Are you ready to create your own website for free? You’ve got your thinking cap on, your mind is laser-focused, and your dream website is going to finally leave your brain and make its debut online.
Hi, I’m Marina, and I share simple tutorials for non-techie entrepreneurs as a non-techie entrepreneur.
Here is your ultimate 17-step guide to create your own website from scratch - no technical knowledge or professional designer required. It’s never been easier to create a website for your small business that rocks.
1. Define your site’s purpose
If your website is not here yet, why should it be? If it is here, who are you trying to serve and why? What is its purpose?
You need to come up with the one main reason why your website should exist. Why are you waking up each day and putting in the work? What are you trying to achieve?
Think a little, beyond the generic ‘If I don’t have a website, I am doomed forever and ever’. What do you want it to do for you? Get email subscribers? Make bookings and sales? Teach something? Inform visitors about an event or your services?
That is its purpose. That is what will trigger action. That is the impact it will make in the world.
2. Get inspiration
Now that you know why you’re creating a website, you need to come up with ideas of what that site is going to look like.
Go get inspired! Search for websites of other players in your niche. Search for websites that you think look cool. Search for websites that have a clear path to follow, and write down everything you notice, everything you like and everything you dislike.
Write down the kinds of words and phrases they use, the fonts that mesh well, their colors and branding, and how everything plays together. You can even create a Pinterest board to put your ideas together.
3. Create a site map
This is where you will add a logical structure to all of the ideas you came up with in the previous step.
Will your website be one, long, scrolling page or will it have various pages? What are those pages and what’s included in each of them? Get a piece of paper and make sketches of where certain links and sections go.
As you start getting more and more ideas, and putting them together in a cohesive way, you will ultimately come up with a site map. That map will be your starting point. It will serve as your plan of attack, so you won’t be staring at a blank page with no direction.
4. Choose your website creation platform
There are so many website creation platforms out there, that it’s easy to get stuck in this step. Let me take out all of the guesswork and tell you that you should use Wix to create your own website.
Why? Wix is easy-to-use even for a total beginner, affordable, has tons of gorgeous templates, looks professional, doesn’t require coding knowledge, has an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, great customer service, and every last detail is 100% customizable.
Convinced? Good. Click on the link in the description box below to create your Wix account for free.
Not convinced? Check out this video in which I lay out the 3 main reasons why Wix is my website creation platform of choice. I'll also leave the link to it in the description box below.
5. Choose your Wix plan
Wix offers a number of plans, and even includes a free version.
As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you will probably want to choose the Unlimited plan, which has features carved out for those just like you (that’s the one I use as well!). You can always upgrade your plan in the future as needed.
Just as a side note: if you're planning on selling digital or physical products on your website, you should go with the eCommerce plan or higher, since those offer online store capabilities.
6. Fill out the preferences of your Wix site and choose a template
When you create a new site, Wix will prompt you with a number of questions and tasks to best suit your site’s needs.
These include: ‘What kind of website do you want to create?’, ‘Do you want to create your website with Wix ADI or with the Wix Editor?’ (choose the latter), and ‘Pick the template you love’.
Wix will automatically lead you to the templates that are best equipped for the kind of website you want to create (e.g. business, online store, restaurants & food, beauty & wellness, etc.), though you can choose a template from any of the categories (there are literally hundreds of templates that you can choose from).
You can search the templates by category, or view by new, most popular, and blank template options. I created Yes To Tech’s website by using the ‘One Page Layout’ blank template.
Make sure that you choose a template that best fits with your branding and design. Once you have made your choice, and started creating your website with it, you can’t go back and change it. The good thing is that although that’s the case, all templates are seriously easy to customize, no matter which one you choose.
As I had mentioned, all elements are purely drag-and-drop, so you just have to click on 'add image', that bam, it appears on your screen. No need to know design or coding to create a beautiful and professional-looking website!
7. Purchase and connect your domain
You can purchase your site’s domain with Wix, but, as I like keeping my eggs in different baskets, I purchased mine on a third party provider, GoDaddy.
Your domain should reflect your business’ or blog’s name. On GoDaddy, where it says ‘Find your perfect domain name’, write down the domain that you wish to purchase.
Some things to take into consideration are: length (make it short and easy to remember), spelling (make sure a 5th grader could spell it), choice of words (pay attention to how the words look when combined without spaces), the name itself (choose something that relates to your topic and brand, but that is not too specific), and availability (brainstorm a few options since your first choice may not be available).
Once you've found a domain that is available, follow the instructions to purchase it. This shouldn’t cost you more than $20.
8. Create a ‘coming soon’ page
While you’re building your website behind the scenes, it’s important to let your audience know that something awesome is soon coming their way.
Create a page with no header and footer, with a captivating call to action, and a place for your visitors to add their email address to get future updates once the site is live (you can do this by inserting an html box with the code provided by your email marketing provider, or use Wix’s own integrated email marketing service).
Publish that page, and make sure that it has no links to the website that you are creating that is under construction. You only want your visitors to have access to the coming soon page.
9. Create each of your site’s pages
Take out your site map sketches, and start putting together each of your site’s pages, at the basic, overarching level.
