Up next in 10
How To Make A Website For Free For Small Business (Full Guide)
590 views
May 22, 2024
### How To Make A Website For Free For Small Business (Full Guide) In this comprehensive video tutorial, you'll learn how to create a professional website for your small business without spending any money. The tutorial covers everything you need to know, from choosing the right platform to launching your website. You'll discover how to use free website builders like WordPress.com, Wix, or Weebly to create a stunning and functional website. The tutorial includes step-by-step instructions on selecting a domain name, designing your website, adding content such as text, images, and videos, and customizing the design to fit your brand. Additionally, the tutorial covers essential aspects of website creation such as optimizing your site for search engines (SEO), ensuring it's mobile-friendly, and integrating contact forms or other essential features. Whether you're starting a new business or looking to expand your online presence, this guide will help you create a professional website for free.
View Video Transcript
0:00
How to make a website for free for a small business full guide
0:03
I bring you back with yet another video and in this video we're going to be discussing on how you can make your very own website for like a small-scale business and like you don't
0:13
want to make that big, huge website. We're going to be talking about all of that in great detail, so please do make sure to watch
0:20
this video till the end. So without further ado, let's get straight into it. Now, the product that we're going to be using to make our website is called Big Cartel
0:29
Okay? Now, Big Cartel is an easy online store for artists and makers
0:34
Now, before getting into this, I know it says artists and makers, but you don't need any experience in art, design, coding, drag and drop editor, building, anything
0:46
You can go with, like, a blank mine into this website, and you will come out with an amazing outcome
0:53
Okay? So let's just get straight into it. Okay. Now, we're going to be discussing all the aspects of this in great detail
1:00
So here we are. Easy online stores for artists and makers. We make it simple to build a unique online store, sell your work, and run a creative business
1:11
Now, obviously, we can see, you know, all these designs in the background
1:14
Come on, like, it looks great. It looks amazing. Pretty cool designs, pretty cool coloring
1:19
Now, obviously, these designs were used, like they used big cartel for these designs
1:25
So, like, you can already tell how cool it looks. Now, here it says, keep your money
1:32
We don't take a cut out of your sales or charge a bunch of fees
1:36
Just pick one of our affordable monthly plans to fit your needs and budgets
1:41
Now, we're going to be talking about the pricing and plan in like a moment. But as you can see, this is like a great slogan to have, keep your money
1:50
I just love that. Now, before getting into that, like the pricing and everything, we're going to talk about
1:55
the rest of the thing. So made for makers. Since 2005, over a million creators have sold their t-shirts, art, clothing, merch, prints, jewelry
2:06
and other weird and wonderful stuff with big cartel. As you can see, people have sold art and stuff like that
2:13
Now, your custom shop, customize one of their free themes to set the look and feel of your shop
2:20
Or dive into the code to create one-of-a-kind design. Basically, you can either make the website using one of their themes
2:30
or you can make it out of scratch through coding. Now, obviously, you don't need to have to do that
2:35
Let's say you don't have any quote experience, then there is no need to do this. You can just do the free theme one
2:40
which is a pretty great way to start. And let me tell you, I've used all their themes
2:44
most of their themes, and their themes are amazing. They look great
2:49
They have a great color scheme. They have great designs, great widgets, great layouts
2:53
and yeah, you're going to be pleased using them. Now, here it says the tools you need
2:58
Manage your store, fulfill orders, update products, check stats, and run promotions from any device at home or on the go
3:08
For artists by artists, Big Cartel is a tight-knit company built to stay small, independent
3:17
and do right by the team and artists for years to come
3:21
Even on Forbes, you can see Big Cartel is one of America's best small companies
3:27
So it was like Forbes Small Giants in 2018. So, yeah, it's a pretty good thing to have
3:33
Big Cartel is committed to being an anti-racist company and transparent about their efforts
3:38
Here's how they're showing, you know, their, you know, support for everything
3:43
Now, that we've discussed, you know, a brief overview. Let's go and head into examples
3:48
So as an example, an army of artists. whether they're starting a passionate site project
3:54
or making a full-time living selling unique goods online over a million artists
4:00
and makers have basically used big cartel to easily set up shop
4:06
and get back to doing what they love. Here are a few of their favorite designers and artists like Jose Arrota
4:14
From a studio in Spain, Jose Arrida creates colorful illustrations and precise paper cuts
4:19
