Do I need the knowledge of a developer when it comes to creating a website?

Yes, if you want to create a website in the most complicated way. This requires that you know the basics of programming, that is, that you know HTML, JavaScript, CSS and PHP.

This is the best way if you want complete control. But certainly the most difficult, most expensive and longest way to get a website.

But there is a much easier and faster way to get a great website, without being a developer.

It is enough that you have basic knowledge in using a computer and that you know English.

There are a lot of platforms that have a lot of themes so it won't be difficult to choose the right one.

We will not delay, but reveal to you:

1. Define what type of website you need

Not all websites are the same, so we will divide them into several categories.

The following are the most common in our practice:

• Micro websites. These are the smallest websites with 3 to 7 pages. The main page explains who we are and what we can offer in terms of products or services. There are also contact pages and about us pages. Possibly a blog page, privacy policy, FAQ and support.

  Sometimes a slightly longer "American page" is made, where all this is only on one page. This type of website doesn't get updated that often and once we're sure everything is perfect with it we just let it do its job.

  For this type of website, 7 days are enough to create.

• Blog page. This is a very popular way of communicating with your followers. There you can give them space to actively participate with you in creating topics and content. Here, the method of inserting text and images is very simple and it will not be a problem to learn it very quickly.

  A small blog can be created in a minimum of a week, and publishing new articles takes the most time.

• Websites for sale. In our country they are known as online stores. They require the most time to make, but that again depends on your requirements. The simplest online shops need at least 3 weeks to create, provided that we have everything prepared in advance. More demanding websites require at least 6 weeks to 6 months to create. It may seem like a lot, but it is true. Here we recommend a CMS, and in our opinion it is best to use WordPress for this purpose. If you don't know how to do this, we advise you to find someone with experience. Recommended in this case is the WooCommerce plugin.

3. Register the website domain.

For those who don't know, a domain is practically the address of your website. That address is called URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for short. Or to put it even more simply, if the website is a house, the domain would be its address. The Internet itself is actually a large network of connected computers.

To ensure networking, each computer has its own IP address. It would be really hard to remember so many numbers for the sites you want to visit, that's why such domains are used for easier navigation.

Before registering the domain itself, you must check whether the domain name you have imagined is available. You can do that search in several places. If it is for the territory of Serbia, check on the website domen.rs. If your idea is to perform outside the borders of Serbia, you can check on the website domainchecker.com.

Think about the market you will be operating in, and choose an extension for your domain accordingly.

If you do business in only one country, use the domestic extension (in Serbia, use the .rs extension), and in any other case, you can use the .com extension.

When you want to register the domain of your website, it will be easiest for you with the company that will provide you with hosting services (you can also check the availability of the domain there). Domain rent is paid on an annual basis and currently costs from 500 to 2,100 dinars.

Please note that this amount may vary slightly depending on the company.

Make sure your domain doesn't have too many letters and make it easy to remember.

If you can, make it sound like a brand so that you can promote yourself more easily on the Internet in the future.

5. Choose a theme for creating a website that suits you

As we mentioned, we would always advise you to choose a CMS. In this case it would definitely be WordPress.

There are many themes for it that can be free or premium (they are paid). There are several ways and places, but our suggestion is to look at the offer at www.themeforest.com. Navigation is very easy there and you can easily find a topic that will suit you.

Our favorites are Divi, Elementor and Astra. But there are hundreds of themes that are equally good, it just depends on your needs.

To know that each page can be changed, so a unique design can be created. If you want something special that's out of the ordinary, you'll need to hire a developer. But there are so many solutions that you probably won't need this.

This is mainly for companies that have special requirements and large budgets. Whatever you decide, the next step involves making some design decisions.

Although it does not seem complicated, creating visuals for a website is not an easy task.

In our opinion, there are many more examples of bad design.

If you are not sure, always use light colors for the background. Use matching colors and use the Color Wheel to help.

Keep the design clean and simple, and keep the font proven (for example, Helvetica) and from the sans-serif font group. One or two fonts are quite enough for each website.

And take care that your pages do not look confused, but should resemble each other.

So always stick to the rule "less is always more".

6. Add your content like images, videos and text

Design is important, but content is even more important. And to know that it is always easier, faster and cheaper to change the design than the texts on the website.

It is very important that the text is original because if you copied it, even if it was the best in the world, you will not have any benefit. In fact, according to the latest Google Core Update, you can have a lot of damage if you go that way. To know that a text belongs only to the one who first published it and who was the first to be indexed.

Any subsequent text, if it is the same, is not taken into account by Google at all.

Which simply means that by copying someone else's text, you actually caused yourself a lot of damage at the very start.

When you write a text, it must be understandable to someone who knows nothing about the field. Or better yet, you need to speak the language of your customers that they will understand. Take care of the headings and, if necessary, bold certain parts of the text. Don't forget to indent the text to make it more readable.

And be careful not to fall into the trap of using expressions that hardly anyone understands, because that's the easiest way to drive visitors away from your site. If you do not have the sense and time to write, it will not be difficult to find someone who writes optimized texts for websites.

It will be enough to do a little research on Google.

For photos and videos, there are many websites that will help you with this. Some are free and some you will have to pay for.

If you don't have time or don't know how to record or take pictures, this is the perfect solution.

Whatever photos you choose, remember to reduce their size so that each web page loads quickly.

And don't forget that all pages that are important to you have a call to action (CTA).

7. Finally, publish and promote your new website

Before you publish a website, review it once more. It always happens that some mistake slips through. Even if that happens, don't worry because everything can be corrected along the way. Because when the website becomes active, it can still be updated and changed.

It is important that your content is optimized and relevant and that you supplement it. If, for example, you are in the catering business and you change the menu, it is important that this change is published on your website.

Next is SEO optimization. In order to progress to the first page of Google you will need to optimize all the pages of the website. One part of this can be done when the site development is started, but site development does not imply advanced SEO optimization.

To know that this requires a lot of time and work, but it is always worth it. We'd even say it's essential if you want to rank on the first page of Google.

If you want to know more, read our article "SEO optimization of the site".

Let's not forget the promotion of your website.

We recommend promotions via the following channels:

• Google Ads advertising

• Facebook

• Instagram

• E-mail marketing

• TikTok

In our opinion, this is quite sufficient for most websites. If you have time, read our Google Ads article, because we think you can benefit from it the most.

And don't forget to open accounts at the very beginning on two very important Google services, which are:

• Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
• Google Search Console

These are completely free tools and no one will give you better and more accurate results than them. Without them, you won't know how your website actually works.

And whenever you publish something new, be sure to index it in Google Search Console so that your efforts are not in vain.