Website Building for Production

Why do you need a website?

In today’s digital age it gets harder and harder to stand out. In order to properly showcase all you have to offer prospective clients you want one place where it all comes together that is completely under your control.

Consider your website as a central hub for your creativity, a creative focal point so to speak, while having all the relevant social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and even Snapchat?) is important, you are locked into their word count, algorithms, layout etc. A website gives you the means to break free of the shackles that such social media outlets will place on you. For Example, here are a few advantages a website would give you over social media

Website vs Social Media: Round 1!

· Allows you to surpass the word count of 280 characters (as of writing this)

· Users are unlikely to be drawn away from your profile and down a proverbial rabbit hole

· Can offer other services than just notifying followers what you are up to, like mailing lists, online stores or image galleries.

· Facebook algorithms squash anything with outside links

· Don’t have to pay per post for promotion just a monthly fee is you are using a site builder (which we will cover in a moment)

· Personalised design layout, make your website original and your own.

· Lots of people have social media and you can be lost in the mass of voices crying out to be heard but having a website adds that extra air of professionalism to your name/brand

· Centralised hub for all your creativity, easily navigable to find latest news, “about me” sections, merchandise, mailing lists and past projects to showcase talent.

Click here if you want to check out Round 2 (slightly more pro social media than me)

“But Building a Website is so much work!!”

That is where you are very wrong. Maybe in the fledgling days of the internet when we all needed a PhD in coding and computer science to begin to understand a website. Today there are several websites devoted to helping you out with creating your website with plenty of templates, stock images and customization options to assist you in any problem you can think of, and in the 100 other ones you’ve not thought of yet.

I could go into detail about the differences between the site builder options but I’ll save us both the time, energy and more of my writing and link a great article with a comparison of the two most notable options which are “Squarespace” and “Wix”

This website was made with Wix, I found it offered more freedom in creation and layout choices from a quick bit of research although Squarespace still does have plenty of potential and would be a viable alternative.

In the name of full disclosure, I feel I should mention I also gave WordPress a shot at the initial time of making my website as it was suggested to me by a classmate. I did not find the website building anywhere near as intuitive and freeing as the options I found in Wix so that ended my venture into WordPress as quickly as it began.