by | Jul 19, 2021 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

Here’s your 10-Step Action Plan for Learning to Build Awesome Websites

I’m glad you’re here because I LOVE sharing my experience with designing and building websites for clients for over a decade. This is the action plan I wish someone would’ve shared with me when I first got started.

1) Build on WordPress

You want to make sure you build websites on a stable, secure platform that you OWN, not RENT. WordPress is now over 40% of the internet and is just getting better.

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2) Pick a page builder/Wordpress theme

The page builder and WordPress theme you choose is a super important decision because it’s what your websites will be built with. I use and highly recommend Divi but if you choose another theme, look at the tool itself, the company and the community.

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3) Choose good hosting

Your hosting will be the foundation of your website, files and entire web presence. It’s so important to choose good hosting, otherwise, you get what you pay for. I recommend avoiding “cheap” hosts like GoDaddy or Bluehost and choose from the options below.

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4) Learn Divi (or your chosen builder)

Before you dive into design, coding, SEO, etc, you need to know your page builder and theme well. You don’t necessarily need to be an expert at it through and through, but you should feel really confident with it before you start building sites. Learn what you NEED to know and get comfortable before you start getting clients.

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5) Learn good design principles (particularly conversion based design)

By no means do you need to become an “expert designer,” but you should at least be able to design a nice site and more important, focus on designs that CONVERT for your clients. Clients don’t care about a site that looks nice if it isn’t turning visitors into customers.

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6) Refine your web design process

You’ll get better, faster and more efficient every website you build but in order to do so, you have to be intentional. I sure wish I had a proven process to follow for my website builds instead of them becoming a scattered, time consuming mess. To avoid that, continue to refine your process and follow my proven path!

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7) Get a foundational understanding of SEO

SEO seems like a shady, scammy and spammy world, right? That’s how I felt at least. Which is why I learned about SEO later in my journey. But I wish I learned about it much sooner because a nice site that converts doesn’t matter too much if you can’t find it online. As a web designer, SEO IS a big part of your job whether you like it or not. Luckily, it’s not rocket science! In fact, the basics are SUPER easy to understand.

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8) Learn the very basics of CSS & HTML

The good news, you don’t need to be a coder to build awesome websites in this day in age. But I highly, highly recommend knowing the basics of HTML (the structure of web pages) and CSS (the styling of websites). That way you can customize sites in a way that you can’t with just page builders.

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9) Learn basic DNS and cPanel (for domains, email, file management, etc)

The most fun aspect of web design is by far domains, emails, files, databases, etc! Sense my sarcasm?? 🙂 It’s definitely not fun stuff but it is super, super important to know about. Just like SEO, it seems daunting and scary but it’s actually not bad. And all you need to learn is the basics of DNS and cPanel (what’s behind websites)

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10) Don’t go it alone! (Join trusted web design support groups)

I went along doing things on my own for far too long. It wasn’t until I got serious about joining web design communities (in particular the Divi community) that I stopped feeling alone and made amazing connections. All themes and page builders typically have some sort of community but Divi is the top community online, by far. If you use Divi, definitely utilize the resources below.

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Additionally, you can search for any terms via my website to quickly find more resources!

If you join any of my courses, be sure to use code LEARN10 at checkout for 10% off your entire purchase!

  • Coupon is valid for entire cart purchase
  • Coupon is not valid during sale periods
  • Coupon should not be shared

Finally, if you’re interested in one or more of my courses but aren’t sure which one is best for you right now, watch my course overview video.

And if you’d like to lock in access to all my web design courses, purchase my Web Design Course Bundle with a massive savings.

P.S. You can always upgrade to the bundle at any point 🙂 Just contact me and let me know you’re ready to upgrade, then you’ll be sent a special coupon depending on what course(s) you already have access to 🙂

– Josh

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