when the plumbing breaks, when the toilet backs up, when the dishwasher fails.... you have to fix all of those things or call someone to take care of it for you if you can't fix it yourself.
Running a self-hosted website like WordPress or similar can be a lot like owning a house. There's pros and cons to it.
On the other hand, with a hosted platform like Shopify for e-commerce or Squarespace or Wix, you won't have quite as much customization freedom, but you also don't have to worry about all of the back-end software updates and security updates. All of that stuff is usually taken care of for you.
For most creative solopreneurs and micro small business owners, I generally recommend finding a hosted website platform.
If you are focused on e-commerce, Shopify can be a really great choice. BigCommerce is another good option.
If you only need more of a portfolio type of site and you don't plan to offer hundreds of products for sale, you could use something like Squarespace or Wix .
I recommend if you're going to be the one editing things and maintaining your website yourself, test drive it before you decide if possible.
A lot of these website builder platforms have free trials, so get in there and see what feels comfortable for you.
If you're the one maintaining your website, that's what matters. You need to feel comfortable going in there and editing things.
Now, the exception is if you have someone very close to you like a live-in partner, spouse or roommate who is super knowledgeable about all things WordPress or some other platform, go for it!
One of my students in the Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator is in this situation. She has her ecommerce website built on WordPress with WooCommerce, but she has somebody who's very close to her who can make sure that all that stuff on the back end is taken care of for her.
#4: What content & information will you put on your website?
You don’t need to know or have EVERYTHING ready before you start talking to web designers, but it’s good to have a general idea of the content & messaging you’ll want to include, plus the types of visual branding & images you might want on your website.
It helps to start thinking about this as early as possible because this can be one of the most time consuming aspects of building a new website or redesigning a website.
A good web designer or web development agency can usually work with you on this to develop these ideas, but the more clear you can be about what content and visual imagery you'll need, the better.
Many web design agencies can pair you with a copywriter or photographer to create the content (this usually costs extra though) — but most often, it’s on YOU to provide this content.
If you're considering working with a web designer or agency, two that I highly recommend who specialize in Shopify ecommerce sites for artists and creative product-based businesses are:
#5: What pages or areas will be most important on your website for your visitors / customers to get to?
Much like thinking about what written content and imagery you'll want for your website, it's helpful to start thinking as early as possible about what pages or areas of your site you'll want your website visitors to navigate to.
This will also help make things so much smoother and faster if you can have some idea of the kind of information and content you want on your website, as well as the main pages and areas of your site that you want to have.
Even if you're building a website yourself with a platform like Shopify or Squarespace it's really helpful to consider:
What parts of your website are the most important for people to get to?
When professional web designers and developers start thinking about this and planning what will be included in the top navigation, footer navigation, or primary pages of a website, they'll often create something called a wireframe.
One way that I like to approach this for myself, especially when I'm designing my own websites, is to draw a wireframe with paper.
I find it helpful to step away from the computer where things can get a little overwhelming sometimes. Using pencil & paper can help you to really focus on questions like: What is the most important information that I want somebody to see if they land on my homepage?
I'm a very visual person, as a multi-passionate creative. So I like to grab a piece of paper, preferabily a long, legal sized piece of paper (to kind of mimic the longer flow of a web page) and just sketch out a basic idea of what you want to include.
Here in this video, you can see my example of where I mocked up a basic wireframe.
Here's a great Website Wireframe Beginner's Guide via HubSpot.
If you’re stuck, you can also look at other websites for inspiration & ideas.
Looking at the websites of direct competitors or similar creatives is great, but I also recommend looking for other types of artists or companies who might be similar in size or have similar values as you but they sell completely different types of products or work in a different creative medium.
What questions do you have about planning your website?
I could nerd out all day about website planning, website design, search engine optimization and digital marketing for multi-passionate creatives, but I'd love to hear from YOU:
What questions do you have about planning your website?
Drop them in the comments below this video.
If you want to dive even deeper, check out the Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator, a mentorship program specially designed for creative, product-based business owners.
I also offer a limited number of 1-on-1 coaching, consulting & strategy sessions for creative business owners.
