If you are not marketing yourself and your business on the internet, you are missing a golden opportunity. The internet is the best place to increase your exposure. Studies show that traditional marketing such as Yellow Pages, newspaper and magazine advertising just isn’t as effective as it use to be. Consumers are looking to the internet before they look anyplace else. If you are not advertising on the internet, then your potential clients or customers won’t find you. If you are looking for more customers, you need to have a powerful internet presence. With these hard economic times many businesses and professionals are struggling to make ends meet. They simply cannot afford to spend any money on marketing. Well, the good news is if you can’t afford to hire a professional website builder, make your own website – it’s fast, easy and cheap!
Creating your own website has never been easier. There are dozens of do-it-yourself website builders on the internet. These sites allow you to build your own website and get it published in a matter of minutes. The most time consuming part is actually researching the many website builders available. There are many articles on the internet to help you with your research. Depending on exactly what your website needs are, and what your budget is, there is a website builder perfect for you. There are opportunities to build your websites and have them hosted for free. With these free sites, however, the company logo and advertising will appear on your website, and your website will be hosted on their domain.
There are many packages available with these website builder companies, if you do your research, you will find the package that best fits your needs. Again, there are site builders that offer for free and the packages can run you from $49 up to hundreds of dollars a month. However, this is still much cheaper than hiring a professional website designer. Most of the website builder sites offer free trials. A free trial is a great way to get your feet wet and see which website builder works out better for you. Once you have decided which website builder to use, and which package fits your needs, set up your account, and start building.
Before you get started building your website, you will want to have all of your content information available. This will help you save time. You don’t want to have to stop and search for the information needed to create your website. Now you are ready to create.
First step is to pick out your template there are hundreds of professionally designed templates for you to choose from. You will want to choose colors that are pleasing to the eye. If your company has its own logo, you can upload your logo and pick the color scheme that goes with the logo. Don’t worry, at anytime during the process, you can change templates and make adjustments to the work you have already completed.
Next step is to pick how many pages you want and which pages you will have. Pages can always be added at another time as well. You will want a “home page” with all of your company information on it and a “squeeze page” to capture contact information immediately. You want to be able to capture relevant information from everyone who visits your website, so that you can follow up with them. They are simply opting in to receive special announcements, newsletters or blog postings from you. An auto responder is a wonderful tool that will allow you to immediately response to the potential client or customer stopping by your website. You can also create “drip campaigns” that will slowly drip on your clients reminding them who you are and what services you can supply them with.
A great addition to your website is to create an online blog. Blogging has become very popular today. Offering helpful tips to those who subscribe to your blog is a great way to add to your online presence. People like to receive information to help them with issues important to them. If your business is plumbing, then offering blog articles on how to fix simple plumbing issues is a great idea, or how to avoid potential plumbing disasters. If your website sells baking products, then adding a blog with great baking recipes is an excellent way to go.
If your business has products to sell, then a product page is necessary. Post pictures of the product with a brief description as well. You will need to set up a PayPal account or other avenues for your customers to use for payment.
The website builders will walk you step by step through the entire process of building, hosting and maintaining your website. They offer easy to follow directions as you go through the process. Customer support is available, with most of the companies either by phone, email or live chat should you run into any problems, or have any questions. Usually if you can use Microsoft Word, then you can use most website builders.
When the website is ready to publish, simply choose your domain, most of the website builder companies will also offer domains. You can either use their domain, or pay to have a custom domain. It is highly recommended that you choose a custom domain so that you can further brand yourself, and create more of an online presence. An example of a personalized domain is www.plumbingprofessionals.com. The premium accounts also come with email addresses as well, which will further assist you in branding yourself or your company and creating a powerful online presence.
You will want to submit your website to the search engines such as Google and Yahoo so that your website can be found.
Now, you are ready to publish your website and enjoy the fruits of your labor. You can update and maintain your website as easily as you created it. There will be no more paying those high fees to professional website designers to create and manage your online presence. Simply make your own website – It’s fast, easy and cheap.