Do you need a website for your brand or project? Do you want to create a website to give online visibility to your business? It’s a great decision. Today, not being on the Internet is equivalent to not existing. If you want to grow, you must be. Therefore, in this article I will tell you everything you need to know about how to create a professional website, fast, easy and without spending a lot of money.
Do not miss it, because we will also see:
What it takes to create a website.
Whether it is possible or not to create a website for free
The step by step to create a website with your own domain name
Useful tools
And a bonus track with tips to structure a website and get more visitors.
Why create a website?
A professional website helps you to:
√ Gain visibility and new customers.
√ It allows you to better connect with users.
√ People from all over the world can find you.
√ It makes you look professional and gives you more credibility.
√ You can sell online or offer services without having a physical location.
√ You save money and time.
√ You have your own independent space where you can upload your content (you are 100% owner, unlike social networks, where you depend on the guidelines of the company or you can suffer extensive crashes).
How to create a website to sell more?
Initial Steps
If you want your website to be successful and ensure growth, the first thing you need to do is a planning process.
Ask yourself what goals you want to achieve through your website. Maybe you are an NGO and you want more people to sign your petitions. Maybe you are a professional who wants to be contacted by potential clients or maybe your goal is to create an online store for them to buy your products.
The important thing is that you define this point and ask yourself the following questions:
What information do you want to publish on the website and in what format (text, images, video)?
What actions do you want visitors to perform on your site?
What special functions do you require (online store, forms, blog…)?
What is the aesthetic style you will maintain?
A great idea in these initial steps is to look for references in similar websites. Look for your competitors or businesses similar to yours, how do they organize the information? What data do they provide? What path do they propose to the user within their interface? What is their aesthetic identity like (colors, typography, sizes, slogans, persuasive phrases)?
Recommendation: take pencil and paper and give free rein to your creativity. Dare to make a sketch of how you want your website to look like. Menu bars, banners, buttons, phrases… Start imagining it and take note of all your ideas. The clearer you are about what you want your website to look like, the more prepared you will be for the steps that follow.
What does it take to create a website?
Domain name
The web domain is basically the name of your website as it appears in the web browser. Some examples of domains are Google.com, Neolo.com and Facebook.com.
You cannot create a website without having a domain name, because it is the address through which visitors can access your website.
When choosing your domain name, make sure it is the same as your brand name. If you notice that the www.tumarca.com version is not available, try other geographical extensions, such as .mx if you are in Mexico, .es for Spain, .ar for Argentina, etc.
Hosting Service
In addition to the domain, another service you should hire is the web hosting service. Why? Hosting gives you the space on servers so that your website can be online 24/7 and be visible to all users around the world.
If you have doubts about this point, I recommend you to read our article How to choose a hosting for your web page.
Note: prioritize companies that offer both domain and hosting and hire both in the same place. It will be more practical and will save you future management problems.
Or you can also try the simple way that using website builders like jimdo.
Web design
Although with your domain + web hosting you can technically have a website, it will be of little use if you have not defined the content and the form you want to give it.
To begin with, it is essential that you have designed the logo of your brand or project, the main typography, the colors that characterize it, etc. Remember that your website must reflect the identity of your business in a clear and coherent way.
It is not about choosing pink or green according to your mood of the day, you must know clearly how the visual design of your website will be and why.
Many hosting providers give you pre-designed templates so that you can choose the design of your preference and customize it with your logo, typography and colors. However, if you want your website to really stand out with a unique web design, the best option is to hire a web designer.
Applications and plugins
You will need to download applications and plugins to make managing your website easier. These are intended to help you if you have no programming knowledge and help you modify the web code in a more intuitive way.
Some tools to create a website that you should count on are:
WordPress: it will allow you to manage all your content, text, images, videos, create new pages, have a blog and publish posts. It is a very practical and intuitive system (our website uses WordPress, for example).
WooCommerce, PrestaShop or Magento: if you need to integrate the online store function, you must download an application that enables it. These are the most popular ones.
Moodle: if you want to sell courses or teach online classes, a platform like Moodle is ideal for you.
Yoast: it is a plugin for SEO, which will help you to make your website easier to understand for Google robots and helps with organic positioning.
Note: if you are only interested in selling products online, you can save the process of creating an entire website and simply design your online store on a specific platform, such as Neolo Store.
How much does a website cost?
Creating a website is not expensive, but you must be sure to choose suppliers that guarantee a good price-quality ratio. To calculate the cost, you should consider:
The price of your domain registration: it is paid annually and varies according to the extension (.com, .es, .net or whatever you choose). You can check how much it will cost you on our domain registration page.
The price of your hosting plan: it varies according to the needs of your website (size, number of files, estimated visits). You can check hosting plans here.
Hosting works as a monthly subscription (just like Netflix, for example). You can pay the monthly fee or make payments for a longer period of time. On the other hand, you pay for the domain once and then you don’t pay again until you have to renew it (it is renewed once a year).
Is it possible to create a free website?
You may see brands offering you to “create a free website”. However, what they offer you is far from being your own website:
It has super limited features (you won’t be able to add extra functionality).
You will not have your own domain
They place third party advertisements for which you do not receive any revenue.
It does not contribute to your professionalism as a brand
If you want to be serious about your website, we recommend you not to waste time with free websites that cannot satisfy the needs of a professional website. If you want to know more, read Is it useful to use free hosting? Advantages and disadvantages
Steps to create a website
Let’s see how to create a website step by step:
Register your domain: just go to a domain registrar, type your brand name, choose the extension and, if available, register it. It is as simple as that.
Hire the web hosting plan that best suits your needs (if it is your first website and you do not expect to receive many visitors, I recommend you start with a more basic plan, then you can request upgrades).
Configure your website from the control panel (there you can download the applications and plugins you need).
Design your website. Upload your main brand files, place the text, design the menu and buttons.
What do I need to get a good amount of visitors?
First of all, you should know that it is difficult to get high volumes of traffic when you have just created your website.
The growth will happen gradually and in the medium/long term. However, you must take steps to make this happen, such as working on SEO, publishing on your blog, sharing on social networks and/or investing in advertising through Facebook Ads or Google AdWords.
What you cannot expect is that you will receive thousands of visits just because you have published your website on the Internet. Keep in mind that competition in all sectors is great and there are thousands of websites like yours. These resources will help you to increase the traffic of visits:
Get listed on Google, Bing or Yahoo listings.
Start getting some reviews
Include your business data (name, address, phone number) in local directories.
List your business in industry directories
Make sure all your pages are more than 300 words long
Optimize all your pages with keywords
Get some backlinks or inbound links
Create a blog and publish posts with informative content about your industry
