8 EASY Steps For Creating a Website for your Glampsite
You may think that creating a website is full of technical jargon and sweaty hackers frantically trying to implement mainframe acrobatics a la Hollywood movies. You’d be wrong. In fact, creating a straightforward, easy to use and elegant website can be very simple even if you don’t have coding skills. So simple in fact, that if you’ve used a computer for even a short while you should have no trouble getting the hang of things.
In this post we won’t be telling you step-by-step how and where to type code. Instead, I’m going to point you in the direction of three popular site-building websites and give you some tips on what you should do *before* you begin in order to save precious time and avoid frustration. Choosing any one of these tools and following the steps below is the EASY way to showcase your glampsite on your own website. Let’s dig in.
Before You Start Creating a Website
Preparation is key if you want to save time creating a website. Honestly, it’s better to have a rough plan in advance of starting out so that you don’t get too bogged down with decisions later. These are the basic steps you should take to get your website up and running. You can complete them in any order you like but have a read through first.
1. Decide on a name
A lot of folks start with the name of their website and go from there. When the decision is made you’ll need to buy the domain name from a reputable company. Domain names are cheap these days unless you go for some of the more exotic name extensions like .camping, or .glamping. My advice, stick with .com if you can. Should your chosen name be taken there’s not really a lot you can do about it. Choose another and move on. Repeat as necessary until you have a name you can work with.
2. Get inspiration
The BEST way to do this is to look at websites you like the aesthetic of. They don’t even need to be glamping websites. What elements do you like about the site? Pick out colours, fonts, styles. Is the writing formal or chatty? Do they use lots of photos?
You can also use websites such as Pinterest.com for inspiration or coolors.co to choose a colour palette.
3. Map out your pages
An easy to use website will have its content organised into topics, as well as a home page. A good starting point could be;
- Home – Welcome visitors to your site.
- About – Tell visitors who you are and show you’re human.
- Booking – A page to enable visitors to book a stay on your glampsite.
- Contact – Show your contact details and a form for visitors to ask you questions.
- Gallery – Display your best photos.
It’s better to plan this out in advance because it will make the next step in creating a website easier for you.
4. Prepare images and text
So far, you know what it is you want to say and what you’ll write on each page. Now organise your text around the pages you’ve mapped out. Once this is done you should have all the relevant information site visitors will need in an easily navigable layout. With the text out of the way you can illustrate it with images and photos to make it more attractive. Images will also make the pages more enticing to read – nobody wants to be confronted with swathes of text to wade through!
When creating a website, keep the text simple; less is often best.
5. Pick a site-builder tool and get to work
By now your creative juices should be flowing. You can’t wait to get started creating a website. Our section further down the page introduces three simple tools you can use to build a website; Wix, Squarespace and WordPress. They’re all very popular and you will find lots of information online about the pros and cons of each. You’ll need to do a little more research on this subject but I’ll be honest, if it’s your first site just fret too much. Just pick one you like the look of and don’t succumb to analysis-paralysis.
6. Choose a template
If you’ve followed the previous step you’ll see that there are many terrific-looking website templates for each of the tools we discuss below. WordPress is without a doubt the tool with the most templates. Find a template that most closely fits your inspiration and ideas from the above steps.
7. Check and test
Think you’re finished? Check your work. Ask others to check it for you. Test everything works as you’d expect and then test it again. This is one of the most important steps when creating a website – nobody likes broken websites.
8. Go Live!
Assuming you’ve gone through all the steps above, you’re ready. What are you waiting for? Publish and be damned!
3 Website creation tools
The easiest way to create a website is to use one of many website no-code builders that exist for this sole purpose. Going this route means you shouldn’t have to consider the technicalities of hosting as you can choose to have it included in your subscription. There are plenty of website builders to choose from but these three stand out;
Wix
Wix is well established as a website builder company. It began life in 2006 and hosts an estimated 8 million websites. As long as you have a browser you can build a Wix website for your showcase, booking appointments, collecting contact details and so on. However, some of these features come at a price and once you’ve decided you’ll need several features that price can escalate quite quickly. The basic ecommerce plan is currently £15 per month. There are heaps of templates to choose from so you can select an overall style to get started and plenty of storage for your photos and text.
Squarespace
Like Wix, this product has been around for some time. Since 2004 in fact, but appears to be less popular with only 3 million sites. Personally, I find that odd because it appears to be have an exhaustive list of attractive templates that are very image-centric. This would be ideal for a glampsite where the aesthetic is key. Like Wix, Squarespace is simple to use and the basic ecommerce package starts at £15/month. All of their price plans come with unlimited storage. If you intend for your site to grow, and I recommend you do, this feature may appeal to you.
WordPress
WordPress is the elder statesman of the three on offer here. It’s also higher-priced unless you choose to self-host. It’s easy to use and there are so many ‘how-to’ articles on the web that if you’re the type of person who likes to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in you’ll probably enjoy the freedom and ease that WordPress offers. I imagine that if you’re not au-fait with the ol’ HTML and CSS you’d probably want to be starting with a design template and WordPress has literally thousands to choose from. Sure, after a while it can be exhausting searching for the right one but you’ll never run out of options.
Summary
Wix’s free service is not really an option for a professional-looking site since in order to keep the price at zero, they use your site to show ads which are quite noticeable. All of the above options allow adding your own domain – www.yoursite.com etc. – which I recommend you do. the idea of using a template to get your site off to a great start appeals to you then you’ll be happy with the choice from any. For something that’s easy to get off the starting blocks with you may want to consider Wix or Squarespace but for ultimate flexibility WordPress is probably the better choice.
Conclusion
Creating a website is just the beginning.
If you’ve worked through this article and followed all the steps, done your homework and published your site you should be thinking about how to get visitors to actually see your website. This is probably a subject for an article at a later date but you can start by using your domain name on all your printed materials, your advertising and by using word of mouth. For now, sit back and enjoy your new creation!
