No matter what kind of business idea or business plan you have, one thing is certain. You need a website to serve as your digital front door and help people learn more about what you offer.
For many small business owners, building a website may seem daunting. That is not surprising when you consider what’s involved in the process. Building a website is not a small project from the tech side to finding the right photos and writing website copy.
However, building and customizing a website doesn’t have to be complicated. With tools like the Bluehost Website Builder, anyone can create a website without any coding knowledge.
So, if you’re looking for the easiest way to create a website, you’ve come to the right place. Read on as we show you the best option for small business owners and how easy it is to build a website using website builders.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Determining the Need for a Website in 2021 and Beyond
The Best Way To Start a Website as a Small Business Owner
It’s Easy To Build a Website With Bluehost’s New Website Builder
Final Thoughts: How Easy Is It To Build a Website? + More Questions Answered
Determining the Need for a Website in 2021 and Beyond
With all the available social media platforms, you may be wondering if you still need a professional website in 2021 and beyond. The short answer is — yes, you do.
Unlike social media profiles where your posts might or might not get seen due to an algorithm, your website is always available to your visitors.
As such, your website can work behind the scenes 24/7 to do the selling for you. It’s the one place where your audience can learn more about you and what you have to offer.
That gives you more time to focus on marketing your business, developing new offers, and serving your clients in a 1:1 or 1:many capacity.
The Value of Building Your Website
When it comes to having a website made easy, you have a few options:
- You can hire someone to do it for you
- You can use premade free themes or premium themes
- Or you can build it yourself
The first option of hiring a designer or a developer to build a website for you can be costly. Not to mention, anytime you need to make a change or update your website, you’ll need to hire a designer or a developer again to make those changes.
Using a pre-made WordPress theme is less expensive (especially since WordPress is free and open-source), but searching for a suitable theme can be time-consuming. In addition, it will be pretty hard to find a theme that has all the features and functionality you want.
And no matter what, you’ll still need to find a web hosting provider and set everything up yourself, including an e-commerce store should you choose to add one.
As such, the third option, which is to partake in easy website creation on your own, is often the best choice.
Building your own website empowers you not only to make website changes whenever you need them confidently, but it’s also more cost-effective.
But how easy is it to build a website and how long does it take to build a website?
Let’s explore.
The Best Way To Start a Website as a Small Business Owner
Now that we’ve established that the best option to build a website is to do it yourself, let’s talk about the easiest way to create a website as a small business owner.
The easiest way to build a website on your own is to use a website builder platform like Bluehost Website Builder.
As mentioned above, that is the most cost-effective option. It also gives you complete control over your website’s design, features, and functionality, all while existing on a WordPress hosting service dedicated to that content management system (CMS).
How Long Does It Take To Build a Website?
A few months is about how long it takes to build a website. It can take several months to have your website ready for launch, even if you work with a web designer or developer. That is due to everything involved in building a website from scratch — from the initial wireframing and design down to HTML code and adding content.
But the most important parts are already in place with easy website builder software like Bluehost’s Website Builder.
The code that will power the website is there, so all you have to do is focus on customizing it the way you want. That cuts down how long it takes to build a website in the development phase considerably, often to a matter of days.
How Website Builders Work
Most website builders offer a user-friendly experience for building a website with no special coding or technical know-how required.
Think Wix and Squarespace. They often use a drag and drop or a point and click interface with different page elements and blocks that you add to webpages.
These elements include text blocks, images, video, buttons, contact forms, tabs, sliders, Google Analytics trackers, navigation menus, custom JavaScript, and sidebar widgets.
They can also include a pre-built homepage and inner page sections such as a header or a footer area, testimonials, service list, and similar. They also often have built-in security and SSL.
In addition, website builders offer plenty of styling options. You can easily change colors, fonts, spacing between elements, upload background images, and add animations.
It’s Easy To Build a Website With Bluehost’s New Website Builder
How easy is it to build a website? Easier than you may think.
Bluehost’s Website Builder empowers you to build a website for your small business quickly. One of the most significant benefits of using our builder is that you don’t need any technical or coding knowledge to use it.
Instead, you can use the intuitive drag-and-drop interface to add various blocks and elements onto a page.
Another benefit of our builder is that you’ll be building WordPress sites but with a more simplified building user experience.
That gives you all the advantages of having a WordPress website. These advantages include:
- Access to thousands of free WordPress plugins.
- The ability to add different functionality to your website.
- SEO-friendly (search engine optimization-friendly) platform that can grow with you as your business grows and help your website gain visibility in search engines (thus boosting your online presence).
In other words, you’ll have all the advantages of having a WordPress website but without having to learn how to code or hire a web developer.
Let’s go over the steps to get started with our website builder.
Step 1: Choose a Plan
To get started with the Bluehost Website Builder, choose the plan that fits your needs and budget. As you can see, there are two plans to choose from. The Basic plan is perfect for personal websites and blogging.
The Pro plan is perfect for small business websites. It gives you access to extra features such as domain privacy, the ability to accept payments with WooCommerce and additional design templates.
Once you’ve chosen your plan, you’ll have the option to add an existing custom domain name from a domain registrar.
Step 2: Install WordPress
Bluehost will then automatically install WordPress via one click for you, along with the Bluehost Website Builder plugin.
Step 3: Build Your Website
After the installation process is complete, you can log into your Bluehost Portal. You are now ready to start with website customization and add content using the drag and drop interface.
To do that, click the Edit site button in the Builder, and it’ll take you to a new screen. As you can see from the screenshot below, you can easily see which pages are present on your website and create new pages.
You can also add sections containing contact pages, maps, calls to action, and other elements. To add an element to a page, all you have to do is click it. The builder will do the rest. From there, you can move it up or down, duplicate it or delete it.
You can also control how the elements appear in that section and customize the background.
You can switch between desktop and a view suitable for mobile devices at any point to see how your website looks on different devices.
Step 4: Customize Appearance
The Appearance tab in the Builder lets you easily modify colors, fonts, CSS and add animations to your website.
It’s also worth noting that you can use the builder to add a WordPress blog to your website and access your WordPress dashboard. Moreover, you can access your CreativeMail dashboard to create email marketing campaigns.
When you finish customizing your website, you can publish your website by clicking the Publish button in the top right corner.
Final Thoughts: How Easy Is It To Build a Website? + More Questions Answered
A small business website is the new front door to your business. While the idea of building a website might seem daunting, in reality, it doesn’t have to be.
With building tools like Bluehost’s Website Builder, you can quickly build your site for your small business and have it ready to launch in a matter of days, significantly reducing how long it takes to build a website.
To embrace how easy it is to build a website with the Bluehost Website Builder, check out our pricing page and pick the plan that’s right for you. Then create your account, add your free domain name, and start using our intuitive drag and drop builder to build your dream website.
