Nowadays, you can get a wonderful website within a short period of time on a budget. Many entrepreneurs think that web design and development take thousands of dollars, so they usually turn to social media to promote their business to prospective customers. But there is a solution for finding budget websites.
What they don’t realize is that reaching new customers with social media ads can turn out to be even more expensive than website marketing. If you are equipped with the right information and follow the correct steps, you will soon see that websites are an indispensable part of your marketing efforts and, in many cases, work much better than social media pages.
It’s really not hard, you just have to read up on some information and set aside a period of time to dedicate to your new website. Here are some of the most important pieces of advice for business owners who want to develop a great website at a low cost:
Use DIY Platforms
If you want to get a decent-looking website for just a couple of dollars per month, you can sign up for WordPress, Wix or some other popular website platform and do it yourself. This is a great solution if you’re aiming for a simple website that will showcase your services and let your visitors know how and where they can reach you.
The downsides of creating your own website platforms are numerous if you lack the time, willingness to learn and improvise. If this is your first time creating a website, it can be quite time-consuming, but if you’re patient and curious to learn about how websites are built, it can turn into a very fun and educational activity.
Sketch a Design Layout
For non-experts in web development and design, it can sometimes be hard to illustrate and describe what they want their website to look like. If so, it’s time for the old pen and paper. Just as if you were drawing a floor plan, sketch a design layout for your website, one segment at a time.
This will help in both of these cases:
1) If you decide to do the work yourself – this can be your blueprint.
2) If you decide to hand the work over to a professional – this will be a great visualization for the designer you’re working with.
“If you’re not sure of what you want your business website to look like, visit some other websites that you like and write down or sketch the elements you like about them. You can forward this information to your designer or use them as inspiration if you’re going DIY”, says Miranda Hale, a writer at Studyker.
Use Storytelling
Even if you’re a small business that’s only a few months old, there is always a good story behind entrepreneurial ventures. And best of all – the audience loves them!
Talk about what made you want to do what you do, launch your business and your history in the field. Instead of laying out a cliché corporate mission and vision statement, share your visions about the future in a personal, relatable way.
“Storytelling is an ace up the sleeve of every marketer. Human beings are naturally drawn to stories. We will always react stronger to a story than a sales offer or a promotional message. Use this to your advantage if you’re running a small business website”, says Maya Cornell, a content writer at WriteScout.
Pay Special Attention to the Content
As a business owner, you can attribute half of your website’s success to good design and user experience, and the other half to high-quality, relevant content.
You can use the following services to make sure your content is up-to-par and attracts new visitors and potential clients:
- Subjecto – writers’ website where you can outsource copywriting work for your business website; and
- SmallSEOTools – check all your website’s content to make sure you rank well on search engine results; and
- Readable – run your content through this tool to make sure it’s easy to read and flows well.
Hire Experts to do the Heavy Lifting
You don’t have to waste a lot of time, money and energy to learn how to build websites if your business doesn’t depend on it. Thanks to the Internet and digital freelance platforms, you can get a job well done for just a fraction of the price you would need just 20 years ago.
Here are some of our top recommendation for expert services available on-demand: TopEssayWriting (hire experts to craft your business website’s content), ClassyEssay (for finding writing professionals to do your blog section), TopTal (find talented developers, designers, sales experts and more), SEO Sherpa (outsource SEO work and let pros work on your SEO ranking). Of course, you can reach out to Creative Allies to handle all of your website needs as well.
Make it Pop and Surprise Your Visitors
Many business owners decide to take the safe approach and simply hire developers to design a straightforward, simplistic business website that looks like 90% of other websites. These types of websites work if you already have interested parties who are visiting your website regardless of its design, but if you really want to capture the attention of leads and prospects, you need to stand out.
At the beginning of this guide, we talked about writing down ideas from other websites that you like. You can use elements that you’ve seen and switch them up a little bit so that your website is unique and original. For example, if you saw a chat app on a business website, you can go even further and install a chatbot plugin on your site.
Learn About Tracking Your Success
Once your website is up and running, you will no longer have support from your designer. If you don’t have an IT team easily available, you will have to learn how to track the performance of your website yourself.
Generally, this is not as complicated as it sounds. With awesome tools for tracking performance and visitors available for free, you can get a lot of insight into how it’s working even without previous knowledge in these programs.
If you don’t know where to start from or you don’t know how to install a tracking code on your website, you can take a beginner’s analytics course on Udemy or Coursera.
Conclusion
Creating your business website doesn’t have to be a hassle, nor does it have to be expensive. These days, you can find many high-quality designers and web developers that can create a budget website for you. The important thing to note if you decide to outsource is to communicate your needs and preferences clearly before you start the project.
