- What's up everyone?
Today we're covering WordPress design tips for beginners,
here on The Journey.
- Alright Nealey, I am brand spanking new to WordPress.
Where do I start, I'm so overwhelmed.
- It is super overwhelming
and I think a lot of people do,
when they start to build their very first site,
is they just go gung-ho and just start trying everything.
And they go in without a plan.
So my first tip for you
is to really have a plan for your website, right.
So when someone comes to visit your website,
what are some things that you want them to do?
- For me, the most important thing
is they need to find all of our fresh,
new content on the homepage.
So we have a lot of content coming out daily,
whether it's interviews or news articles.
So I want them to be able to find that
and easily find the thing that's most relevant to them.
- Right, so just kinda go down the rabbit hole
of all your content, getting the freshest first.
- Yep - And then possibly find,
oh cool, here's a related article.
- [Morgan] Yep, yep. - And then
here's another article.
So that's super important. - Yeah.
- You have a plan for your visitors.
So same thing with you.
When you want someone to visit your site,
is it just to get information about you?
Is it to call you, is it to contact you?
Is it to buy your product?
Whatever it is, you wanna have an idea
of what that is going forward,
so that way when you develop your website,
that is priority number one,
whether you're designing the site
or you have someone designing it for you.
- Okay, so I have a homepage,
but other than that what other pages are important to have?
- So homepage, definitely important.
If you don't have a homepage,
you don't really have a website,
so that's kind of important.
But other than that, you want an About Us page,
you want to talk about yourself
and really talk about how you you help the visitor,
the consumer, the customer, right?
The About Us usually, in typical fashion,
here's the company's history. - [Morgan] Yeah.
- A lot of people may not care about that.
With your About page, have it really about
how you help them, a little bit of your history,
but more important how you help them.
Have a Products and Services page,
to really showcase what you do.
Have a Contact page,
because that's super important for people to contact you.
And then lastly, a Testimonials page.
People love that social proof.
You can pull reviews from, like, Yelp, Google My Business,
Facebook, wherever you've got a review
plug it on the website and really show people
that you are who you say you are.
- Yeah and with those pages people are either
finding you through social, or just going to Google
and finding you that way,
and so these are the pages that they wanna do
and they're doing their due diligence,
they wanna know who you are, why you're an expert,
what other people say about you,
what product and services you offer,
so yeah having those main ones are perfect.
- All right so now another thing to really
keep in mind with designing your website
is you want to keep it simple.
And what I see a lot of first time people do
is they'll go in, they have, like,
paragraphs and paragraphs of their content.
- They wanna have everything there.
- Literally everything, so they throw everything
on their website and it's just a giant block of text
that's super hard to read
and I know us millennials
don't really like to read, we like to skim,
so it's really tough to understand where to go.
Don't be afraid of that white space.
That negative space, that basically has nothing,
it helps people just see better.
It helps out eyes breathe and relax
cause we're not straining. - Yeah.
- Right? - Yeah.
- What's some other things to really
keep in mind with the website?
- I think once you start putting ads on your site,
is to limit the number of ads.
Obviously you want to monetize your website,
but if it's just bombarding you with ads,
it's a really poor user experience.
I know that I'll find a recipe on Pinterest,
I'll click on it and it's just bombarded with
ad, ad, ad, ad, where I just say
- It's the worst. - I don't want to make this
casserole anymore and I'm done.
- Those clickbait-type articles, right?
- Yep - You're on social media,
you click on it, then it gives you like a paragraph
and I go onto page two and there's a bunch
of ads and it's like 17 pages for what could've been
like half a page. - Yeah.
Going back to the purpose of your website,
the reason you have a website is cause
you're hoping to turn these users
into clients or paying customers.
So if you have too many conflicting messages
they're just gonna go away and you're leaving customers,
sending them away because you have too much going on.
- Absolutely and I think the, as a beginner designer,
or whatever you're doing, I would shy away from
using ads in the first place until you're established.
Like you said, it's about the user experience
and if the first thing they see is just a bunch of ads,
they're not gonna trust you and
they're not loyal to you yet to understand, like,
okay, cool, they have ads I already love their content,
I love them, let me help them out
and maybe I'll look at these ads,
but if you're not there yet, shy away from them.
And now with the website, too,
you also don't wanna have just super random
conflicting colors.
It stresses out the eyes, like, a yellow text
on white background just doesn't work.