Usually, a website includes a homepage, an about me page, a services page, a blog, and a contact page. You can use this as a framework, or add more or less pages depending on your needs.
You can even require a password to access any of your pages, if you wish to protect certain resources or tools from the general public, and grant access to them just to your VIP clients or email list.
10. Personalize your pages
Click on the panel in Wix on the left-hand side of the screen to add images, strips, galleries, slideshows, buttons, videos, lists, social icons, and more. You are creating a framework to later add your site’s copy and design elements.
Preview the result, and edit it so that it is responsive on mobile devices as well (just click on the editor view switcher in the top, right-hand corner).
11. Add widgets for further needs
Wix has an in-house app market that you can use to take your website one step further. Some of the apps are free, others are paid, and range from business tools to chat to social and more.
You can add an app to display your restaurant’s menu, one to take bookings directly from your site, and even include a forum for your site’s visitors to hang out in.
Search existing apps by category (business, online store, photography, music, designer, restaurants, accommodation, events, blog, portfolio & CV, and other), must-have apps, free apps, newest apps, all apps, and made by Wix.
12. Develop your brand and write copy for each of the pages
This is one of the most time-consuming steps, and involves working on each of the page’s copy and design.
Play around with different sizes, colors, styles and fonts, until you make your site uniquely yours. If you don’t have one already, create a logo for your website. Although most of us lack professional design skills, there is an easy, and cheap, way to do this.
When you were in Step 2 getting inspiration, you were also indirectly copy stalking i.e. seeing the words and phrases that other players in your niche use to feed their sites. Use that as a starting point to write copy for your own site.
13. Optimize your site for SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it's the process of getting found online. In other words, it’s what makes your website show up on search engines like Google.
Not many people know this, but Wix has an excellent built-in feature, called Wix SEO Wiz, that tailor-makes a personalized SEO plan for your own website, with special keywords and best practices to get your site to rank #1 on Google.
It's super easy to use - even for a total beginner! For more information on how to do Wix SEO, make sure to watch my video on that topic. I'll leave the link to it in the description box below.
14. Connect your site with an e-mail marketing platform (like ConvertKit)
If it’s not already, growing your email list should be your #1 priority. It’s the ultimate way to convert visitors into subscribers into sales.
Every page on your website is an entry point, even your about me page. Just as you added a place for your visitors to add their email address in your coming soon page (see Step 8), you should do so on your actual site.
Create an opt-in frenzy by offering something in exchange for your visitors’ email address. This can be a checklist, a worksheet, a video series, an email course or even an e-book.
To connect your site with an email marketing platform, all you have to do is click ‘add’ on the left panel in Wix, ‘more’, click on ‘html code’, and paste the lines of code that your email marketing platform provides. Resize the html box to fit in with your website, and that’s it!
15. Promote your new site
Now that your site is ready, you have clicked publish, and have taken down your coming soon page, it’s time to spread the word.
Promote it EVERYWHERE. Tweet it, share it on Facebook, pin it, add it to StumbleUpon, tell your family and friends, and send a broadcast to your entire email list.
You can even offer an incentive for people to share your website (see Step 14). You can bribe them with a limited-edition checklist or a preview copy of your brand new e-book. Make it enticing, and hard for them to say no.
16. Ask for and use testimonials
Word of mouth is the best kind of marketing. I trust my friends and loved ones much more than strangers, and am much more likely to purchase something they endorse. That’s the power of a testimonial.
Testimonials increase your site’s and your service’s worth and credibility. If you have them, make sure you showcase them front-and-center, preferably on your homepage or next to one of your paid (or even free) offers.
If you don’t have testimonials yet, make sure to reach out to those who have worked with you before, so you can add them to your site in the near future.
17. Analyze your site’s traffic with Google Analytics
Create an account in Google Analytics so that you can better understand and serve your audience.
You can see when your users visit, what traffic channel they come from, where in the world they are located, how your active users are trending over time, how well you retain your users, what devices your users use to access your site, what pages your users visit, and much, much more.
This way you can tweak your content and SEO to combine what your users are looking for, and what you offer them.
And that’s it! CONGRATULATIONS! You did it! You created your own website, and can now showcase it to the world!
Once your website’s live, I’d love to see it! Send a screenshot of it to marina@yestotech.com or tweet it @MarinaLotaif. If you ever have any questions or need advice on website creation, feel free to reach out or leave a comment below!
To help you even further, I created the Complete Website Creation Guide that you can print out and leave on your desk for when you’re creating your own website. It’s a step-by-step, list version of this video, so that you can keep on track and remember everything you need to get your site online. Just fill out the form below in the description box below to download it right now (it’s FREE)!
If you enjoyed this video on how to create your own website, subscribe and hit the bell for new videos every week on how to navigate the tech side of online business with ease. Remember to download the free guide, check out these two videos for even more website creation tips and tricks, and I'll see you in the next one.
