A website is an essential part of your freelance animation business. Your website is responsible for expanding people’s awareness of your animation services and getting you animation clients.
Whether you’ve never made an animation website or you already have one but want to start fresh, this article will help put you on the right path towards having the site, and clients, of your dreams.
First, you should research how to create a website, what to consider, what you want your website to look like, and how much time and money it will cost.
You can choose to make your website from scratch, use free website builders, or hire a professional website designer. No matter which option you choose, there will be pros and cons when coming up with your animation website.
After you’ve finished all the technical stuff involved in building a website, you or your website designer can start designing your website’s layout.
In this article, we list down creative ways to make your own animation website to attract more clients and make them stay.
1) Find a Website Hosting Service
To get your domain name, you need to find a website hosting service that can provide you with your desired web address.
Make sure that you find a web hosting company that will keep your website up all the time and has excellent customer service just in case something in your website goes wrong.
Your website hosting company should also provide you with a fast website. Slow loading time can actually make you lose a lot of animation clients. Websites that load fast rank better on search engines and reduce the bounce rates. This leads to more animation clients.
The monthly fees for your domain will depend on how big your animation website is and how many website visitors you get.
2) Choose and Register Your Domain Name
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Your website domain name should accurately reflect your animation services so that clients can easily find you on a search engine and remember you.
Most businesses and individuals use their business name as their domain name. This is always a good move for businesses.
Make sure that your domain name is easy to say and spell. It shouldn’t be long or include numbers and symbols..
You can choose a domain name yourself or have a tool such as Panabee and Name Mesh to assist you and check if the domain name is still available. After selecting your domain name, register it, and link it to your website hosting account.
3) Make a Free Website on Your Own
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If you have a lot of time but not a lot of money and want to customize your animation website, you might want to build a free website from scratch.
That means you will need to put codes, install plugins, purchase a domain name and a hosting plan,, to come up with your website.
Some cons of making a website for free is that you won’t be able to get a professional URL, you won’t rank high on search engines, and your website might not look that professional because of limited features and your degree of website design skills.
4) Use Website Builders
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This is the easiest and quickest way to build a website. Using website builders, you can create an animation website with a cleandesign and more features in just a short amount of time by paying a minimal cost.
Some websites will provide hundreds or thousands of well-designed templates for you to use. All you need to do is drag and drop your content, make a few edits on the style and text, and it’s good to go.
The downside to using this is that you might need to install some apps and plugins to make the website more customized. Also, the kinds of content that you can put are minimal. You might have to upgrade your plan if you want to access more features.
5) Hire a Website Designer
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If you hire a professional website designer, you’ll be able to have more time to focus on working on your animated video projects and at the same time have an excellent design for your website. Instead of building your website, you will brief your website designer about how you want your website to look like.
This is something that you can do if you have more money than time. Having a website designer to set up your website for you will be more expensive than using creating your own site.
6) Decide What Content You Want to Post
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There are so many different things that you can post on your website. You can include a blog, photos and videos of your work, tutorials, tips, and much more about your experiences as an animator..
You don’t have to limit yourself to just one topic, either. Your posts can be a combination of two or more topics as long as it is still relevant to animation and your life as an animator.
Remember, content is king. Before posting anything, make sure that you can commit to posting that kind of content for a long period of time.
Your website visitors will, hopefully, become regular visitors and will look forward to reading the content you post on your website. If they don’t find anything valuable on your website, they will no longer feel the need to visit your animation website.
7) Upload Images and Videos
After choosing a template or creating your website design, it’s time to add the content of your website, including all copy, images, and videos.
Some website builders will already have stock images and words that you can add, edit, or remove to your liking. You can also feel free to upload your own images and videos when necessary.
8) Edit Text
When editing text, all you have to do is click on the text you want to change in a text box and type into the box. You’ll also be able to adjust the font style, size, and spacing.
You should include a home page, about page, and contact page.
Make sure that the text you use is aesthetically appealing while also being easy and big enough to read. Also remember to align fonts appropriately. Most website text is all aligned to the left for optimal readability.
9) Customize Page Sections
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In customizing the sections of your website, some website builders allow you to use a drag-and-drop approach in adding and removing sections.
You can choose how many pages you want or if you want all your content to be scrollable in one page. The sections of your website’s layout will depend on the kind of an amount of content that you want to display.
Basic website content should include a page about you, your work, and contact information.
