This article will help you:

  • Comprehend what seemed incomprehensible
  • Realize you will not have to study Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create pictures
  • Find out how to launch a website on your own without even finding out what the code looks like

This article will also be handy if you are a web designer and work with graphic editors.
Remember all those programmers and coders who messed up your layouts? Now you can school them!

Why Do I Still Have No Website?

So, you need a website about yourself, your hobby, or your business. But there always seems to be some obstacle in your way. What might stop you?
Some have no idea that they can make a website on their own.

Nelly, Traveller, Family Travel Club Founder
“I need a website so that everyone can understand what kind of tours we organize and, mainly, to be given credit. I am stopped by a lack of money and understanding of what, or better said, who to start with and where to find a team that won’t let me down. Doing it by myself? Well, I have never even thought it possible.”

Anyone can make a basic landing page or an online shop. But will such a website look right?

Anna, Fashion Designer
“I think it is not appropriate to have a website on a free hosting. What’s the difference? I don’t know. The website address, for example.”

There are many misconceptions about the websites created with online builders. Who said that such a site will inevitably have a certain domain? You can put out any website on any domain. Generally, a website that you create on your own using special online builders will not be worse than the one made by web-developers. Quite often, it will even look a lot better.

Many want to make a website but are just afraid of what seems complicated.

Dianne, Textile Specialist, Kimono Showroom founder
“I bought a domain and selected a WordPress template. Then, I googled how to put it all together and freaked out. It’s been three months since then and I haven’t advanced any further.”

Some tutorial articles look more perplexing than the services they teach to use. Maybe, you should just watch less tutorials and go straight to the practical part. The easiest way to understand how it works is to click on the different buttons and see what happens.

I Decided to Make a Website on My Own. What’s in Store For Me?

Lots of interesting and exciting stuff! Apart from learning to use the most up-to-date services, you will rediscover your own brand – because it will be up to you to work on presenting it. Most likely, this process will help you generate some new and cool ideas for your business.

Cheap. Making an internet page does not involve installing any programs or big spending. All the design services and website builders have free versions available online, and that will be enough for your basic needs. There are also extended versions with extended possibilities available at an additional cost. Please note, we are talking about $5-25 for an account. It is only 87 times cheaper than what the unknown web-designer John Smith would charge you.

Quick. You can create your website real quick! If you organize your working process efficiently, the whole thing might be done in one breath and one day. But take your time because it is the quality that matters the most! If you’re looking to explore better ways to create a website, you can try AI WordPress website builder that’s available in the market.

You can split the process into several days/weeks/stages:

  1. Look into the existing websites. Study the pages of your competitors and just find the ones that look good to you.
  2. Examine all the services that will be mentioned further in the article. Try each of them out, and click the buttons to see what possibilities they offer.
  3. Determine the aims of your website and prepare the content. Understand what really has to be presented and leave out all the rest.
  4. Create the website using the online builder and web design tools – use the template or place all the elements manually.
  5. Choose the illustrations and edit them using the simple online design services, in case your builder doesn’t offer too many opportunities in terms of graphics.
  6. Buy a domain and launch the website.

Of course, you can always find your own way of doing things. It’s just that using ours is easier. Or cheaper. Or any other convincing adjective.

Below we will list the key services that help create a website.

First and Foremost, Website Builder

Choosing the best website builder that will put the whole thing together is the hardest part. There are hundreds of them and only dozens are good.

All of the builders are based on similar principles – all you need to do is place your elements into the blocks. The services offer free and premium versions; the latter gives more opportunities in terms of animation, domain name, access to statistics and analytics, teamwork, etc. You could buy a premium version at $100-200 per year, depending on the service, and create a proper website.

Mary, Stylist
“I need a trendy looking page with fancy things like animation. There will be loads of content about my approach to making clothes, my working process, and fabrics, and I will also display a few collections there. This site will have to be updated – not too often but a few times a year, whenever the new collection is launched.”

The builders that help design a website with the different types of context blocks and illustrations are Wix and ReadyMag. Not only do they offer templates, but they also give an option to create your own. So, if you have some taste and understanding of the basic design principles, you can go outside the line and make the page look exactly the way you want.
Both of the mentioned platforms have the option of manually customizing the mobile version, which is a massive advantage, as the rest automatically make the adaptive version.

The ReadyMag interface looks way more simple and minimalistic than that of Wix. Besides, ReadyMag gives more ways to play with animation. Here, you can customize the appearance and movement of any object. Here’s an example of the website created in ReadyMag.

The websites created in Wix will be as stylish but will be way behind in terms of animation. However, this platform has other advantages, like the graphic editor and image and clipart library. There are many additional applications for SEO, social media, marketing, and online shop instruments, forms, forum, etc.

If choose Wix, watch this tutorial.
If you prefer ReadyMag, see this one.

Nathan, Lawyer
“I would prefer not to bother too much with the design. It’s good to have a template to lay it all out. I just need to publish a few lengthy laws and regulations and upload a few document scans and photos.”

Tilda is a perfect platform to create a website that looks unique yet is very easy in production. It comes with half a thousand pre-designed elegant blocks, or sections such as a menu, gallery, text, online form, etc. Here are examples of websites made on Tilda.

Actually, Tilda has all sorts of instruments – built-in web design editor Zero Block, a large number of templates, and facilities to edit the content blocks, but best of all, it serves for making efficient landing pages and business sites. It comes with a huge variety of integrated services to manage leads, connect payments and send newsletter campaigns.”

image

Nelly, Traveller, Family Travel Club Founder
“We need a community type of website to be able to quickly and easily update the routes and discuss them with the other members.”