You really wanna stick to, kind of, your brand colors,
there's a lot of cool little, like,
complementary color wheel calculators out there online
just do a quick Google search,
and it'll show you cool, plug in your primary color
and it'll give you some complementary colors
that look good, that's not gonna be too overwhelming
for the end user on your site.
Because if you frustrate them and stress out their eyes
they're never coming back.
Now I know with your website you have a ton of content
so lots of experience there,
what are some best practices when it comes
to content with designing your website?
- First off you want content that is relevant
to you and your business and your audience.
If you are a dog groomer and you are writing about plumbing
then people coming to your website are not going
to find that helpful and they're gonna go away.
So make sure that whatever your audience
is coming to you for, you're writing content
that you like, and you can use Google Analytics
or just ask your audience what they want to hear from you
and you can start writing more content about that
so it's more in line with what they're looking for,
but then also you wanna make sure that it's consumable.
You can't just have this giant block of text
because you wanna put everything in there
- I won't read it. - No one's going to read it
so it's as simple as trimming it down
to the core message, but if that content
is really important then just hit that return bar
and add some spaces so that way it's nice
and easy on the eyes.
- Right, it's not an essay when you were in high school.
You wanna break it up even if the paragraph
is not the perfect form, make it easy
for the visitor to read,
have nice bolded headlines, or bullet points
or quote boxes, break up that content.
- Make your English teacher mad, okay?
Just make it nice and pretty.
- Yes, we're gonna get some angry, angry emails,
but with the website itself too, you really wanna
think about the structure of the content as well,
especially on the main pages,
the blog posts and things like that,
definitely have to have structure
but so does, like, say your homepage.
Now you don't want that block of text in your hero.
So the hero of a website is basically
that first little banner, header area, that you see,
it usually has some type of text saying
here's how I help you, a call-to-action,
and a nice image on the background usually.
Images with your website, they have to match your brand.
You can't just throw out, if you're a dog groomer,
some plumbing stuff cause that doesn't make sense.
- It's weird. - What about corny photos?
Like corny stock photos?
- I mean, if you don't have any photos,
I would say that corny photos are maybe better
than a blurry photo from your phone.
- It's true. - But maybe,
it's time to invest in a photo shoot
so you can get really nice, high-quality content
and images that really show and display
what your brand and your products and services are.
- Absolutely. - My two cents.
- A professional photographer will definitely elevate you,
especially if you're a brick-and-mortar,
having someone coming to your place
and take super quality photos, that way anyone
can actually see it, is great.
- Worth the investment.
- And now, if you have to use stock photos,
you don't always have to use the super corny ones,
there are some free resources that I like to use
when I'm designing websites for clients,
so pexels.com is probably my favorite one
and then unsplash.com is also a solid option.
Basically, photographers are going on there
uploading some of their best work to get exposure
and they're giving away for free
which is super awesome and helpful.
You can donate to them if you really like their stuff,
but it really elevates your website
so it has some beautiful imagery,
especially when it's on-brand.
- Okay, this is awesome,
but what else do I need for my website?
- Right, so with your website, you really want
that purpose of it, right,
and we talked about what is the goal of the website.
Part of that goal is having a call-to-action
and not just one call to action up in the hero
you want multiple call-to-actions throughout.
So, a call-to-action is a, usually, a button
or a link of some sort that says
learn more, get now, buy this product.
- Subscribe to my email list. - Yes.
Something basically telling the user to take action.
So, again, you wanna have in the hero image
but you also wanna have it throughout the website itself,
at the end of blog posts.
I really like to have it at the top
of the navigation bar, upper right,
just because the way that people's eyes kind of travel
around the website.
It's usually in a Z formation
so they'll start at the top left,
which usually your logo,
they'll move over and have the navigation,
but then have a call-to-action right there
and then they'll kinda scroll down,
they'll see other content
and to the right they'll kind of finish off
and especially if that menu bar kind of scrolls down,
that call-to-action is always there for them
to see and use and take that action.
- Nice, Nealey pro tip guys, take notes.
- Alright, so now another aspect of your website
when designing is truly have some sort of social share,
if you can say that five times fast.
- Social share, social share, social share, social share,
social share, woo, got it!
- I'm impressed.
- Pretty good.
- She's kind of the best.
So now, with the social share, I know what you're thinking,
right, like, that's not design.
But design is every single part of your website,
and you really need to be designing with purpose.
So, how is social share,
I can only say it one times fast,
how has that really changed your website?
