You Need a Website
While social media platforms can be effective for advertising and engaging with your audience, a website gives you more control over your online presence.
In my blog Website for Startups, I compared your website domain name to a company address and the hosting service to a plot of land you build on. To continue with this “architectural” theme, I’d say: social media is like the property you rent, your website – is like the property you own.
Ownership comes with control, but also with responsibility.
When you rent the repairs and maintenance are usually not your problem, but there are rules for what you can or cannot do. While you design your company presence and plan marketing on any social media platform, the platform’s ownership and the rules can change. The new rules may force you to modify what you had planned. Whoever managed for a few years Instagram, Meta, Twitter – or any other social media profile knows exactly what I am talking about.
A website lets you fully control how you present your brand, increase visibility, and design the user experience.
Start Your Website on a Low Budget
Do not pay the host and the domain fee until you prepare some content.
There are certain website elements that you need and that you can create ahead of time using a laptop and a word processor.
- Home Page.
It is like a front window display of a “shop”. It needs to be planned well, otherwise, it will be the first and… the last page your visitors will see. It should provide a clear description of your venture, show the key sections, and where to click next. If it’s not easy to understand people will click away.
Home Pages often include a mission statement: a summary of the purpose, core values, and goals of your venture. In many instances, this statement is shortened here to a catchy phrase, like these:
- “Let’s go places” ~Toyota
- “Finger-lickin’ good” ~KFC
- “Just do it” ~Nike
Instead of a wordy description – the home page often displays an image that represents what you do. Sometimes it takes time to find the best image for the job but this is time well spent. People won’t stop to read your content unless the image provokes them. Remember: It takes less than a second for someone who finds your website to decide to click to read more or click away. Use that time well.
- The About Page
This is a great place for a more elaborate mission statement.
This statement also needs to be well crafted. See my blog Elevator Pitch for tips on writing it. Notice that there is a place for a version of such a statement on most social media platforms. AND networking in person is not yet dead.
If you are serious about promoting whatever you do, you should have this statement ready and in a few versions: detailed, shorter, very short, and the catchy slogan I mentioned before. Your website has no length limits, so the longest version goes here, but each social media platform limits the so-called “bio” to a certain number of characters. Therefore, one of the versions may be just a few bullet points.
- Services / Products Page:
If you offer services or sell products, prepare some details and images.
Check your competitors. See how they do it, including descriptions, pricing, features, or packaging. Think about how you can stand out from this crowd. Use their systems to learn how to categorize and show your items, and then think about how to do it better.
- Contact Page
Because you will be entering a public space you may want to set up a separate email address and phone number. If you plan to connect to social media platforms you may also want to establish business profiles rather than using your personal. Plan a contact form for visitors to submit inquiries or sign up for your news.
- Blog/News
Sharing regular updates, via blog or news section is valuable. It allows you to publish fresh content, establish your expertise, engage with visitors, and improve search engine visibility. It may not be the first item you need to start your website – but the sooner you create a plan and outline for it the better.
- Pictures
A picture can be worth a thousand words. You need good visual content to share.
If you are creative a portfolio or gallery section will display examples of your work. If you are sharing written or spoken content – the images within are important to catch visitors’ attention. You can use your own photos or stock photography but building a library of images will not only save you time later but also allow you to create your own imagery style – an important part of your branding.
Publish Your First Website for Free
If you did check the Website for Startups you know I like the combination of WordPress as the website builder and Bluehost as the host. It is great if you already have some experience in creating websites, or you can pay someone who does, and will guide you initially through it.
For a complete beginner, the lingo and tasks may still be a little overwhelming.
Disclaimer: I am a Weebly Affiliate. If one day you decide to use my link to move to a paid version I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Nevertheless, I look out for the best deals and relevant materials for my blog and I don’t recommend what I would not use myself. And free is always free.
This is how I began many years ago.
I learned a lot, and free learning is always prized. Besides, I am still helping a couple of businesses maintain their websites in Weebly. After the free testing, they moved one day to the paid option, and it works well for them.
Weebly is a popular website builder and host that allows you to create and publish websites without much technical knowledge or any coding skills.
Using the free version of Weebly, you can:
- Use pre-designed templates that cover various industries and can be customized with your own content and branding.
- Weebly utilizes a simple drag-and-drop editor that enables you to easily add to pages new text, images, videos, and forms.
- The free version allows you to create and publish a website with essential features blog posts, photo galleries, and contact forms. You can also add basic SEO to optimize your site for search engines.
- The templates are mobile-responsive which means that they automatically adapt so that your pages look and function well on smartphones and tablets.
Free Weebly Limitations
- When using the free version, your website will be assigned a Weebly subdomain instead of your custom domain. That means that your website address will not be yourcompany.com but yourcompany.weebly.com.
- The free version also displays Weebly branding, such as a small Weebly logo or link in the footer of your website.
- You will get a limited amount of storage space for your files and media.
- You can include your affiliate links in your free Weebly pages, but you cannot build a fully functional store.
Upgrading to a premium plan unlocks all features, such as a custom domain, expanded storage, advanced site analytics, e-commerce functionality, and more design options.
Are you ready to try? No matter what path you choose, I wish you the best of success!