using simple shapes. Like, how cool is that? He just used shapes. And then you have Feebles, you have colored code printing, you have Lucy Courage, Jim Golden Studio. You have all these people who make great and amazing designs. So it's pretty cool stuff that you can mess around with later. You have Nika Anna Miller, who is an art director with a background in printmaking living in Brooklyn. She brings her woodcut sculpture prints to life using woodblock printing, stop motion videos, and art installations
4:51
Now, obviously, all of this is pretty cool stuff as well. As you can see, you can, like, go to these people's profiles to see what, like, all the designs they make and what they use to sell on, you know, your basic big cartel
5:04
Now, once we've, you know, discussed all of that, now let's go ahead and discuss the prices
5:09
Now, as I said, totally free. On the free product, on the free one, you can, like, sell five products, okay
5:16
And, like, per month, per month you can sell five products. It has goal features like one image per product, free customizable themes, send online and in person, real-time stats, use a custom domain, offer discounts and run promos, shipment tracking, product option groups, sales tax, autopilot
5:36
You have all those features and obviously you can use the free one. But if, like let's say you want to use the platinum features, then it's $9.99 a month, 50 products per month
5:46
And you have five images per product. free customizable themes, okay, as the first one
5:52
Then you can sell online and in person with real-time stats. You can use a custom domain, theme code editing, Google ytics, inventory tracking, offer
6:02
discounts, and run promos, bulk editing, shipment tracking, product option groups, and sales tax autopilot
6:10
And then finally, there's the diamond features where you can get 500 products per month
6:15
It's $19.99 a month, okay? Now, in 1999 a month, you can get five images per product like this one, free customizable
6:22
like this one, sell online and in person, real-time stats, use a custom domain, theme code editing
6:28
Google ytics, inventory tracking, offer discount and run promos, like everything that you're
6:32
going to get in platinum, but the difference is that in the diamond, you're going to get 500 products
6:37
per month which is like crazy So now that we discussed all that let go ahead and get into the main magic So that is to sign up with you know everything
6:49
So I'm going to go and click on sign up. Now once you click on sign up, we're obviously going to sign up with a free page right now
6:55
And here we are. Start your free store with up to five products
6:59
and limited features upgrade any time. Now, what I'm going to be doing right now
7:04
is I'm going to be using a tent mail for my work. But if you're doing this for the long term, please use a proper email
7:11
Okay, don't use a template like me. I'm only doing this for the work purposes
7:15
So I'm going to copy this email. Okay. Once I've copied this email, I'm going to come here
7:20
I'm going to paste it. Now, I keep a shop name. Just call it that
7:24
Not the most aesthetic name, but it's a name. So once you've done that, they're going to set a URL for you
7:30
and then you're finally going to sign up. Now, once you sign up here, it says, let's verify your email address
7:34
Before you get started, verify your address. So you're going to go to Temp Mail
7:39
Here you can see, we have gotten our email, so we're going to go here
7:43
We're going to click on Verify our email address. Now once, our email address has been verified, here we are
7:49
So yes, your email address has been verified. Getting started, Checklist. So verify your location at currency, add a product, explore shipping profiles
7:59
connect a payment processor, design your shop, and launch your shop. So we're going to be doing all this, and then I'm going to be explaining everything that goes
8:07
on back or behind the scenes. So first of all, we're going to go and verify our location and currency
8:13
Here we are. So, your account. Your account page is where you'll find important features and settings for your shop
8:20
This is like mission control of your shop. It's pretty cool stuff
8:25
And then, location. Big Cartel uses your location and currency for tax settings and shipping profiles
8:31
If you're based in the US or Puerto Rico, you're selling in USD
8:35
we require your address for automatic tax calculations. Your address is never shown in your shop, so not to worry
8:44
Now, once we've discussed all that, we're going to come here, and obviously there's our store name
8:49
You can add a store description if you want to. Now, and don't worry, you can change your store name later if you want to
8:55
It's totally upon you. But you can add a profile image. You can edit your profile
9:00
Now, here you have your shop. In your shop, you basically, you know, have
9:05
your URL. You can add a custom domain if you want to. You can also upgrade to add your domain
9:11
to Google ytics. Now here is your theme, but we're going to be discussing this in a second
9:17
Here is your location and currency. Okay. This is the get paid option where you can, you know
9:22
set your payments and everything. So again, if you already go in dashboard, you have verified
9:26
your location and currency. Now it says add a product. Coming from another platform, you can also
9:32
import your product listings in a few click. So let's say you're coming from, you know
9:36
something like Wix or Shopify and like you want to create a small business and you want to
9:40
like import your products. You're going to go on your products page. You can add new product listings or edit and remove existing product listings. Let's get started. You're going to click on
