I have some very depressing news—there’s no such thing as a basic website.
It doesn’t exist.
It’s patently false.
It’s a tale whispered in back alleyways and dark corners, a fable told to small children, a myth perpetuated by the WordPress illuminati.
You’ve been lied to, lied to by everyone.
But I’m going to tell you the truth.
Gather round children, and let me tell you the Legend of the Basic Website.
It All Began With Al Gore… No Wait, Just Kidding, Ahem… It All Began With Tim Berners-Lee
In the beginning, there was content. But the content was boring and ugly, so along came the tag. And we slapped HTML tags on everything, but it was still boring, so we used Flash to make it beautiful, but it generally just made things silly.
And as we were figuring all this out, the basic website was born. It awoke, and found that it had form, a form that generally applied to every website. And then CSS came along, and the web started to grow up and go to parties with it’s friends and discuss philosophy and wear fedoras and pet cats, and we nodded knowingly at the awkwardness of growing up.
And the web was silly and ugly, but then, so are newborns—it was to be expected. But it had a form dammit—the basic website was born, and for a time all websites followed the same format.
But Then, The Web Really Grew Up
Back in the ancient days of America Online, there was such a thing as a basic website. Each website needed a header, a footer, a homepage, a contact page, an about page. We learned these things over time, but as CSS and HTML evolved, much like Pokemon, they became stronger and more powerful.
As our abilities grew, so too did our tastes. By the 2010s, there were web designers and developers who had been working on websites for decades. It had become a full-fledged profession, and what followed was an explosion of theories and hypotheses on what even constitutes a basic website.
The Debate Rages…
“Should we have a sidebar? Sidebars are worthless!
Should we have a header and footer? A footer just doesn’t make sense here!
I don’t give a damn if people expect an about page, I don’t think my client needs an about page!”
These were the arguments, and though the fedoras had been cast aside, the passion had not. Somewhere between the 2000s and the beginning of the 2010s, we realized something.
There’s no such thing as a basic website. A basic website depends entirely on the needs of the client. What’s basic for you isn’t basic for your competitor. What’s basic for Amazon certainly isn’t basic for a small dog groomer.
It all depends on your needs. That’s an annoyingly vague answer isn’t it?
But It’s The Truth Dammit. Your Basic Website Depends Entirely On What You And Your Customers Need, Not On Some Arbitrary Definition Of What Constitutes A Basic Website
Sorry for the long heading, but it needed to be said louder than this site’s paragraph text allows (ahh, CSS, you rascal).
You want a basic website? We’d love to give you one. So would a million other people. But anyone who tells you that they’ve got a “basic website” ready to go for only $200 is selling you crap.
That website might have some basic stuff on it, but it’s not going to be what you need—it’s not going to consider what your customers need to do on your website. It’s not going to consider what you need the website to do for your business. It’s even going to come close to creating business for you.
It’s not going to generate leads, much less sales. If you need to sell products on your website, it’s certainly going to fail at that task.
We can create about a billion different websites targeted to different audiences, created with different purposes, and that can complete different functions, and they would all be considered “basic” by some people’s definitions and sophisticated by others.
You need a basic website, you say? Let’s back up a little and think about what that really means, shall we? I’ve come to learn that “basic” really means “quick and on a small budget.” If that’s what you mean, then let’s keep going here.
Ok, We’ll Call it a Basic Website—You Still Need To Start Here
With your audience. Everything, and I mean every. little. darn. thing you do with your website should be centered around this. You need to know who your content is written for, who the site is designed for, and how those specific people go from a visitor on your website to a customer.
If you think your audience is, “people with money,” well, we have a problem.
Grab with this customer persona template.
Download it, fill it out, it’s pretty sweet, and it will tell you everything you need to know about who your audience actually is. Who you need to think about while you assemble this new website.
Once you have your audience down, you gotta start thinking about your brand (notice we haven’t even started thinking about the website yet). You won’t know what your basic website is even going to look like for you until you have your brand nailed down.
Whatdya know, we have a worksheet for that too.
It’s pretty cool too, and it will help you figure out exactly what your brand is and, for the sake of what we’re doing here, it will help you figure out how your branding should apply to your website.
Now It’s Time To Apply
So great, we’ve got this information. Wonderful. Fantastic. Phenomenal.
What the hell do we do with it?
Great question, cause we still don’t have a website. I needed a basic website yesterday, not after filling out 1,234,098,320,498 forms (you’re still trying to figure out how to actually say that number out loud, aren’t you? One trillion, two hundred thirty four billion. Start there and we’ll meet you at the next paragraph).
I get it, but trust me, this is work that pays off in the long run. You need a website that’s going to actively contribute to your business, not sit around and collect dust and cost you money. All this work helps you create a basic website that pays for itself over time.
Let’s do an example to show you how this might work in practice.
Say I’m a cat groomer (I’m telling you, this is a genius business model, but I digress). I’m a cat groomer, and my audience is 30-50 years old, weighted heavily towards singles, no children, lots of disposable income.
There’s my stereotypical audience. Now what about my brand?
My Brand Drives My Website As Much As My Customers
My brand is quite professional. We take cat grooming very seriously. We spend lots of time developing cat grooming techniques and services because they simply don’t exist (all these stupid dog people have tons of unique services, but us cat people? It’s a travesty!)
We are clean cut, no nonsense, and we value impeccable customer service above everything else.
We want our customers to know about our services in our three cat salons spread throughout the tri-state area.
We also have about 100 professional photos of the children, er… cats, that people brought in, photos taken in our cat-tography room. We need those on the website.
With all this knowledge, a basic website begins to take form.
We know that certain WordPress themes (because obviously we do everything in WordPress cause we’re chill like that)… ahem, we know that certain WordPress themes simply won’t work here because they’re made more for blogs or video-heavy sites.
We know we’ll need certain plugins to provide the functionality this customer needs. We know we’re probably going to need a gallery plugin of some sort, and a theme that has plenty of widget areas for lots of photos will be necessary.
We know that these customers are going to do a lot of research before coming in to the brick-and-mortar, and they want to read the experiences of others, so we may need a custom post type for case studies on amazing catransformations.
We also know these customers are active on social media, so we need a robust sharing plugin.
We also know we need a theme that is clean, sleek, and professional like the brand. If this were a custom site, we could customize a theme to fit this last need. But, since this is a basic website, we have to choose a theme that already looks sleek and professional.
The basic website is taking form, driven by knowledge of the brand and the customer.
This is just one example. Are you starting to get ideas for your website?
A Basic Website Is Anything But—Let’s Talk About Yours
If you need a basic website, we’ve got you. Check out our basic website package.
It will take you through the website planning process. If you’re ready to get serious, this is what you need.
Getting a basic website isn’t nearly as simple as you may have assumed, but such is life. You’ve got a better grasp of what it really means to get a basic website—now start planning!
