The internet has truly been a blessing to allow those to pursue whatever dream that have. It is now possible to reach the largest of markets in 
the blink of an eye, converse with like-minded individuals and find out information you would have spent hours finding through speaking to people or visiting a library.
This makes it an extremely compelling for many people to look to start websites. Even though the internet is around 20 years old, there are still many opportunities out there to make websites, especially in niche areas. The problem lies with what? What type of website should you make? How should you make it? Many of the biggest decisions are made after the website is made, where it should really be done before. Here are some of the things you should be thinking about before you create a website.
What is the website about?
This is obviously going to be the first step to your new website. It is important to get complete clarity of the vision of your website, so you can push it in the right direction, consistently, to reach the vision you have for it.
For example, if your website is about car reviews, make sure the content is going to be primarily about car reviews. Differentiating will only cause issues early on into the website’s life span.
Market research?
It is vital to understand the current situation of the ‘market’ that already exists for your category of website, and to understand the pros and cons to each of these. Such factors to analyse include:
- Use Google Trends to get a good insight into the searching of your website’s category.
- How many competitor websites will be you be competing against? What makes them good? What makes them bad? What makes your website better than what is already out there?
- How much will it cost you to get the website up and running? How much will it cost to maintain the website? How much will it cost to publish content on the website etc.?
Design a Winning Theme
Once you know what your website is about and the type of content it is going to have on it, it is critical to the success of it that you use a theme design that completely compliments the vision you have for the website. For this reason, I would highly recommend not going for a default theme but use a uniquely created theme, based on the requirements you believe to work for your website. As much as there are many websites that offer great themes to use, making a unique and tailor-suited theme will make sure you get the exact functionality you want, the exact way that will yield the best results.