- Well, for our website, we want people to,
we do a lot of blog posts, news articles,
we wanna share our interviews
and, so, having those buttons at the end
of every article is crucial
because we will have article that will go viral
and that's really the goal if you're writing content
that is a blog post or whatnot,
you want as many people to see it as possible,
so having that option that at the end of the article
they can just click and share it
to their favorite social network is key.
If you don't have it, you're missing out
on potential new viewers and new users
who can find you and your business and your content.
- With social shares, it can be on, like,
the left side bar of, like, your blog page,
you can have it in the widget area on your right side bar,
you can have at the bottom of a blog post.
Usually people have it in either the header or the footer.
The more places you can add it to your website
without it being overwhelming the better.
You wanna make this as easy as possible
for someone to really love your content,
wanna share it with the world.
Now, another aspect that you really wanna keep in mind,
and a lot of, again, a lot of people don't think this
as designing the website, is planning for SEO.
SEO is all about the website design
and what you put into it.
What are some things to keep in mind
when really designing for SEO?
- Yeah, so you have this website, you want it to be found,
and there are certain things that you have to do
when building and designing your website
so that way Google and other search engines
can actually find and read your website.
- [Nealey] Right. - So the first one
is your source code, there is certain ways
that you need to structure your website
so that way the crawlers can find it.
An example are the image alt tags.
Google is not a human, it doesn't really know
what your images are about, it's a robot, right.
- Yep. - And so you have to go in
and put text to describe, hey,
this is a picture of a dog being groomed
so that way Google knows that this picture,
this website, is relevant for those search terms.
So, again, this all goes around,
you have to structure your website
in a way that Google wants, but then, also, your content,
you have to have your key words in there
that's relevant to you and your business
so, where you're located. - Yes.
- What your products and services are, your business name,
make sure all of that is found
in the content of your website
cause that all helps with your SEO.
And if you want even more of a deep dive about SEO
click this video right here
and we can go into it even more.
- Now, super important when designing your website
is to make sure that it is mobile friendly.
Everyone has a mobile phone.
Gone are the days of the early 2000s
when, literally, everyone was on a desktop.
- Yeah, now, not only does everyone have a mobile phone
or a tablet that they're using to look at your website
but all the different phones have different dimensions.
So all the screens are different sizes and,
there's just a lot,
so having a mobile responsive site solves for that.
- And most Wordpress themes have some sort of responsiveness
that'll make it look good no matter what device you're using
almost all website builders do, as well,
so you wanna make sure you keep that in mind
cause over half of searches on search engines
are coming through mobile
and, if your site is not mobile optimized,
you make me zoom.
- Oh, the worst. - I am never coming
to your website or doing business with you ever.
And lastly, you wanna make sure it works
no matter what browser people are on.
I know some browsers have some funky different settings,
right, so what might look good in Chrome
may not look good in Internet Explorer
if you're still using Internet Explorer.
- Edge. - Edge, Edge now.
Or if you're using Internet Explorer, upgrade to Edge,
Firefox, make sure, just, test it out.
Just download the browsers really quick,
go to the website, go to different pages.
You wanna QA these things
to make sure that you're not putting
someone else's experience down
because they happen to have a favorite browser.
- So these are all really great tips
but where do I go to find what's new and modern
and to see what other people in my industry are doing
with their websites?
Do you have any tips or ideas?
- Yeah, I have lots of suggestions here.
I know designing website,
especially when it's not your forte
or something you do everyday,
it's hard to really get those design juices flowing.
So sometimes it's good to see just inspiration,
check out other websites
and you can go online and just
start searching random websites if you want
but I have two recommendations that,
these sites really just highlight, kind of,
the best of the best.
The first one is awwwards.com
and the second one is behance.com.
Now, both have all sorts of just
graphical design-type aspects,
but they do have website, just examples
and, basically, sites of the day
that you can kinda check out.
And start picking apart, like, cool,
I really love this feature or I really like how this looks
and mold it into your own site.
Kind of take the best of everything
and make your own.
- Alright, Nealey, thank you so much.
Those were fantastic tips on how to get started
with Wordpress.
I think if you follow those
you're gonna have a killer website.
- Absolutely, and you helped out a lot
which has helped me so I don't have to come up
with as much content. - What can I say.
- But, let us know your favorite tip in the comments below
and, while you're there, smash that like button
and subscribe to this channel
so you get all these episodes first.
This is The Journey, we'll see you next time.