So, you decided to quit your job and start a brand new business. I’m going to bet that one of the first things that are on your list to do is to build a website. In this video, I’m going to explain to you why it’s not a great idea to get started with the website right away.

Hi, my name is James Bullis, and I’ve been a web designer for over 20 years. I own a company called Ventin Web Solutions, where we try to help business owners and solopreneurs be able to take advantage of technology to help improve their business.

Today, we’re going to talk through the decision about investing in a brand new website for your new business. And I’m going to tell you the reason why it’s not such a great idea to jump right into a website.

I’m going to tell you three different things that you need to do before you even plan a website so that it’ll be a better experience for you, your business, your customers, and the web design agency that you hire.

Tip number one Start on social media first. Today, there are all these free social media platforms that allow you to create a presence for your business, and it allows you to be able to connect with potential customers for your business on those platforms because those platforms are free.

I always encourage people to get started using those free platforms first so that they can understand more about your business before you commit to investing in a website. The first step is to choose the right platform, and in order to do that, you need to understand where your potential customers are if your business is primarily B2B where you’re going to be trying to sell your products and services to other businesses owners. I recommend that you start on LinkedIn, but if your business focuses more on selling your products and services to end customers that I recommend getting started on either Facebook or Instagram.

The reason why you want to start with a single platform is so that you don’t stretch yourself too thin. Well, what you want to do is you want to be able to start building an audience on that platform of your potential customers.

The purpose behind starting on social media and on a single platform is so that you can begin to start collecting data so that you can make decisions based on data instead of your gut. So simply pick a single social media platform for you to get started on so that you can get to understand who your audience is before you go and invest your resources like your time, money, and energy into something that’s not going to work. Now it’s time for tip number two. Tip number two is all about understanding who your market is when you invest in a brand new website for your business.

The number one thing you need to realize is who your market is so that you can create a website that’s built specifically for them. The first thing you should know about your potential market is their demographics. These are things about who they are.

You need to understand by the age range of your potential customers the kind of money they make, what kind of education they have, what their family makeup looks like, whether they’re married, they have kids. Do they have adult kids?

You might start out thinking that your target market is the millennial generation, but then find out that your business is more suited to support Gen X or the boomer generation. The way that you market to these generations is completely different, so it’s important for you to understand who your best customer is so that you can then create an online presence that’s geared specifically for those people. Next, you want to understand your customer’s psychographics. This is basically how they think and how they are being influenced. So things you want to know about psychographics, are going to be like, who’s influencing them?

What kind of gurus do they listen to? What kind of books do they read? What kind of conferences do they go to understand? Their psychographics allows you to really dig deep into the mentality of your potential customer. This includes thinking about what their current state is like, how do they feel because they have this problem that can’t be solved, and then you can understand how they’re going to feel after you solve their problem. This brings us to the last part about understanding your potential market, and that’s called levels of awareness. Some people understand they have a problem, and they don’t know that you have a solution.

So you want to create content that speaks to that solution solve. I mean, their problem. Other people don’t even know they have a problem. So what you want to do in that case is create content that helps educate them, that this potential problem exists and that your solution can help solve that problem that they don’t even know that they have. Once you started gathering data on a social media platform and you begin to get a better understanding of who you actually help, it’s time to move on to the next tip. Tip number three, it’s all about understanding what your customer wants.

If you follow these steps, it’s going to be really easy because basically what you’re going to do is you’re going to start asking questions on the social media platform to the audience that you’re developing, and you might just get a few little responses.

But those responses are going to be golden because when you ask questions and they respond, that’s going to allow you to get a better, deeper understanding of not only who your audience is, but what they want from you.

As you begin to understand this better, you’ll be able to create products and services that are specifically geared for them. This is going to prevent you from wasting a lot of time and money out there, trying to help everybody and try to do everything for them.

Once you understand this and you understand how they feel before your product and what the outcome is going to be after your product, it’s time to truly understand the power of transformation. What you offered to this world can transform somebody’s life.

And so as you begin to ask these questions and get to know who your audience is, you’re going to see that when you apply your solution, they’re going to go from one state to another state, and that is the power of transformation.

Well, that’s my three tips for you today to help you understand why you shouldn’t go and invest in a website right away just after starting your business because you really need to understand who your market is, what they want, and you’re going to do it by collecting data through a single social media platform.

Once you’ve completed these steps and you’re ready to move on to building a brand new website for your business, it’s time to start planning so that when you choose a web design agency, the process will be seamless to help you out.

I’ve created a website planning guide that you can download from the link in the description below. Just click that link. You’ll be able to go through the process. You’ll be able to understand how to properly plan out your website so that when you choose your web design agency, your new business website is sure to be a winner. Have a great day!