Cutting costs with an all-in-one website builder
How can you build an online business from scratch without spending loads? In the past you may have needed a whole team of people to help you design and code your site, but now there are easier and cheaper solutions that can help you build your site from scratch even if you don’t know any code. These days, it’s so easy to start an online business even with a small budget. With an all-in-one website builder not only do you get to create your new site by yourself, with no outside help needed, but you can create it exactly as you’ve imagined it. Getting started with the all-in-one website builder When you get the website builder from 123-reg it comes with everything you need to get your site online. You can register a free domain name for your site and also get plenty of web space to host your personal or business site online. Our packages are designed to ensure you have enough space for your site, whether you’re building an online portfolio or an e-shop. Now that you have your domain and hosting in order, you can start building your site. Customising your website With a website builder you get to design your site the way you want with no extra help and for a lot less. Think about it. Hiring web designers and web programmers is expensive, not to mention time-consuming. You need to review examples of templates, choose one and then if there’s something you want to change, it may take days or even weeks until they’re completed. If you’re a perfectionist and have already an image in mind of how you want your site to look like then why not create it yourself? Choosing a template Our website builder allows you customise your site easily. Choose a template from our wide collection of pre-made templates and then customise it as you see fit so your site is unique and doesn’t resemble any other site on the Internet. Drag’n’drop elements You can change anything from background images to header, footer, colour schemes and text fonts. From the menu on the left, you can choose to add everything from text and images, site search, navigation menus, slideshows, videos and more. Simply drag and drop them onto your template and then move them around to where you think they would fit best. The great thing about it is that you don’t need any technical knowledge to build and design your site from scratch. You can even add a carousel gallery at the top of your homepage to showcase your products and special offers. To do that, simply go to Widgets on the right menu and drag and drop the Carousel onto your page anywhere you want. Using a carousel can help make your site look more dynamic and interactive. Check out this simple example of how you can implement the carousel into your new site. You can add as many as 5 pages with our Personal package and it’s more than enough if you need to create an online portfolio or a presentation site. However, if you want to build an ecommerce site, the Business package allows you to add an unlimited number of pages so that you can create various pages to present your products. You will also be able to add ‘Google Add to Cart’ or ‘PayPal Buy Now’ buttons on each page to allow your visitors to buy products directly from your site. Take a look at our customers’ sites to see how they’ve used our website builder to create their site from scratch. Another great thing about using our all-in-one website builder is that you can add widgets to your site to enrich your visitors’ experience on your site. You can easily integrate Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or Google Maps to let your customers know where they can find you online and offline. Getting visitors to your new site Optimising your site is very important as it will help Google and other search engines show your site in search results and people will find your site faster. Our website builder allows you to optimise your site for search engines easily. Click on the Manage tab (1) to set the title and description (2) for your site that will appear in search results. Click Save settings (3) when you are finished. You can do this for every page of your site. URLs are also a very important part of the optimisation process. With our website builder you can control how your URLs look. When you create a new page you’ll be given the options to give a title and page URL for your webpage so include the appropriate ones to help you with your SEO. Find out more about the value of URLs. If you go to Manage and click on My Site you will see that you can also add the Google Analytics code for your site so you can track your site’s performance directly from your Website Builder account in 123-reg. This makes it so much easier for you as you won’t have to access the source code and add the Google Analytics code to every page on your site. As you can see, the all-in-one website builder from 123-reg provides you with everything you need to build your website from scratch easily and without spending loads. So, why not give it a try? Sign up now and try it out free for 14 days.
How designing a website has changed
Back in the day, when the internet was in its infancy getting a website up and running needed a team of experts, or a very multi-talented individual with six different hats. Many businesses still follow that model when looking for their first website now, but it needn’t be the case. Creating a website is easy if you choose to use 123-reg Website Builder. The stages however are still the same: The Creative The concept of a great site can be a momentary flash of inspiration or weeks of perspiration. What will the first impressions be, how will the pages link, what elements will you include? You could pay an expert conceptual creative or you could choose to use 123-reg Website Builder and benefit from the 100s of website templates to choose from. The Designer A concept is fine, but moving that from head, to paper to online is one of the most complicated parts of the process. A designer can hold your hand, make your idea become a reality and move inspiration towards conception but so can 123-reg Website Builder. With a template for almost every style of business, you are not restricted to those set designs either. Each of our templates is customisable, so you can change colours, change elements, even change the number of pages. The Compiler Making sense of images, written content, Twitter feeds, etc isn’t easy and you could employ an expert but far better to use 123-reg Website Builder to enable you to drag, drop and organise the way your site looks. Moving elements about is easy. Placing them where you want to place them is easy. Making them work on your website is easy. Using 123-reg Website Builder is easy. The Coder Many people will probably consider they might be able to cover the first three skills themselves, but when it comes to coding, well that’s a completely different language! Even if you know HTML and CSS, getting it perfect every time isn’t easy with hand-coding. With 123-reg Website Builder however it can be as with a few clicks and a few mouse moves, the code is created automatically and all to W3 standard. Plus if you really want to try your hand at coding, you still can as everything is customisable (Business package only). The Publisher Even if you are a coding wizard or an arty architect, getting the site up online isn’t always so easy, unless you are using 123-reg Website Builder. No need for separate hosting, email or even FTP accounts. All your publishing tools are there built in to your 123-reg Website Builder browser-based control panel. Just a few clicks and a confirm and your new site can be on message and online. The Statistician The modern internet is all about tracking and comparing. How many visitors, how long, where, when, where… There are countless tools out there to help but Google Analytics is the one they all look up to and with 123-reg Website Builder it is easy to integrate the same so as soon as you publish you can also be measuring. Whatever your level of creativity or technical ability Website Builder can help you save time and money by automating the laborious bits that can so often go wrong. The site creation tool was originally designed by web designers to make their own lives easier and has since been tweaked so that everybody can enjoy the benefits. What’s more you can trial Website Builder for 14 days to see if it can help you get your website online too.