Getting your website live matters more than everything you think you need before starting.
Like many marketers, I always had the idea of building my own marketing website. But it always came with conditions.
“I need to learn the basics of WordPress first.”
“I need to make the website clean and polished. I’m a marketer. I can’t have an unpolished site.”
Those thoughts sounded reasonable, but they were just excuses. They kept me in a loop of consuming instead of doing. I would read about platforms, watch videos comparing them, and try to understand which one was better without actually taking action.
Then I came across an ad from Hostinger offering a year of hosting and a free domain for around $50.
That moment triggered a different thought.
What do I actually have to lose?
The price made it feel low risk. The timing made it feel like an opportunity. More importantly, it removed the pressure of needing everything to be perfect.
What this post is about
This post explains what actually mattered when building my first marketing website, based on what I did, what worked, and what turned out to be unnecessary at the beginning.
What actually mattered
I didn’t know WordPress when I started. That turned out to matter much less than I expected.
What mattered was getting something live.
Once the site was live, everything else became easier to figure out. I started fixing things one by one.
- Design inconsistencies
- Layout issues
- Buttons that didn’t do anything
Then I moved to the technical side.
- Setting up Google Search Console
- Making the site discoverable
- Installing Google Analytics (GA4)
At that point, I had something more important than a good-looking website.
I had a system.
What didn’t matter as much as I thought
Looking back, a lot of the things I thought were important didn’t actually matter at the beginning.
- Knowing WordPress in advance
- Having a polished design
- Getting a perfect SEO score
- Adding every possible feature
All of these felt important because they delayed action.
None of them were required to get started.
What I actually built
By focusing on an MVP, I ended up with a site that:
- Is live
- Lets me publish
- Lets me track what happens
- Can be improved continuously
More importantly, it lets me learn by doing.
Closing
I’m not treating this website as a finished product.
I’m treating it as a marketing lab.
Something I can build on, test with, break, and improve over time.
I wrote about why I’m treating this website as a marketing lab in my first post.