Over the years, new technologies have been introduced to enable you to build your own website free of cost. Gone are the days when you have to hire a professional web developer to get your site up and running. Building a website has ceased to become a crucial business decision because of the high cost involved. For any company, the decision to have a website that will represent its brand online is a no-brainer.
Website builders such as Strikingly enables you to build your own websites free of charge. With these platforms, you don’t need a background in web development to build your own website for free. They pretty much do the technical heavy lifting and equips you with design tools so you can create sites that are at par with professionally-made pages.
Free website builders are understandably not created equal. Most of them provide free accounts to help users get a feel of their services and entice them to upgrade to paid subscriptions later on. It’s not a bad business model but it does limit your options in terms of features, services and event website templates that you can use. To make the most out of a free account, your choice of website building platform is important.
Access to the most features at a lower cost
Strikingly lowers the barrier to entry for individuals and small businesses that are looking to create their own websites without spending too much money. No matter what kind of site you want to create - be it a personal blog, business website or even an online store - a free account with Strikingly lets you build your own web site free of cost.
With the technical stuff such as hosting and website development taken care of, you can now focus on building a successful website. Here are a few tips to keep in mind.
1. Know your goals
First and foremost, you have to be clear about your website’s goals before you even get started on designing your space. What do you aim to achieve when you learn how to build your own website for free? Do you intend to sell products? Are you looking to invite new customers to your brand? Do you want to share a new idea with the rest of the world? Having a specific and actionable goal in mind will help you structure your website properly.
2. Create a proper plan
Planning is important in everything - even when it comes to building your website for free. Free accounts will admittedly have lesser resources available for them compared to paid versions but if you plan your website content, features and design carefully, it is possible to build your own web site for free and successfully fulfill your digital marketing goals. Planning has two parts: creating the navigational hierarchy of your site to make it easy for users to get around it and identifying which pages to add to your website.
3. Add valuable information
Content is an important part of building your own website. With a website builder, you save time building a site from the ground up so you can focus on this area of website building. You can probably get away with average writing when it comes to website content but if you want your site to stand out, you should create content that adds value to your reader’s life. In this way, not only do you get to build a following for your brand but also increase your search engine ranking potential.
4. Practice SEO
Finally, even free websites need to implement a sound SEO strategy. Adding Google Analytics to your website to help you track your site’s performance, tweaking your content to suit your user’s needs and changing preferences, optimizing your website for search are just some of the many things you can do to boost your site’s search rankings. Having a good understanding of how SEO works can help you build your brand online.
