8 Teacher Website Must-Haves

Kirsten 0:00

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the creative teacher podcast. This episode is all about teacher website must haves. Now I'm not the best at designing websites. I don't do any of that type of service. But I have had my own business website for over two years now. And I've just now branched into having more than one website, one for my TPT teacher business and one for my design business and branding business. So it's been definitely a lot of learning experiences along the way. And of course, I'll tell you about them. So you can learn from my mistakes and just utilize those best practices that I've discovered over the past couple of years. Today, I'm going to share with you eight website must haves that if you have one, or you're considering launching your own website, some things that you must include in order for your audience or people who happen to stumble upon your website, to be able to have a user friendly experience.

The first must have is your about page. This is something that's important. You want to include information about yourself, your credentials, and any other relevant experience. Think about on your TPT Store Profile where you have those tabs, the profile section where you add the little blurb about yourself. That's pretty much the same thing, except you can add a little bit more detail. I've seen about pages that are really simple and a couple of paragraphs which mine used to be like. And then I've seen some that almost follow a storyline you learn a lot about their background, why they got into education, what they taught, and just different experiences that led them to create the resources or services or products that they do today. I think that's really great to have on an about page. And I think it's a really great way for your audience members to connect with you or your potential customers to connect with you and ultimately purchase for you. I know it's kind of scary putting yourself out there about you know, like, I don't want them to find where I live. I know all about that. I know how it feels to not want to put so much information out there. So definitely do as much as you feel comfortable. You don't have to share all the names of your kids and your husband's name or anything like that. But the about page can be utilized to explain the purpose of your website what you offer. And also just make sure that about page is well designed and easy to navigate. Don't just put a huge paragraph about your life story. Break it up into sections give them a story to follow along with a few pictures if you feel comfortable with

the second website must have is a clear menu a clear navigation menu. Make sure your menu items are clearly labeled and intuitively organized so that visitors can eat easily find what they're looking for. Most people are reading from left to right, if they're on a desktop when they're looking at the navigation menus, or if you're on your phone, it would be probably a drop down menu. So it would be from top to bottom. So think about what you want to be highlighted first, which page you want to put first, and then second, and so on and so forth. Consider adding drop down menus for longer lists of links or topics to make it easier for users to find what they need quickly, and without confusion. So let's say that you have multiple services, you're a service based business. Instead of having all five services or however many services you have, in that one main menu, you can just put services on your main navigation link with a little drop down arrow, and just have those sub menu items where you have service one service to service three, so people can click on Services, and then they'll be able to scan on the drop down. Same with if maybe you offer a lot of PD or learning opportunities, it might help to put like the word learn, or PD or courses, and then you can select the drop down there. I also find it helpful to use simple wording, like maybe one or two words. So I've seen menus, where it's home blog, learn services about contact. So just keeping it simple with one or two words per menu item. My website, the Southern peach Designs has a list of menu items where it just says about podcast courses services contact. Yes, I also have a blog. Yes, I also have like multiple services that you can select from. But I don't want to add all of that in my navigation menu at the top in the header. Because it's a lot of for things to take in I kind of adding the thing that I want to highlight. So I could also add a portfolio in the menu, I could add, you know the different blog posts that I have. But I really wanted to highlight and focus on those specific menu items. So I left some out, you don't have to have every single page on your website in your menu.

The third thing that you should have is a privacy policy. This is very important. Make sure your website has a dedicated privacy policy page that outlines how data is collected, used, stored and shared on your website also explained in detail how cookies are used on your site. So yes, we got to stay legal on our websites. And the privacy policy is usually linked at the footer of the website. So once it's on the footer, it'll pretty much be on every web page that you have, other than you know, your typical landing pages. This can easily be done with a template but not just any template, make sure you get one from a reputable seller or somebody who has, you know, law experience. I really like Bobby clinks free privacy policy generator. And I will link that in the show notes. It's really easy to follow, you just have to change out what is highlighted in yellow, and then enter in your own information. So that is easy. You just have to just put in your email and name and you'll get a free privacy policy to add to your website.