10) Use a Live Chat Feature
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Aside from just leaving your email address and social media links on your website, you might also want to include a live chat feature that will enable you to communicate with your website visitors in real-time.
Live chat saves you money in having to use your phone plan to call and text clients.
It also increases your chances of getting clients and closing a sale. A lot of customers need support online when they have concerns and need to make decisions. It shows your clients that you are always within their reach and are reliable.
If you’re there when they need you, they will be able to find what they’re looking for and maybe even become repeat clients if they enjoyed working with you.
11) Include Calls to Action
On every page of your website, make sure that you let visitors know what you want them to do next. It makes it easier for you to assist clients in going down the sales funnel.
You can include calls to action buttons such as “Learn More”, “Read More”, “Sign Up for Newsletter”, and more that you think will meet your client’s animation service needs.
Some calls to action aren’t as effective as others, so you need to study your online audience and do some trial and error till you find what attracts your website visitors the most.
12) Stick to a Color Scheme
Part of your personal branding includes the colors you choose for your animation website.
People want to look at aesthetic designs and colors that are easy on the eyes. You should use colors that complement each other when combined.
To find color combinations, you can check the color wheel or use online tools to improve your design. If you’re not sure how to use the colors you want for your website, you can go through other animators’ websites to see how they use their own color scheme.
13) Create a Logo
After putting all of your content on your animation website, it’s time for you to make a logo. Having a logo for your website is important because it’s one of the ways animation clients will recognize you.
Make sure that your logo has similar fonts, colors, and designs to your website. If you don’t have a logo yet, you can make one on your own which will definitely save you time and money.
However, if you think you don’t have enough logo design skills, you can hire a designer on websites such as Fiverr or Upwork to create your logo.
14) Make Content Responsive
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More and more people are browsing on the internet, not just on desktop computers, but on mobile devices as well such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
For people to have an easy time viewing your website, you need to make your website content accommodate resolution and image size for any screen size. You can use HTML and CSS codes to do this.
15) Use Lead Magnets
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Lead magnets are what you offer on your website in exchange for your animation website visitors’ email addresses. A lead magnet should deliver a benefit, solve a problem, be specific, easy to digest, valuable, and easy to access.
Lead magnets help you know your customer, differentiate you from other animators, grow your email list, and, ultimately, increase your sales.
Some lead magnets you can offer are checklists, books, cheat sheets, guides, infographics, educational videos, and many more.
16) Add Social Media Buttons
Social media should be your best friend when promoting your business. To take advantage of social media, you’ll want to send your website visitors to your various social media platforms and make shareable content.
If people see something valuable from your website, they will want to share it with their friends on social media. This will raise brand awareness and will eventually help you reach your target audience and increase conversions.
Adding social media buttons on your website can also improve customer experience, making it easy for your audience to share your blog posts or pages.
17) Include Testimonials
Adding testimonials to your website gives you credibility and assures potential clients who visit your website that you are worth the time and money they will spend on if they end up hiring you.
In addition, testimonials can explain the benefits of working with you and the quality of your animation and customer service.
18) Use a Back to Top Button
If your animation website has pages with super long content, you might want to include this back to top feature. If users want to go back to your menu or top part of your webpage, you don’t have to give them a hard time.
This is a small website detail, but gives your website visitors an easy user experience and saves their time.
19) Show Your Personality
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Some people might not be attracted to overly professional-looking websites and texts that sound too serious. Show your audience that you’re human and not just some robot posting content online.
You can show your personality through your voice when writing blog posts, font styles, font colors, and more. You can even make your animations the background of your animation website.
20) Use SEO
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This one is a biggie. Search Engine Optimization helps your website rank higher on search engines. If you want to be more visible to animation clients, you have to choose your headers, meta keywords, meta titles, meta descriptions, image alt tags, and copy carefully.
Make sure that they are all relevant to you, your animation services, and the animation industry. Aside from this, you can also install plugins such as Yoast SEO for WordPress on your website to ensure that you are using the best keywords for your blog posts.
Wrapping It Up
No matter how you choose to bring your website to life, what’s important is that you actually do it.There are so many things that you can do to create your website. The only limit is your imagination.
You can choose from to make your own website from scratch, use website builder options, customize sections and fonts as little or as much as you like, select several apps and plugins, and add other elements when necessary.
If you’re having trouble creating your website, it’s best to read and watch video tutorials, ask help from your colleagues, or hire a professional website designer.
If you want to learn more about animation tips and the business of animation, get a copy of our free marketing handbook and sign up for our masterclass.
