Every business needs a website. But creating a website can make us invest in tasks and features that are not helping our business. Especially if you’re just starting out, you might think you need everything. All the paid features, all the plugins, all the extras… The truth is somewhat different. You need a strategy and that’s what I’ll share with you in the following article. I’ll assume you’re making the website by yourself, that you’re just starting your business and that you don’t have too much money or time to invest.

Don’t compare your first dollar to someone’s last dollar.

This is especially true when creating a website for your business for the first time. Many people tend to have the „shiny object syndrome“, especially when it comes to websites. We are often seduced with the design and the technology behind modern websites that we forget that those are just aesthetic features of our „shop windows“. The website is basically a "shop window" for our business. What really makes us customers is what’s inside the shop. The offer, the quality, the price… „Shop window” matters as well, but if you’re just starting a business you're in no position to compare yourself with other more experienced businesses who have much more resources to spend on their website. Here are some tips on how to create a pretty-looking website quickly with limited resources. 

If you don’t have money to pay a professional to make you a cutting-edge modern website for you, guess what? You don’t need it. If you’re just starting, all you need is a one-page website that shows what you do and how your clients or customers can reach you and make a purchase. After you created a steady cash flow from your business and you can justify the expense of a pro website, you can upgrade if you need to. But at the beginning keep it simple. Save your time, energy and money for something more important.

I recommend that you create a website on a budget. Not only to save a penny but because you want your life to be simple. You can always add features later. A simple one-page website does a much better job of directing your visitors‘ attention to the value of your offer than a multi-page “gallery” website. Most of the visitors are just not going to click around to find information. It’s the value of your offer that’s going to make you your first sales, not a big shiny website. This value should be the first and the only thing your visitors see.

Lucky for you, you can make a simple one-page website in a day. I recommend you use a site-builder service instead of your own hosting and Wordpress unless you really know what you’re doing. Site-builders allow you to just insert blocks you need and just add information about your business, copy and images. You can do that in one day. The best part is that site-builders usually have great templates that make your website look shiny. Without any extra effort from your side. 

Site-builders also don’t support unlimited features, so you won’t be distracted with something that’s unnecessary. The goal is to make a functional website. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can focus on getting leads. 

As your business grows and you have new content, you can add new blocks or pages and grow your website. If you start needing something more complex like a membership site or a big online store, you can move to a platform that better suits your needs, but even then you’ll have your simple website working for you while you develop the new home for your business.

Self-hosted Wordpress sites tend to be much more complicated to make and you need to have a good understanding of the platform to begin with. It will take you some time to learn unless you're already an experienced web-developer. Definitely more than one day.

When it comes to expenses, site-builder services cost between 0 and $20 per month on average. You can make a website for free, but for some features, you’ll have to get the subscription. Comparing to a self-hosted Wordpress site, site-builders seem more expensive, but when you take into the account that you can add paid plug-ins for Wordpress, it can cost you the same or even more. Plus, the mistakes you make if you don’t have experience in website development.

The only real advantage of your own self-hosted website is that you own it. It’s your property. If you use a service, you depend on the service providers. If they change their policies or shut down the service, well… You have a problem. At some point in your business you should consider migrating to your own website, but not at the very beginning. 

Which leads to another reason for a simple website: easy to move somewhere else. If you keep your copy, images and files backed up on your computer (which by any means you should!), it’s easy to move. Your service provider changed prices or removed features? No problem! Easily paste your information onto a new website. Your business overgrew your website? No problem! Uplevel seamlessly and easily migrate to your new website. No need for an upgrade because your website is doing a great job for you? Excellent! Keep using the service and enjoy the benefit of not having to code or hire a programmer (but backup, just in case). Site-builders offer incredible simplicity, they are easy to modify and are, in my humble opinion, the best solution for those who don’t have too much time, money or energy to invest in website creation and maintenance.

I honestly recommend that you don’t spend more than one day on creating a website. Make it work, publish it as quickly as you can, drive traffic and then when you have some feedback, tweak for performance. All you need are essentials anyway. The purpose of your website is to direct attention. We are all overloaded with information so less is more. Allow your prospect to quickly and easily get the idea of what you do and how you solve the specific problem. That’s what your website is about. 

Everything else is optional, and you can add extras any time. You can leave out the blog until you actually find time to write it. Or leave it altogether if it doesn't fit your business strategy. Your website doesn't need pages of content to look respectable. 

Another reason I love this strategy is that you can easily try new potential business ideas. If you want to offer something new and totally different from what you’re already offering, you can quickly make a new website for your new idea and market it. And you won’t mess up anything in your main business. And if the idea doesn’t work out, the damage is minimal. You can quickly test products and services or offer to different target groups. For example, you might offer coaching for individuals and coaching for corporate businesses. You can address both of those target groups with a different voice on a different site, by choosing templates, images and a story that’s adapted to the target group’s needs and wants. 

As a busy entrepreneur, you don't have time for a bulky website. You need a site that looks good right away. A simple minimal website creates a great user experience and it won’t cost you too much to make it yourself. Give yourself one day, write good copy, find nice images, connect it to your social media, test it if it works properly and that’s it! You have a functional website. After you do that, the next good idea is to create a sign-up form that will help you grow your email list as soon as you can. This will require you to make an incentive. But this is an entirely new topic, so I’ll stop here for now.

Let me know if this is helpful in the comments and let me know if you have any questions. I would love to help you solve YOUR problems so feel free to engage with me here.

Love! <3 

Image credit: Photo by Angelo Pantazis on Unsplash