Today I’ve been building a website.
On a scale from favourite to least-favourite activities, website design ranks somewhere in the middle. I don’t really enjoy it but at least I’m not being eaten alive by insects or something.
Thrive Themes tools make it easier.
What makes it even easier is the following rule:
Just keep it simple.
I’m building a membership site for this place. I’ve talked about it for months and have finally cleared my schedule so that I can get some of these promises brought into life.
And I’ve never done anything quite so complicated so far as private member sites go.
It has:
- Two tiers of membership
- A forum
- Various materials for the membership levels
- More stuff to be added on a regular basis
And the biggest issue is that it’s not going to be open for everyone or all the time.
Now, all the technology is there to do all of these things.
Arguably, I could have gone with someone else’s platform: People use Clickfunnels and whatnot, but I prefer to keep everything in house.
And so we’re putting it together with the various tools, tips and tricks we’ve accumulated over the years.
S2Member is the most powerful membership plugin. But it’s a pain in the arse frankly, because there are a million options to get that power sorted out.
Thrive Leads and Ultimatum can handle lead generations and the limited campaigns.
And I’ll use 3rd party platforms to deliver the content that isn’t housed on my server.
Why Am I Telling You All This?
Mostly because I haven’t got anything to write about because I’ve spent most of today putting it together.
But also because let’s talk about the important art of web design or a good offer:
It’s easy to get trapped in trying to make everything super-awesome and good looking. But functionality is what’s important.
I’ve been worrying about the site structure when there’s really no need.
Homepage that says “Put your email in here if you want to join the waitlist.”
Terms and Conditions.
Then the rest is backend stuff.
That’s the skeleton in total for the site.
And most sites are a lot simpler.
It’s easy to get caught up in the big picture stuff – you see someone who has built a website and added to it, improved it and refined everything over the course of years – and you think that you’re going to do that in a weekend.
It’s probably not going to happen. The worst thing you can do is paralyse yourself until you know what to do.
Because you won’t know what to do until you’ve done the first thing.
Clean Design: Who Cares?
Remember back to this article about selling gold?
That sums up my general thoughts on web design and creating perfect landing pages.
Ultimately, if you have a brilliant offer, it doesn’t matter all that much.
To argue against this is to be one of those weirdos who want to be copywriters but hate long form sales letters because they look ugly.
You can argue about it all you want but ugly long form sales letters sell; have always sold and will continue to sell. Your opinion doesn’t matter.
Anyway, you shouldn’t concern yourself with a beautiful project anyway at first. You need to make money and get proof of concept because if your web design is beautiful but nobody buys what you’re offering, you’ve wasted your time anyway.
Don’t waste your time.
Get started. Get functionality. Worry about everything else later.