I had an interesting past two weeks.
I ran a DIY (WordPress) Website Challenge in my Facebook group this past week. The week before I ran a pre-challenge; I guided those taking part in the challenge through the process of gathering their website content via daily email prompts.
Both weeks were a lot of work and were pretty time-intensive to set up, but I’m pretty sure it was invaluable to those who took on this challenge!
I actually had a lot of fun assembling the challenge, even though it was a lot of work for return I might never see. (If you took part in this challenge share your website URL!)
Why did I run the DIY Website Challenge?
Because I truly want to help others succeed.
Those who are just starting their entrepreneurial journey are generally tight on funds, whether that be they are truly tight on money to invest in their business, or they can’t quite fathom how investing a little now will help them get off on the right foot and bring in some cash sooner.
There are also those who truly want to give things a go first, trying to learn about every possible aspect of their business before handing any part of it over to someone who can do it better/more efficiently/has more knowledge about strategy.
What did participants get out of it?
The main goal of the challenge was to help people create their own websites, of course. It was meant to be step-by-step instructions covering all that goes into creating a minimal website. A minimal site being one that contained the basic information one might need to learn about services offered, who provides the services and to who the services are suited for.
At the end of the week students should also walk away with knowledge of:
- purchasing a domain and hosting
- installing a theme
- installing a template
- adjusting site settings
- installing and configuring security plugins
- adjusting theme page settings
- creating new pages
- adding pre-created sections to a page
- adding images, icons and copy to a page
- adjusting column settings
- knowing how to select images, fonts and colors that reflect their business
- setting and applying colors and fonts to a website
- creating and adjusting forms and their settings
- how to structure the copy
- basic SEO
- basic website strategy (through strategic page layouts and Calls to Action)
- how to make backups of a website
- how to make updates to a website
- resources to learn more about all of the above!
All of the information was broken up into short 5 to 10 minute chunks of video, in hopes to make it easily digestible.
I’m always telling my clients and my Facebook group members that preparation is the key and I can tell you for sure that preparing everything for a week-long challenge is definitely the thing to do.
First I made a basic outline of everything that I needed to include in a minimal website. Then I broke that down into the skills one needs as well as the materials that are needed to complete the work. Then I broke that down into the simplest way to teach that skill and incorporate it into moving forward with the project and offered resources as to where to find the website components (images, fonts, icons).
I also had to plan out just how the finished website would work so I had a clear end goal for the website as well as for the challenge itself.
In addition to that I wanted to include tutorials for the necessary post-launch things like backing up your website and making updates. I didn’t cover things like Google Analytics, and only brushed the surface on Search Engine Optimization.
Anyway, by the end of the week of the Facebook group challenge itself I had completed 26 videos of tutorials plus several live videos offering encouragement and check-ins to see how everyone was doing.
Was this the best challenge I could have assembled? I’m not sure, but it was my first time pulling something like this together to help my audience get Simply Launched with a minimal website and I know for several it was their only way money-wise.
Will I do a challenge in my group again? Possibly.
Take Action
If I were to offer a challenge or tutorials again, what would you like to see?