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HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN WEBSITE FOR FREE (The Ultimate Guide). Looking for the ultimate guide on how to create your own website for free? If you're getting started with your online business, and want to find out how to create a free website and how to build a business website for free, this Wix tutorial is for you. I'll walk you through how to launch a website for free the quick & easy way so that you can learn how to create a website for your small business. Get excited to discover how to build your very first website even if you're not a web designer!
SUBSCRIBE FOR NEW VIDEOS EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY: http://bit.ly/youtubeyestotech
~ RESOURCES MENTIONED ~
○ FREE Complete Website Creation Guide: https://www.yestotech.com/complete-website-creation-guide
○ Try Wix For FREE: http://bit.ly/wixforfree
○ Best Website Builder (Wix Review): https://youtu.be/hpKU938zTKg
○ Free Logo Maker: https://youtu.be/APBqujB7rrE
○ Wix SEO: https://youtu.be/QF1Qdd2X4mQ
○ Create Your Own Website Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNL5gEeIhRc&list=PLbLPqE_rHXqsSO58zV2lTGCH4DnzjPp2r
○ Read The Post: https://www.yestotech.com/post/how-to-create-your-own-website-for-free-the-ultimate-guide
CLICK TO TWEET: https://ctt.ac/cQIpr
~ TIMESTAMPS ~
00:00 How To Create Your Own Website For Free - Intro
00:35 1. Define your site’s purpose
01:27 2. Get inspiration
02:10 3. Create a site map
02:57 4. Choose your website creation platform
03:57 5. Choose your Wix plan
04:35 6. Fill out the preferences of your Wix site and choose a template
06:13 7. Purchase and connect your domain
07:18 8. Create a ‘coming soon’ page
08:05 9. Create each of your site’s pages
08:46 10. Personalize your pages
09:17 11. Add widgets for further needs
10:03 12. Develop your brand and write copy for each of the pages
10:53 13. Optimize your site for SEO
11:43 14. Connect your site with an e-mail marketing platform (like ConvertKit)
12:49 15. Promote your new site
13:31 16. Ask for and use testimonials
14:15 17. Analyze your site’s traffic with Google Analytics
14:57 How To Create Your Own Website For Free - Conclusion
~ RECENT VIDEOS ~
○ Tools To Start Your Online Business: https://youtu.be/hUoA8SPQZpk
○ How To Start An Online Business: https://youtu.be/VCFlJby6UEs
○ Facebook Shop Setup: https://youtu.be/5EoHA1XTZn4
○ How To Find Your Target Audience: https://youtu.be/DO_Q_gvoH5k
○ Business Structures Explained: https://youtu.be/Om7i1gGFmV8
~ TOOLS & SERVICES I USE ~
○ Graphic design tool (Canva Pro): https://canva.pxf.io/jA4Q5
○ DIY website builder (Wix): http://bit.ly/wixforfree
○ Landing page builder (Leadpages): https://try.leadpages.com/yestotech
○ Email provider (ConvertKit): https://convertkit.com/?lmref=7SUoRg
○ Surveys & experience management (SurveySparrow): https://surveysparrow.grsm.io/yestotech
○ Quiz, poll & giveaway maker (Interact): https://www.tryinteract.com/#oid=59709_4020
○ Web hosting (Hostinger): https://www.hostinger.com/yestotech
○ Paid products platform (Teachable): https://teachable.sjv.io/c/1134751/933427/12646
○ Pinterest pin scheduler (Tailwind): https://www.tailwindapp.com/i/yestotech
○ Visual content creator (Visme): https://partner.visme.co/?ref=MarinaLotaif
○ Social media management (Viraltag): https://viraltag.grsm.io/MarinaLotaif914
~ SHOP MY COURSES ~
○ Canva Crash Course: https://bit.ly/yttcanvacrashcourse
○ Fill In The Blanks Website: https://bit.ly/fillintheblankswebsite
○ Jumpstart Your Sales: https://bit.ly/yttjumpstartyoursales
○ Brilliant Branding: https://bit.ly/brilliantbrandingcourse
○ Wonder Website: https://bit.ly/wonderwebsitecourse
○ Traffic Takeoff: https://bit.ly/traffictakeoffcourse
○ Webinar Sales Funnel Template: https://bit.ly/webinarsalesfunneltemplate
○ Online Business Templates Vault: https://bit.ly/onlinebiztemplates
○ ConvertKit Tech Training Tutorials: https://bit.ly/convertkittechtraining
○ Power Productivity: https://bit.ly/powerproductivitycourse
SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE VIDEOS: http://bit.ly/youtubeyestotech
MY FAVORITE RESOURCES: https://www.yestotech.com/resources
~ COME SAY HI! ~
○ Email: marina@yestotech.com
○ Website: https://www.yestotech.com
○ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yestotech
○ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/yestotech
○ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yestotech
○ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarinaLotaif
I'm Marina, the brain behind Yes To Tech. Think of me as your fairy godmother of tech, so that you can grow your online business fast without stress or overwhelm. It's my mission to help you navigate the tech side of online business with ease - even if you're not tech savvy! New videos go live every Tuesday and Thursday :)
DISCLAIMER: This video and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. This helps support the channel and allows me to continue to make videos like this. I only recommend products that I use and love. Thank you for your support!
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