Here\’s how to launch your own website and start your digital marketing.
I\’ve been stumbling upon several small business clients in the past two years and I\’m wondering why they don\’t have or have no idea how to create their website.
I guess it\’s normal around 15-20 years ago when websites weren\’t a hit but now there are a lot of tools that you can use and some provide templates already.
This will be a way to convince people that they can do it independently without having a lot of knowledge.
To share a part of my story, I started making websites back then when I co-founded my first startup. I even have a window blinds business that I made a website for that we\’ve been running for a while and it is still our core source of customer leads.
But why? What\’s the need still for a website in your business at this time?
There are a lot of areas in websites that can still work until now in the digital marketing space and e-commerce world.
Social media has been the top-of-mind source of marketing because it\’s newer than websites but websites are a way for you to take ownership and set it off if you launch it in the right way. So websites are still effective especially if your organization or your business is very heavy in information. That\’s a good platform where you can have an overview of your business and not have it be very bulky.
Even before social media, similar to other people I didn\’t have any formal training on how to develop a website though I know how to code. Either way, a website is not necessarily just about the technical stuff, it\’s also about design, copywriting, and more. In my case & my experience, I just use templates and paraphrase the existing content from similar websites or probably competitors injecting my unique value proposition.
We don\’t really need to define what the website is but you know in basic terms it\’s just having a domain of your own, browser pages, even for the mobile and using the browser.
For example, in my case it\’s dennismhilario.com and then you can publish whatever information you have like brochures, company profile, products, and contact page. Your website is your home base or your headquarters so in the physical world, we have our headquarters, then we have other offices or branches that serve as your social media channels now, but at the end of the day, you have your own virtual HQ presence that you own.
Moreover, social media is a platform that you do not own. Facebook can shut you off or delete your profile and you don\’t have control over it. On the other hand, a website is something that you can control and it has a more professional feel. It also has credibility since you have your domain name.
The main advantage of having a website is that it is customizable. You can decide on how you wanna serve your customers or features you wanna include for certain traits you want your website to have. There are limitations with social media platforms because it is already pre-made but there\’s freedom in websites and can cater to any product or service you offer.
Another reason for having your own website is for blogging. These days people don\’t know you exist if you don\’t have a voice. Depending on your goal or your purpose as a business you should have a voice. It can be posting educational content about your services, products, etc. Even sharing downloadables, templates, and tools, you can place them on your website so they can browse and download the freebies you have.
To add to that, if you have multiple products or services, you can put up a single landing page to explain further. The last thing on why a website is still significant is that if you do Facebook or google ads or have the intention to do so then there are what you call pixels and trackers that you can embed on the website. You\’ll be able to know the behavior of your consumers or your audience and at the same time, you can specifically post an ad for the people that already visited you.
Once you get to build the purpose of your website, we can head on to discussing how to launch your website. A great way to start is to look for a person or people that can do it for you especially if you\’re not a techy person. Fortunately, there are already so many platforms online that you can do without having technical knowledge. All you need to have is a template and a peg for the design. There are three important things that you also need to have and the first one is the domain name that was mentioned earlier. You can buy this in domain registrars like godaddy.com and some other website bundle platforms that also include a host. It is called a host because it is a server that can host your website. One of the hosting platforms you can use is squarespace.com which is about fourteen dollars a month and there are cheap ones as well like Wix which is $4.5 a month. Another one is Weebly which is four to twelve dollars a month because it varies depending on the size of the storage that you want. There is also a platform called WordPress where you can subscribe thru wordpress.com, bluehost.com, dreamhost.com, or godaddy.com and it costs roughly three to five dollars per month.
There are different apps and tools I\’ll be listing down below that can help give you a headstart, but overall the launch of a website is a process, can be collaborative, and gives you a lot of freedom to create and make it your own!
Links for other resources :
Design, Photos and Vectors – canva.com, pexels.com
Video editing tools – invideo.io, animaker.com, animoto.com, synthesia.io
Interface design – marvelapp.com, figma.com
Copywriting – copyscape.com, title-generator.com, grammarly.com
This blog post is brought to you by our free accounting software and free payroll software Snap Solutions.
Want to learn more? Check out my Simplified Digital Marketing Course
Or enroll in my Accounting Course Online