Starting your own business can be an exciting time, the buzz of planning and seeing your dream come to fruition. But planning the marketing of your new startup can be stressful and time-consuming. People need a way of finding your business and services and the best way for them to do that, is through a website.
You may be a one-man band at the moment and your budget might be limited, so finding a designer and a developer to create your website may not be an option. That’s where site builders like Webeden.co.uk come into play. These types of ‘build your own website’ tools can help you create a user-friendly and fully functional website in just a few hours.
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H3: Finding the perfect template
Many of the free or affordable website builders will have a library of templates for you to choose from. Many of these will have features which cater to a particular type of site, such as e-commerce, portfolio or service based businesses.
Many of these sites will allow you to filter certain templates depending on what you need your website to do. You can then pick one of the designs that appeal the most to your business branding and the layout you like best.
Using a template that is easily customizable will help you to mirror your existing business branding. It is also vital that the template has the option to support any other media you may want to include such as photography, video or audio.
H3: Choosing the right functionality
Choosing the right functionality means that there will never be something you want to do on your website, but aren’t capable of. Make sure, right from the start, that you will be able to add everything you want to, to your site.
If you are a video production agency, making sure your template can support video and that the layout opens itself up to the embedding of videos, is crucial. For a graphic designer, it will be essential that their site shows off their amazing work, so a gallery feature needs to be available.
It helps to write down all of the content you are planning to add to the site, before choosing your template. You can then group this content into categories like imagery, video, interactive elements etc. This will give you a clearer idea as to what functionality you will need from your template.
H3: Making sure your CTAs are clear and concise
To be able to make sure you’re seeing conversions from your website, you’ll need to include plenty of calls to action, across all pages. Making your CTAs easy to understand and positioning them in the direct eye line of users, will help to boost click-through rates tenfold.
Large and well-labeled buttons are always a good place to start and can help to easily link pages and content. CTAs may change over time and it is worth opting for a template that allows you to easily add and remove calls to action, to allow you to test consistently.
In order to see your very first conversion, there are plenty of elements that have to be put into place. The user experience needs to be simple enough for your customers to find what they are looking for and your CTAs need to be clear enough so that users know what you need them to do. An attractive looking site also helps, as many users will make a snap judgment as soon as they land on the site and poor design may put users off.
These website builders are a great way of getting a professional looking site together quickly, with limited knowledge of HTML code. So why not save some budget and opt for this more affordable route?