If you need to constantly update the news on your website (for example, you are a traveler or write about the global financial markets), you might need a builder specifically designed to create blogs. Many consider WordPress to be the best among these.

It has everything to make your work with content convenient – text editor, graphic editor to adjust and cut the images, a powerful blog platform that supports tags, headings, comments, RSS, and search tools.

WordPress creates not only blogs, but any other type of website. There are many plugins available to make a gallery, forum, and even an online shop.

It takes a little more time to understand how to work with this platform. Not that it’s complicated, it just offers a lot of everything.

John, Tattoo Artist
“I have a Facebook community, which is quite popular and performs all the functions of a website. However, it would be great to have a website for the new customers as well.”

There is a uKit constructor offering, and alongside all the basic functions is a special opportunity to create a website straight out of a Facebook page . You just need to give it access to your account and then choose the template to have the content copied from your business page to your website.
Here is a detailed review and tutorial for working with the uKit.

There are many other constructors, so if the top five mentioned above don’t work for you, try to watch this review of another 15 platforms.

What To Do With The Domain

Getting a domain name is easy and can be done anywhere. The question is what to do next.
Some website builders will offer you to buy a domain before you start, some will just ask if you have one, and others won’t ask anything and will leave it up to you. The important part is to make sure that you choose suitable domain extensions, that are available to use.

Grace, Photographer
“I bought a domain at reg.ru and made a website in ReadyMag.
The ReadyMag tutorial shows how to adjust the settings for a Whois.com domain. However, it all looks completely different at reg.ru and I just can’t understand…”

To avoid extra hassle with the settings, try to choose the domain server your builder suggests. If it doesn’t suggest anything, try going to the settings and see how this particular builder works with domain names. ReadyMag, for instance, offers an instruction on domain settings – it’s quite hard to get it wrong if you register your site at Whois.com.

Designing

There are a few simple online services that will help you create all the necessary illustrations – logo, collages, patterns, infographics – and edit the ones you have. You can also buy and download the pictures and icons for your website.

Photo and Video Selection Made Simple

There are millions of stocks with pictures and videos; the most popular are depositphotos, istockphotos, shutterstock, AdobeStock, and GettyImages. Their prices per photo only differ slightly and some pictures can be found on several stocks at the same time.

There are also aggregators that search through all the stocks at the same time, which is really convenient. Just open one of them, for example, shopdiz, enter the keywords and choose the stocks (or better yet, mark all of them), select a picture, and make a purchase.

All the aggregators and stocks offer package options, or even unlimited packages, so that you could buy many photos at a time at a lower price. You can pay as little as $0.50 per photo if you use Shopdiz.

Icons

People don’t like to read a lot of text (you are definitely the exception because you are still reading this article), but they are happy to look at the images. To illustrate your message and make it easy to understand, turn it into a picture using icons.
Want to make a block with the title “Flying With Baby”? Use icons! The reader will understand what it deals with at first glance.

The icons must be performed in the same style so that your website looks tidy. Icons8 have over 54,600 compatible icons. You can customize the color, add text or graphical layer, change the form, etc.

Creating a Logo

All the online logo generators (like Logogarden, gtaphicsprings, Onlinelogomaker, Thefreelogomakers, and many others) will offer you the same options as the icon creators – choosing and editing the picture and adding some text. It will only take a minute to create such a basic logo, but it won’t be unique.

Consider some alternative ways because after all, the logo will represent your business.
You might experiment by doing something with your own hands. For example, if you make furniture, why not take a piece of wood, carve it, take a photo, edit it and add your brand name?

You might do without a logo at all, for example, by placing the headline photo on the first screen of your website and adding some text next to it. This is relevant if you are not exactly a brand and don’t even use a particular name. “Nelly’s Family Travels Club” or “60-s Japanese Kimonos Showroom” will go well without a logo, but if you are YOUNG TRAVEL, also a family travels club, it is hard to imagine your page with no logo on it.
Ask a professional to make you a logo. If you need a stylish and minimalistic one, have a look at the icons8.com offer – they only charge $50 for a unique icon.

Instead of Photoshop

If the website builder of your choice does not have enough graphic editing facilities, try the online service BeFunky. It has everything from basic sizing, cropping, and rotating to color editing and a huge variety of effects and collage templates.

It has a very simple interface – a large menu listing all the possible actions and effects you could apply. You might just click the buttons one by one to try them all and choose what suits you best.

Add filters, textures, graphical objects, frames or text.

This editor makes collages and has templates for menu, ads, business cards, and so on.
Most of the functions are free and some are available at an extra price. You can test each of them before purchasing, however the image will have a watermark until you make the payment.

Infographics

Statistics, research, comparisons, facts, packages – all of it can be vividly presented using infographics. This article gives you an overview of the top ten online services to create it.

Patterns

If you want to make a creative thematic background, try one of the 20 listed online pattern generators.

GIFs

Animated graphics are fun. They can be made here, for example.

Where to Find Help

If you need assistance in making illustrations and logos, doing a photoshoot, editing text, translating, or correcting – use freelancers.
There are many services to find them, like Freelancer, UpWork and others.

As you can see, the automatized services are squeezing out the profession of web-designers. Now, anybody can make their own website!

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