The fourth must have is a mobile friendly interface. think mobile first as you're designing and editing your website and then think desktop. So design with your mobile users in mind. More people are browsing websites on mobile devices. So you want to make sure that the content you use is optimized to be viewed correctly on all types of screens. Think about creating an adaptive design system so that elements like menus and images and buttons can scale up or down automatically when you're viewing them on larger or smaller screens so that there's no loss functionality or aesthetics because of the different size. So as you're creating your website, let's say you're in WordPress or Kajabi you need to make sure that you're looking at the preview or your beat you're able to check in the mobile and tablet and desktop form. You may think it looks really really great like dusky click Preview and you're looking at the desktop version and looks fine. But then you get to the mobile version, and it just looks really bad. So there might be, you know, words that are off or it's way too large or it's way too small, the columns are too narrow, the button is way off in one direction, you have no idea how it got there. I've always whenever I'm editing my web pages, I always make sure to use the functionality in my website platform. So the cool thing about it is most website editors will have like, you know, if you were to change a button size, usually there's three different versions, there's the mobile version of the size that you have, there's the tablet version, and then there's the desktop version. So even if you might change it up in the mobile version, it will still stay the same in the other two versions, unless you also change it that way, too. So And usually, you can tell that in WordPress and Elementor, whenever you click on the element that you're looking to change, and it'll kind of tell you, there's a little icon where you'll see either a mobile phone or a tablet or a desktop. And you can see that okay, there's three different types, and I can change it up based on that. So definitely make sure whatever web editor or web page editor you use, it has those capabilities for you to be able to edit and change things in different modes depending on what device is being used.

All right, the fifth must have is having a header or snippet at the top, use a header or snippet at the top of each page or section of your website, to make sure to give concise summaries about what content or services will be found there, so that users can know what to expect when they visit the page. This can help improve user experience, so they don't have to guess or navigate around trying to find what they're looking for before eventually giving up or becoming frustrated with a lack of clarity. So this can easily be done with having your header tags, either header one or header two, depending on where your headers are in the page. But definitely make sharing for each actual web page that you have, especially if they're linked to your navigation at the top that you have some type of heading. So that it's also showing up whenever you have the search results. It's clearly labeled for each page.

Alright, number six is having some type of freebie, that's also a website must have. Make sure you have some type of freebie or lead magnet relating to some type of paid offer. on your home page. Don't feel like you need to have multiple offers on your webpage all over at least start with one and add that as a section on your homepage. And wherever you feel applicable. Maybe you can add it in your about page at the very bottom as a way you know, after they learn more about you, you can kind of have that call to action, click here for a free math manipulative guide or something like that. So add the same, it's okay to add the same lead magnet throughout your website if that's something you want to do to capture leads and get people on your email list.

The seventh thing is having a Terms of Use page. When you have a Terms of Use page linked at the footer of your website. This helps protect yourself and your business. A lot of the Terms of Use will contain some type of disclaimer, that will lessen your liability from errors in the website's content. So maybe you make mistake on a blog post about some incorrect information or something that turns out to be incorrect. This can reduce the strength of a case should anybody you know, have some type of offense to it and they decide to sue you for injury or property damage or something that impacted them for that error. It also helps protect your content. So pretty much clarifying that all the content on your website is your intellectual property and you have that copyright and you have some language on permitted use on how the visitors or people on your website can use and consume that content. You can always research or find different template generators for Terms of Use if you want do that. Or if you want something that's pretty rock solid, there is the contract shop. I am an affiliate, and I've used her contracts before and I love them. And it's pretty much rock solid as far as like having everything you need so that you feel safe that if somebody should come for you about the content on your website, you have a pretty solid Terms and Conditions agreement, and template, I will put the link for that as well in the show notes. It's a Terms and Conditions and Privacy bundle for your website. So if you want some type of template for that you can get started by checking that out.

And number eight for teacher website must haves are cookies, not actual cookies, unfortunately, but it's some type of template or tag that you put at the header of your website that allows a pop up to come up. And it would have visitors except a cookies policy before they would access your content or services on the site as well as any third party services such as Google Analytics be used. For my WordPress site, I use a free plugin called compliance. If you just type in cookies as a keyword, in the plugin search area, you'll see it's at the top it's like a blue background with a little checkmark. There's also other free ones that you can utilize. There's cookie, yes, there's GDPR cookie compliance. So just look at each of the ones that are there and just see which one you prefer. For my Kajabi site. I use cookie pro by one trust.

g the DIY of my website since: 2020

All right. Well, that is the episode for today. I hope you've enjoyed it, I hope you got some tips on what you should include on your teacher website. Having a teacher website is important in itself, just so you can establish yourself on the web. And you have more of a presence where people can find you if they like one of your resources, or even somebody who technically didn't buy a resource and got it from another teacher friend. They see that logo and they're like, Oh, do they have more stuff? They do a Google search. And your website pops up. Just imagine what could what good could come from it. And maybe if somebody didn't buy it from you before they'll buy it from you just because of that. So it's always helpful. Teach your websites are a must. And I hope these tips have helped you in general. All right. Well, that's it for today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. I'll see you guys soon.

Thanks for tuning in to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I cannot wait for you to join me in the next episode for more tips and inspiration. Have an amazing day.