How To Build Your Website

tech Jul 13, 2020

Introduction

Today we will dig into the meat and potatoes of actually building your website.

In the last guide we talked about the process for discovering your website domain. We outlined the tips for choosing a winning domain name and then we registered our domain.

So at this point I'm assuming you already have a domain name purchased. If you don't have one yet, reread the previous blog article and purchase your domain on NameCheap.

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

Since everything we do in this course is linear (step 1, step 2, step 3) you'll need to get your domain name before you can continue with the training. Everything else will be based on the assumption that you've completed that step!

Incidentally, if you have any questions just shoot me a message in the comments below or join my email list by popping your name in the form at the bottom of this post and we can talk over email!

In this lesson we’re going to connect your website to your domain and begin building your website.

To be honest, this might be the scariest lesson so far because it’s going to be long and will have a lot of steps. But I promise you, if you just stick with it you’ll get there.

Also, if you get stuck just leave a comment and I’ll jump in and help you out. I actually read all comments as they arrive so you can rest assured that I’ll give you a thoughtful response within a reasonable amount of time.

Alright, that being said let’s begin the job of connecting our domain name to our website.

Choosing Your Web Host

There are many web hosting options out there.

We’re going to build your website in New Kajabi but I should mentioned that you aren’t required to use New Kajabi to build a website. After much trial and error I tried numerous web hosts and eventually landed on New Kajabi because of its customer support team. The Kajabi team is always quick to answer my questions and they really seem to care about my issues. The other thing that impressed me is their generosity. On several occasions they upgraded features of my account into premium levels (for FREE) and without me really asking. It’s that kind of support that led to me becoming a Kajabi affiliate and a customer for life!

Okay, so that being said, to get started with your website click my affiliate link below to signup:

https://app.kajabi.com/r/Zv3MyAVF/t/prsuwmcx

Full disclosure here: I get a small commission for any signups through this link but it does help me to continue producing content for this blog (I don’t use ads) and keeps me motivated 😊

Once you click the link, pick your plan and sign-up.

We’re going to start your website journey here inside the Kajabi portal.

Note: Download the FREE PDF Version of this article so you can read offline, anytime and print it for easier viewing. As free a bonus, it includes the audio narration as an MP3 file so you can listen on the go. Just enter your email address to get the entire thing. It's free, instant and available now.

Mini-Van Man

A few months ago my mother-in-law got in a multi-car accident with my son. Thank God no one was injured! But we did total our car. The insurance company declared a total loss on the vehicle.

After a few days we started looking for a new car and my wife was going bonkers over a minivan. She always wanted a minivan but I really wanted to get a new Toyota Highlander (the wrecked car was a Highlander).

Anyway, my wife won (as you can imagine) and we ended up getting the minivan. At first I wasn’t too happy because I mean – it's a mini-van. Guys don’t typically get super excited about those!

But the more I drove it the more I loved it.

That's how your website is going to be. The more time you spend building it and working on it the more you’ll love it and the easier it will be to make adjustments in the future. It will become less daunting.

So stick with me here: my goal is to make sure your website is a super success. Remember if at any time you get stuck you can always jump in the comments. And if you are still having issues, reach out to me on email so we can schedule a Skype call to get you going fast.

Don’t Fret Over Design

The first thing I’m going to tell you is going to bother you because I know what it felt like when I started my blog many years ago.

You’re going to be tempted to tweak the design until your eyeballs fall out.

Resist this urge!

We’re going to cover some core elements that need to be in place but keep this in mind:

“Just because your tool allows you to do something does not mean you need to do it.”

Our goal right now is just to get something up there on your domain so that when people visit your site they aren’t hit with a blank page. As you start to get web traffic (which we discuss traffic strategies in the next section) I’ll show you how to let your audience tell you what they want so you can mold your site design based off their preferences.

Core Elements

At the bare minimum your website needs these core components:

Homepage
About Me Page
Opt-in Forms
Blog With Fresh Content

Homepage

Your homepage should feature a large image, called a Hero image, of your face.

Yes.

People connect more with people than words. If you go to my vonimus.com homepage you’ll see that I did just that. And don’t worry about using fancy cameras or equipment, I just used my iPhone to snap the photo. I didn’t even bother editing it! Just take a few photos, pick the best from the pack upload into your homepage so people can see you before they explore the rest of your site.

Your homepage also needs a one-sentence summary explaining the purpose of your site. It should be a quick one-liner that instantly helps people know if they’ve landed on the right page. You should take several hours to think through the purpose of your site. What results are you trying to achieve in your target market’s lives? What is their core problem and how are you trying to solve it? These are some of the things you’ll need to think through as you work out your magic sentence.

This process isn’t easy but it’s worth it. Trust me.

