The Thriving Maker

#17: The Key Decisions To Know When Starting Your Website

• Sarah Kavanagh • Episode 17

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If you're ready to take your handmade business online with it's own website then there's some key decisions you need to make.  Don't let not knowing where to start hold you back.  This episode of The Thriving Maker podcast will help you make those key decisions  such as:
What do you actually want your website to do? 
What platform is best for your business? 
What do you need to include and where do you even start?
Join me as I share insights on nailing down the essentials to create a beautiful and results driven website for your business. Having a website for your business is a rolling project and  one that you'll never really finish, evolving and growing alongside your business. So whether you're starting from scratch or reviewing an existing site, this episode is packed with tips to help your handmade business thrive online.

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Sarah:

Hello, welcome to today's episode of the Thriving Maker podcast. In this episode, I'm talking all about websites and those key decisions that you need to make as you start building your very own website for your handmade business. So, wherever you're listening and however you're listening, I hope you enjoy. Welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. My name is Sarah Kavanagh. Your host and I started the Thriving Maker to support makers, crafters and artists just like you to grow your creative passions into flourishing businesses on your terms and give you the life that you want. I'm a jewellery designer maker and started my own handmade fine jewellery business over 15 years ago. I now also help other artisans and makers build their own craft and handmade businesses through marketing and branding and techniques and strategies I've studied, learned and put into practice along my journey. Right now, I want to help you to establish and grow your own designer business so it can help support the lifestyle that you want. Think of this as your go-to resource and check in for all things strategy and marketing for your business, along with stories and anecdotes from my life as a handmade entrepreneur. Thank you for tuning in and welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. Hello, now you may have heard me talk lots about the benefits of having your own website for your handmade business, and I do think it is crucial that you have your own website and you don't just rely on third party platforms. They are brilliant for when you're starting out, but as you're growing your business, it's really important to have your own website where you can be in control of your own branding and attract the audience that you want. So what I want to talk about today is those key decisions that you need to make in order to get yourself started on this route of building your own website for your business. So the first thing you need to think about is what is it that you actually want your website to do? Need to think about is what is it that you actually want your website to do?

Sarah:

Now, everyone's business is different and you will have different aims for your business. It may be that your business is going to be your shop and you are. This is predominantly what happens and that you're selling your products directly off your website. It may be that your website is more to sell your services and more something that you're going to. That's going to be your shop window. You're not necessarily going to sell products on it so much, but you're going to be talking about your experiences, your business and the services that you can provide as a designer maker. These are two very different things, really. One, you need a website that's going to sell your work and, secondly, you need a website that is going to sell your business and your services, so that people will come to you and you can build more relationships with them.

Sarah:

So, whether you're selling your services as a maker for bespoke commissions and workshops, or if you're selling your finished pieces, there are two platforms for building your website that I would recommend. Now. I've used both of these in the past. I don't get kickbacks from either of them. They're just ones that I would recommend based on their ease of use and their functionality and depending on how you decide to promote your business and what services and products you're wanting to put on your website. Then there's different platforms that will suit each of those different needs.

Sarah:

So the two platforms that I'm referring to are Shopify and and Squarespace. Shopify was built for e-commerce. It is more technical of the two, I think. I think neither of them really require you to know coding, which is great, so you can focus on building it the way you want without worrying about coding. Shopify, however, I do think is more technical, but it offers more add-on apps that you can use to track stock levels for marketing tools that you might want to use as an e-commerce business. So when I say e-commerce, that's selling your products online, and if you have lots of products that you want to sell, shopify is most definitely the platform that you want to go with, and it can all be managed seamlessly through their platform. And it can all be managed seamlessly through their platform.

Sarah:

Now, shopify has lots of different templates that you can use as a starting point. It will take time If you're doing it yourself. It will take time to get the hang of it and how it all works, but there's plenty of tutorials, both on their site on YouTube. There's lots of information out there that will help you if you're DIYing your site. So some of these templates are free to use and some you will pay for, depending on the layout, the functionality and really the overall look of how you want it to be. So have a look through their template library and see what works best for you.

Sarah:

So Squarespace is the other platform that I would recommend, and this platform is better for businesses where you might be offering your services as a designer maker or you work predominantly to commission or bespoke work, so you may not be selling a large number of products directly from your website, but you can still sell some products on here. But if you've got a large number of products, then Shopify is probably better for you. However, squarespace is better suited if you are showcasing your work and you want it to be a shop window for your work, where people where your audience and your customers are going to come to you and maybe have a conversation with you first about a piece of work that they want commissioned. Or if you're wanting to sell craft workshops or experience days, then this is a better platform to do that on. And again, squarespace has lots of templates that you can use as a base and you can just fill those templates with your content. Or if you want to spend more time designing a site that is exactly for your needs and how you want it to flow and the look and the the functionality of the site, then you can still do that with Squarespace as well, and obviously it will take a little bit more time, but it's intuitive and the design element of it is very good on Squarespace, and so you can see that both platforms offer something completely different and are suited to different types of businesses and how you set up your business and what type of services or products you are wanting to promote and to offer on online.

Sarah:

Now, if you go down the route of either of these platforms, you will need to have all of your content ready and prepared in advance, and I recommend you do as much of this in advance before you even sign up to one of the platforms. Now, both platforms have different packages depending on which level of service you want. The basic package on Shopify is perfect if you're just starting out to get the hang of it, and again on Squarespace, you can have their starter package, and the same applies if you're just starting out and wanted to get a feel for it, then this is a good one to start with, and you can upgrade your package whenever you want to. So the things that you need to prepare in advance, before you even go down the route of getting your site built on one of these platforms, is the content for your site. So this is what I would recommend that you have nailed down or at least have a very good understanding of before you go forward, whether you're doing it yourself or whether you want to commission a web designer to do it for you. So these are some of the important things.

