Having your own website is no doubt getting more and more important for not only established businesses but it is also very important for small businesses, startups and even for individuals to have a website that helps them benefit from all possible opportunities.
However, it is not possible for every one of these people or groups to afford to hire a web developer to build their custom website for them. Hence, we recommend such people and groups to build their own websites via online free website builders, especially for small businesses, startups and individuals who have limited budgets.
Since the last few years, it has been very clear that smart online presence can be a strong driving force for a business’s or an individual’s overall success in most industries. Hence, as a first step in the online world, building your stunning website with an online free website builder is a great option.
Here are 15 brilliant tips for you to make your free as customized and efficient as possible:
1. Be very clear about your goal
Every website, business or otherwise, is unique because every one of it serves a unique purpose or has a unique goal. If the purpose of your website is to build a portal for selling products or services online, to create an online portfolio to showcase your work and skills or anything else, make sure you build your website and customize it around the same goal. A website created without any clear purpose or goal will provide little benefit, if any, while costing you time and money.
2. Draw inspiration
If you lack inspiration and are not really sure how you want your website to look or how to go about your web content, just take a min and look for any website that you really like. There is your website inspiration, don’t copy it but having an inspiration can actually help you figure out what you want and what you don’t want in your own website.
3. Write your own website content
Before you start building your free website, you should decide what you want to say through your website, if not the exact words then at least the basic terms. If you think you are not that good with words then get someone to write your content with necessary skills, however, you should at least begin the content creation process. It is quite easy to hire help who can edit or even polish your created content but there is no one else who would know the core message of your website better than you.
Unique and relevant content customizes your website like no other web element can.
4. Clearly tell your audience what you can do for them
It can be very helpful to make your content more effective if you try to read the content as a potential visitor of the website. One of the common mistakes website owners do is that they make their content focus on what they do and who they are, rather than to talk more about how they can provide benefit and value to the visitors or customers.
Well thought out and original content again customizes your website and brings more business opportunities.
5. Tell your personal story with your website
Another great way to make your audience feel more connected with you or your business is to tell your personal story through your website, as this will not only customize your website but it will also humanize your business in eyes of the visitors.
People feel more connected to you if they know your story and why you created your business and the inspiration behind it.
6. Get your custom logo
It is always good to have your custom logo, definitely if you are a business and even if you are an individual, there is no harm. Your logo is like a visual name or identify of your business and you should make sure to very well incorporate your logo in your website. A stunning logo is great way to further customize your website and your overall online presence.
7. Provide easy and efficient contact through your website
Every website business or otherwise, with very narrow exceptions, without the consideration of the type or size of the website, should include their contact information. It can be anything, an email address, phone number, social accounts or the address. The more number of ways you provide your audience to contact you, the more comfortable they are likely to feel to reach out to you or even buy from you.
8. Try to avoid using cheap stock photography
Putting an overwhelming number of stock photos won’t really do you any favor or add any value to your website. Hence, if you just don’t want to make even small investment for good pictures for your website then it might just be better to completely skip it or only put up the necessary ones.
Using too many stock photos lowers your quality, it tell nothing about your business or yourself to your audience, they have seen these same photos too many times and they are too generic to be effective anymore. Therefore, if they are not adding any kind of value to your website, adding to the visual attraction, then there really is no point in using them.
Moreover, you should completely avoid using stock photos as images on your website titled as your product or your team of resources, as this might come off as you trying to fool your audience.
9. Include your customer reviews and testimonials
Customer reviews and testimonials is another web element that is being used more commonly now and can be very effective in not only customizing your website but in also adding to its credibility and authenticity in the market.
Try to get some quality testimonials and reviews from your customers, the specific the review or recommendation the better.
10. Add more valuable images
Using good images in your website is a great way to customize your website, to add more value to it by making is visually stronger and more appealing for your audience and it can be a way for right people to take interest in your website and ultimately in your business.
Some ideas to incorporate relevant images in your website to get amazing results is to include your actually team’s photos and examples of your work if tangible and visible.
11. When possible try to use more video elements
The idea of video elements in your website is relatively new and is considered to be very trendy and effective by industry pros. You can incorporate more videos in your website by adding video testimonials, tutorials or any other kind of video content that is relevant to your business and purpose of website. Moreover, creating and publishing an engaging video to put out any message is a great way to reach more audience and you can even further increase the viewership by publishing the same videos on your social media accounts.
12. Always go for a mobile-friendly website
No matter what type of website you have and the type of content you decide to add in your website, you should make sure that the website is mobile-friendly or responsive. In today’s markets, having a website that is not responsive on mobile phones can be the reason to drive a segment of your customers away, damage your SEO efforts, it makes you look unprofessional and it may make your mobile visitors frustrated.
13. Make your website content easy to read
Even though your free website builder may offer you great variety of fonts that you can use but it is important that you chose only easy to read fonts. No matter how cool some fancy fonts may seem, the basic typefaces are really best for readability.
14. Give your website a face
Another website element that can definitely further customize small business websites while making it more effective, is to give your audience a face to go with your business. Making your business appear big may not always be beneficial, rather at lot of times providing customers with a real person that they can connect to such as the owner or founder of the business, can be a great strategy.
Hence, adding a good picture of yours or your team can almost never go wrong.
15. Do required SEO research
You should research SEO, as it is something that you should keep in mind through the entire process of creating your website and for as long as it is running live. At first you only require some basics, such as when creating your content try to incorporate your business relevant keywords that can help you have better presence on search engines like Google.
However, over the course of running your website, you will have to get back to it at and make some efforts, as SEO is very important in long run for the effectiveness of your website and business.
Conclusion:
As mentioned above, today making your website free of cost is rather easy with easy availability of online free website builders, however, it can be a bit tiring to make your free website as customized as possible. Therefore, make sure to follow these brilliant tip and enjoy your customized and effective website by availing the new and improved opportunities it brings for you.