You can personally build a website for your business without needing to learn how to program or train as a website designer. Fortunately, you don’t need to despair if you don’t have several hundred dollars to spend on developing a website as there are many programs and online resources available that will cost you a minimal amount to get up and running.
The dilemma is that there are so no-code many programs including the cheap, the free and the expensive – that it has become difficult to choose which option to use to build your own business website.
1) Free Website Builders
You may be wondering where on earth you can get a website builder for free? The answer is simple; from a website host. Many or indeed most website hosting companies will give you access to a free website builder as a free resource along with the hosting package.
Unfortunately, as in life generally, things you get for free tend to come with some disadvantages.
In the first place, in most cases the free programs have limitations – one of which is likely to be that you are only permitted to build a few pages. If you want any more, you often have to upgrade to a paid version of the website builder.
Next, most of these programs while quite easy to use tend to produce very basic websites which may not be anywhere near the standard of your competitors professionally constructed websites.
Apart from these factors, web hosts website builders tend to in my opinion lack flexibility so that as your business grows and you want to add features such as polls or forms to gather information or add a video or sound media or even adverts, you may find these features are lacking and impossible to add.
Lastly, how about if you want to move your website to a new host – Sorry, a website hosts website builder is likely to be so knitted into the system it is impossible to move. You may need to start from scratch on a new website host.
2) Software Based Website Builders
In this scenario, you simply purchase your website builder from a company and download the software or you pop into a shop and buy it as a CD or DVD package. Then you follow the instructions and carry out a simple installation. Next, you allow the built in wizard software to lead you through various choices such as which design template and features to use etc., add your content and then upload your website onto your webspace on the Internet.
To successfully apply this method you will need a bit more technical knowledge than the other options as you will need to ensure that the package you have is compatible with your computer, select compatible website hosting and make sure you understand how to transfer files from your software and computer to your website hosting package.