About Me Page

The purpose of the "About Me" page is to tell your audience the results they should expect to achieve by spending time on your site. It’s a bit of a misnomer because most newbies think the “About Me” page is an opportunity to tell your website visitors about you!

No, no no... here’s the raw truth:

“No one cares about you.”

People don’t care about you and your hobbies and your experience and your website. They just care about what you can do for them. How is your website different? How does it solve their problem? Your website needs to speak to this core concern and then include an opt-in box so a percentage of visitors can provide an email in exchange for a lead magnet that subscribes them to your email list.

We’ll get into the weeds of that soon but I’m just painting the broad strokes about what your “About Me” page should be about.

Opt-in Forms

I think this is a good time to talk about the purpose of your website. Your site exists for one reason:

“To generate leads”

What does this mean? It means that every part of your website, from the blog, the homepage, the about page and even the 404 error pages should provide some way for users to opt-in to something of value in exchange for their email address.

You see, the goal of your site is to provide the opportunity for you to build relationships with your target market by continually dripping free, valuable, relevant content into their inboxes.

After a few weeks of doing this, if you did a good job selecting your niche in the beginning, your subscribers should begin to know, like and trust you. When we talk about your email list, I’ll show you how to get into your subscribers minds using surveys and I’ll teach you how you can work that input back into your email copy, website copy and your product copy to elevate the value of your product and increase your conversion rates (hint: this equals more sales!)

Blog With Fresh Content

The last thing that is critical is that your webpage hosts a blog with fresh content.

Why do you need this? And how much work will this require?

We'll talk about how you can find the time to blog in two lectures, but right now I just want the underscore the importance of blogging.

Blogging keeps your site fresh which means more people will visit. The idea is to write about 1,600 words or more and publish at least weekly on some specific content. This translates to about a 7-minute read.

Building Your Website

We’re going to build out your website in New Kajabi so if you haven’t already done so sign-up for your free trial first and then come back here so we can continue building out your page.

There are almost an unlimited amount of Kajabi Themes you can use to build your site. We’re going to start things off strong by using the Premier theme (now known as Encore) because it offers the most flexibility for you to mold things down the road.

In the Kajabi dashboard, go to Kajabi > Website > Design > Manage Themes

Click the Pick a Theme button in the upper right corner.

Pick the middle one and install it.

After a few moments the theme is built and your site is now built.

Congratulations!

We’re obviously going to need to customize the web page with your specific content but now we have something we can link to our domain name. Let’s do that next.

Connecting Your Domain Name

Now here’s the fun part.

Go to Settings > Custom Domain and flip the little switch to “ON” under the SSL section.

Alternatively, you can just type "custom domain" in the search box near the top of your Kajabi dashboard and get there that way.

Enter your domain name and click next.

Now all we need to do is prove to Kajabi that we own the domain name you registered earlier.

Since we used NameCheap to register our domain it’s super easy to connect the two.

Tweak Your NameCheap Settings

To make the magic happen we need to log into NameCheap and add one small setting.

Select Domain List from the left side menu and hit the Manage button next to your domain.

Click the “Advanced DNS” tab, click “ADD NEW RECORD”.

Now all you need to do is select the “CNAME” record type, put in “www” for the Host and in the value paste in:

ssl.kajabi.com

Click “Save all changes” and then in about one hour your changes will be accepted!

Don’t about the technical mumbo jumbo of what’s happening. This is just how you can connect your domain name to New Kajabi.

Click “Verify Domain” And Wait An Hour

Now flip back over to New Kajabi, and hit that “Verify Domain” button and wait. After about an hour go back to the page and refresh and it should be automatically connected.

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

Now when you type in your domain name you should see your default New Kajabi page pop up!

Pretty cool right?

Now It’s Your Turn

This is all we wanted to accomplish in this lesson. We built your basic website and connected your domain name to it. Now here’s your homework:

Set aside a total of two hours this week clicking through the different parts of New Kajabi. Don’t read any documentation or Google for details. Just click through the application to explore the product. You will obviously have a lot of questions as the tool has a great deal of capability but I just want you to get a feel for the tool so when we really start building out your business you can say, “Oh, wait I remember seeing that before!”
You don’t have to knock this out in one two hour sitting. Feel free to split it up into four 30 minute chunks over the week. The key is to click through as much of the tool as you can in two hours while avoiding the temptation to read documentation or watch hours and hours of tutorial videos.

Your quick action result today is to play with the web page editor.

In the dashboard, go to Website > Design > Homepage > Customize.

Click through the settings to change the default elements on the page. At this point you’re just playing around so feel free to modify everything you can. Change the text and swap out images.

A really awesome resource for high-quality royalty free images is unsplash.com. You can search by category and quickly find some professional images to post on your site from there 😊

Hope that helps

Next time we meet we’ll be digging into how to get traffic to your website!

Talk soon.