Getting started on your pages

Your starting point

Before starting on your page, it is helpful to consider what you want to place into the page. Here is a list of areas to consider:

1. What do you want to show people about your business online?
2. Have you already defined any brand guidelines, such as colours, fonts, imagery?
3. What kind of image are you trying to portray to your audience? Professional, fun, creative etc…
4. Your site hierarchy/navigation structure. How does that look? What type of pages and content do you want in the site?
5. What content do you already have for your website? If you are stuck knowing what is best, start by getting ideas from competitors that you admire or you know who do well. When writing your own content, it can be worth getting feedback from colleagues or friends to make sure it reads well (it should be written in a way that is engaging and understandable to your ideal audience) and is free of any spelling mistakes or typos. Alternately you could look at engaging a copywriter to take care of this for you.
6. What type of imagery do you have to use on your website? Have you taken some of your own already, or have the ability to hire a photographer to take them for you? While your own unique imagery can be great, it is not always realistic for every small business just starting out. There are a lot of great stock image sites that are worth spending time on to find great images. Here are a few sites to get you started:
   1. https://www.pexels.com/ - Pexels free images are available from directly within Limecube.
   2. https://www.istockphoto.com/
   3. https://stock.adobe.com/
   4. https://unsplash.com/ (a free image site)

While it can be easier to build a page when you know what you want to put into it, don’t worry if you don’t have everything ready to go. Pages are extremely flexible and things can be moved around, changed, added or deleted as you need. As you build your pages (even when you have planned out everything in advance) you’ll inevitably think of things you need to add or remove.

Working on your home page

For most sites, the home page defines the look and feel of the rest of the site and will be the most visited page on your site. As such it becomes the most important place to start building the look and feel for the rest of your site. It is worth getting the home page right, before starting to move on to other pages

So where do you start when first building a page?

The answer to this comes down to what you have ready to work on for your home page. Click on one of these links below to push you to the relevant section of this article to get started.

• Header/Navigation - adding contact details, navigation structure, call-to-action
• Adding content - imagery, text, videos etc.
• Defining fonts, colors for your site

Header/Navigation

The header and navigation of a site are amongst the most important elements on a site as this area is one of the most visible sections on a site. This is the top part of your site that contains your logo, navigation menu and call-to-action.

A well thought out navigation bar is important as it helps drive users to the most important pages in a site.

When considering what the most important navigation pages are, think of around 5 key menu items to keep your menu simple and easy to use. Then define the sub-page system underneath that. Sub-pages can either be accessed as sub-menu (drop down) items from the main navigation, or accessed by users through links in each page, so don’t worry about trying to fit everything into the top level navigation.

Adding content

When you first choose a theme to signup with, you’ll have pre-populated layouts and content to get you started. You can choose to follow these layouts for your own content, or remove them and start with other pre-layouts, or empty layouts to build your pages out exactly as you want them to appear.

If the page layout is already right for you, it is time to start learning about using Elements (Plugins). Elements are such plugins as content, imagery, contact forms, video etc…

If the page layout is not suitable, and needs to change, it is time to learn about working with the Sections layouts.

Defining fonts, colours for your site

If you are ready to start working on your fonts and colours you can do this within the style editor.

View your page in different device views

This is an important step many people forget to take and is a very important one. Much of the world views a website on their mobile phones, so it is quite important to look at the mobile view before launching your site.

These devices views are available to view your site in:

1. Desktop - This will be your default view while working in Limecube
2. Tablet
3. Mobile

To switch between these views, look to the top of your admin area for the icons shown below.

Toggle between each device's view by clicking each icon.

Adding a background image to your page

1. If you want to add a background image to your page, click here to learn more.
2. If you want to add a background image to a section on your page, click here to learn more.

The footer

When first working on your pages it is normal to get stuck at times. Make use of the chatbot to ask questions, or return to the support centre at any time. And if these don’t answer your questions, reach out to us by logging a ticket from the menu at the top of this page. We’re here to help.

Tags: Mobile preview