Sarah:

You need to know who your ideal customer is, because you are building a website for them. It's representing you and your brand, but it is for your ideal customer. Because you are building a website for them. It's representing you and your brand, but it is for your ideal customer. So you need to know who it is that you're building it for. So do some keyword research into what your audience is searching for, and this can be really useful for when you're writing the copy and the text for the website, because you can use these keywords to optimise the copy for the search engines. So it's really good for SEO to have a good idea of what your ideal customer is actually searching for in relation to your work and to your products. So your ideal customer is number one, and number two is to nail down your brand and your brand story. Now, if you struggle with this, you can commission a brand designer, or you can work with a web designer who also offers branding services as well, to help build out your brand. You want to nail down what your brand story is so that visitors can get to know you and your work, so that you can really talk about your brand and your work and you as a maker throughout your site and really connect with your audience, remembering that stories connect and ultimately sell you and your work. So work on this brand story and work on your why and why you create the pieces that you do.

Sarah:

So some of the essential pages that you're going to need and obviously every business is different, so you will map out and have an idea of what you want to include before you get to the building stage of your website. So you want to have your home page, you will need to have an about page. You'll want to have a page for either your product so that will be individual pages for each of your products, or collection pages, or you can or you might want to have a page for your services that you offer. So if you offer bespoke services, you'll want a page for that. You'll also want to have information about shipping and returns, and every website should also have terms and conditions and a privacy policy statement, and Shopify, I know, has templates for this and I think as well on Squarespace, there are templates that can be used for the content of these as a base, but obviously read through and make sure you're happy with all of those terms and conditions and privacy policy in relation to your business. A blog page is also building your SEO as well, so also think about if you have any testimonials from previous customers or anyone you've done work for, whether that's friends or family or a paying customer. It all helps with building authority for you as a maker and for your business.

Sarah:

Start collecting all your images together. You'll want your brand images, images of you as a maker and images of your products and your work in progress and put a folder together with all these images in so that they can be used and easily accessible when you come to building your website. Before you get to the stage of building your website, research other websites that attract you, whether they're in your field or something completely different, and I always think it is good to not just focus on your craft discipline but look outside of your discipline and look at other businesses that you're attracted to. Make a note of what you like about them and also what you definitely don't like about them, because this will really help as you build out your website so you can include those elements that you like and make sure you're not including the things that you really don't like about them, because this will really help as you build out your website. So you can include those elements that you like and make sure you're not including the things that you really don't like, and research other websites that your ideal customer is also going to be looking at. So research other websites that your ideal customer would also be looking at as well. So when you know who your ideal customer is, you can start to get a feeling of what type of other sites other websites might they be shopping at or might they be looking at, and see what is it about those that you possibly need to include in your own site.

Sarah:

Now, just be careful about this aspect because, remember, you want to stick to your branding and your style and your brand voice. So don't copy these other websites, but be more inspired by them and take inspiration and just make a note of your feelings as you're looking at them and how you can incorporate desirable elements into your own site. And that's really the main things that you need to think about before you even get to deciding which platform you're going to workshop sessions or doing bespoke work to somebody, because you won't need all the functionality that Shopify has, but you still want a really good looking site and one that you can easily work up yourself. So, remember, both of those have different templates that you can use as a starting point. However, if the thought of building your own website fills you with dread or is something that is stopping you from moving your business forward and you've just been putting off and putting off, don't let that worry and that fear be an obstacle for you.

Sarah:

Hire a web designer that can get your website up and running and you can move forward with your business. You can move forward with your business Now. There's lots of web designers out there, and they can start from anywhere from under £1,000 to a few hundred. If somebody's just starting out and wanting to build a portfolio of work, to several thousands, depending on the scope of the service you want. So if you want someone to do your branding, your copywriting and the web design, it's going to cost you a lot more than if you just want somebody to make your work and put it into a template which either they have designed or one that you have chosen off the shelf. So there's lots of different ways to get your website up and running.

Sarah:

I do think both of these platforms you can very easily build your own website on, but if you want to get somebody else to do it, there are lots of options out there for you. So don't let it hold you back and remember there's so much information nowadays, whether it's through podcasts or YouTube or the help pages on these platforms. When you get stuck, there is lots of people and information out there to help you on your way. So set a deadline for when you want to have your website done and start collating all that information, all the copy, your branding, your images, so that you're ready to go as soon as you sit down to build out your website. And you will need all that copy as well if you go to a web designer. So it's really useful to have and it doesn't need to be pages and pages of copy. Less is often more when it comes to the copy on your website.

Sarah:

Think about those keywords that are going to attract your audience, that your ideal audience is looking for. Think about your brand story and weave all of that together so that your audience is not having to read lots of text on a page, because no website looks good if it has paragraphs and paragraphs of text. So keep it simple. Spend time putting it together and then play around with it. See what works. Do research, work out what it is that you want to include on your website and then go for it. So that was it for today. Really what it is that you want to include on your website and then go for it. So that was it for today.

Sarah:

Really, do start getting all this information together for your business, if you haven't already, and if you already have your own website, it's always good to take a look every now and again and see if there's anything you need to refresh or rewrite or renew photographs for. So it's an ongoing, rolling project really having a website. It's never completely done. You will always want to update it, change it, rebrand it sometimes, but you've got, but have it there. Your business needs its own space to be able to grow and thrive and to be able to share your work with the world. As always, if you have any questions, do drop me a message and if you enjoyed this episode, please put a comment. I would love to hear from you. Take care and I will speak to you soon. Bye for now.