Email marketing is one of the biggest tools in any marketer’s arsenal. Whether you’re a small business owner or a department manager at a big company, you’ll be using email marketing one way or another to communicate with customers. There’s also a wealth of free tools that can be accessed directly from your inbox allowing you to create, send, and track marketing emails with ease.
While most business owners or managers will have no trouble getting started with email marketing, creating a website to support your efforts can be a little more challenging!
What if I told you that you could create a professional-looking, free website in less than an hour that will allow you to capture leads, grow your business, and start generating revenue faster than ever before?
Would you keep reading?
Make A List Of The Things You Need
Before you start building your website, you’ll need to make a list of all the things you need. Websites are built on content so you’ll definitely need content to build upon. You’ll also need a domain name, hosting, and a few other items.
To save you the hassle of going back and forth to find these things, I’ve compiled a list of the essential ingredients you need to create a functional website in no time.
Pick A Niche
Even if you have a business you want to promote, it’s advisable to pick a niche and go for it. Not all products or services are created equal, and focusing on a specific area can help you develop expertise and understanding of the problems that exist there. For instance, if you’re the world’s best virtual assistant, you might want to consider promoting yourself as such and developing a VA website.
By understanding your target audience’s needs and wants, you’ll be able to create content that they’ll value and be interested in.
Get A Design
Speaking of value, it’s essential to put a price tag on your content. This is where advertising comes in, but before you begin running ads, you need to have a design for your site. If you’re applying for a mortgage or loan, for example, and want to advertise your business, you’ll need to provide a design for the mortgage broker’s website. You can also get a designer to create a corporate identity for you that will help you establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
The best part about this step is that you can get all the above for free. All you need to do is visit Dribbble, Behance, or any other free creative website, and you’ll be able to find a wide array of graphic designers who will be more than happy to help you out. Plus, all of these sites offer free email accounts where you can send the designers regular tasks (e.g., designing a logo) to keep them motivated and engaged.
When it comes to creating a website with WordPress, you’ll need to decide what you want the site to look like. Do you want a simple, clean look or a more vintage, handmade feel? There are dozens of free templates out there that you can use to get started, so you don’t have to worry about choosing a design. Plus, once you have a general idea of how you want your site to look, you can start implementing it into reality.
Choose A Platform
After you have a design for your site and you know what you’re going to put on it, it’s time to choose a platform. There are dozens of options when it comes to website building platforms, so it can be a bit overwhelming to choose one. Even marketers who use WordPress for all of their sites sometimes end up choosing one that’s slightly too complex for their needs. It’s better to choose a simple, free platform that you’ll be able to customize to your needs. In this case, I’d recommend hosting with Bluehost, as they offer a convenient one-click install that lets you get your site up and running in no time.
Set Up The Basics
Once you have a platform in place, it’s time to start setting up the basics. What are your goals for the site? Are you looking to gain credibility as an expert in your industry or would you just like to have a place to promote your business?
Your answers to these questions will determine how you want your site to function. Do you want it to be an info-graphic website where you give useful tips or do you want it to be a place for viewers to come to for product reviews? Whatever you choose, the most important thing is that you have a plan before you start building.
Add Content
Depending on your answers to the questions above, you will either need to add a few pages with useful tips or develop a product review website. For the sake of this example, let’s assume you choose the latter.
As you may have guessed, developing a product review site entails adding content to it on a regular basis. To get started, you can use a tool like Google’s Content Suggest to find topics that you can explore in depth. Once you start getting a feel for what works and what doesn’t, you can start developing content for your site.
The above steps will only get you so far when it comes to creating a website. Once you have a rough draft of the site, it’s time to fine-tune it and add that professional, polished look that makes all the difference. To get started, you can again use a tool like Google’s Page Creator to build out your site and then use their Inline Editor to make adjustments to the text and images on your page. Once you’re happy with your page, you can grab the URL and set up autopilot so that you start receiving traffic from Google immediately.
In the next section, I’ll run you through the essential steps to creating a professional-looking, free WordPress website in under an hour. But first, let’s take a quick look at why you might want to do this.
The Growing Demand For E-commerce Websites
The e-commerce market exploded in the last couple of years with many businesses establishing online stores to showcase their wares and allow customers to purchase them directly from the website. If you’re looking to enter this market, you’ll need to consider creating an e-commerce website.
The benefits of an e-commerce website are numerous. You can continue reading from the previous section to get an idea of the things you’ll need to create one. The fact that you have a dedicated shopping page on your site with all the product images there is enough information for the average person to make a purchase. Plus, with many big brands promoting their products on social media, you’ll have the opportunity to reach a huge audience.
Why A Professional-Looking Website?
If you’re entering the world of online marketing, you’ll most likely be bombarded with countless sites that look the same as the rest. One way to set yourself apart is by creating a website that looks and feels professional. This doesn’t mean you need to go overboard and spend thousands of dollars on a designer to get all the bells and whistles, but rather you can create a fully functioning, professional website for free using WordPress.
WordPress offers thousands of free and premium plugins that can be used to enhance your site’s functionality and appearance. Many of these plugins require you to have a premium account to use them, but you can get a fully functioning plugin from the wordpress.org repository that’s compatible with any plan. You can find a list of the plugins below with brief descriptions from the WordPress.org website.
Is Keyword Research Required?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to any type of website, but it’s especially important for e-commerce websites. You need to find the right keywords to use in your content as well as incorporate them into your webpages’ URL.
For example, if you’re writing an article about e-commerce and you want to incorporate the keywords “online store,” “ecommerce website,” and “online shop,” you’ll need to enter these keywords into the URL when you’re posting the article to ensure it gets found by the right audience.
Many tools exist that can help you find the right keywords, but you can also find a list of the most popular keywords in any given niche on the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. In the next section, we’ll step through the process of creating a fully functioning, professional-looking website in under an hour.