9:49
next. Once you click on next here, it says new products. Using the add button, you can create new
9:54
product listings in a snap. So then you have the import product section if you've used Shopify
10:01
Etsy or Squarespace in the past, you can quickly import your product listings here
10:06
And again, if you click on next, here it says you can also manage how your products are displayed
10:11
in your shop by changing their order up or categorizing them so your shoppers can easily find
10:16
what they are looking for. So, first of all, we're going to add our first product
10:22
You're going to click on how to product. Once you do that, you're going to click, like, write any product name
10:26
So let's say I'm going to add, uh, hmm, let's add a van go
10:31
painting okay we're gonna add the starry night the starry night if you don't know what the
10:37
story night is or like let's i'm just gonna give you a whole template so this is the starry night
10:43
it's a van goth painting and we're going to be adding this so the story night let's add a description
10:48
okay make sure to add a good description for your product if you don't have a good description
10:52
trust me it's not going to it's not going to be a good uh like outcome so i'm just going to go
10:58
And here we are. I'm just going to add this description, to be honest
11:03
Just add it. Make sure it's a good description that's going to catch the eye of the viewer
11:08
Now, in the category, to get started, click the Manage Categories button below to add your first category
11:13
You're going to go in Manage Categories. Okay. We're going to add that. And this could be, let's just add painting
11:21
Okay? We're going to add painting. I'm going to click on save. And we have added our first category as painting
11:26
You can keep the status active. obviously you're going to keep a price in dollars. I'm going to go like obviously the Starry Night original is priceless
11:33
but we're going to keep it $19 for now. So we can also keep it on sale or off sale if you want to
11:41
This is just to, you know, attract the viewer more that, okay, the product is on sale
11:45
so maybe you know it's at a less price right now. Now here you are on the option section
11:49
Now you can add individual options if you want to, like let's say if you want to give individual options
11:57
that depends on you, okay? I am going to keep this empty for now, to be honest
12:01
Doesn't really matter. This is the important section. Now, if it's like in the place of your selling
12:09
you can keep it, you know, just $19. But if it's like anywhere else
12:15
you can keep it to whatever you know, pay out you like. So you can increase it to $39
12:20
And let's say I'm going to just keep it to this. Wait, I'm just going to keep the money
12:27
and we're gonna keep this 41. There we go, and I'm gonna keep the option name
12:34
That's called, I'm just gonna name it randomly. Doesn't matter, okay? 19, and there we are
12:40
Now once you've added that, there's a UX tax category, okay, where you can edit it if you want to
12:45
I'm gonna keep it blank. I don't really want to, at least one option's price
12:50
must match the base price. Okay, so if you save it, and it doesn't
12:57
doesn't work, so make sure that, okay, yeah, I see what the problem is
13:01
Okay, there we are. I'm going to click on save, and there we go
13:05
We just added a new product for ourselves, so how cool is that
13:09
And you're probably wondering like where will we add that product. Don't worry, it's coming, it's coming, it's going to come to the end of the videos
13:15
Please keep on watching. Now once you added a product you going to explore shipping profiles Now you can quickly create flat shipping rates or customize profiles for your products So we going to go on X shipping profiles and here we are So here On your account page you can find many useful settings but for now let look at your shipping
13:35
Now, we're going to do okay, and here we are. With your shipping profiles, you can create shipping rates for anywhere in the world
13:40
and customize your shipping fees for specific products that may be extra big or heavy
13:46
We're going to click on Next, okay? And here we are. click edit your shipping to get started and if you need to get super detailed with their shipping fees
13:54
on a per product basis, you can check out that option here. So again, what we're going to do
14:00
is we're going to go on edit your shipping. Okay. Now, once we're over here, here's your shipping
14:06
profiles, create flexible zone-based shipping rates that can be assigned to any product or product
14:12
options. You can further customize your rates with profile overrides for any items that have special
14:18
shipping needs. Shipping profile beta is disabled. Any shipping settings using their older product
14:24
level shipping tool will be ignored while the shipping profiles beta is enabled. So you can't turn
14:29
this on, turn this off totally depends on you. I'm going to keep it off. So here are your default
14:33
shipping rates again. So how the shipping zones work, basically at checkout, your customers will only
14:40
see shipping rates available for their location. Make sure your shipping profiles cover all locations
14:45
and rates you want to offer. So, select a country or a zone, okay
14:51
So you could go with any country. I'm going to go with everywhere for now
14:56
Everywhere includes all countries, okay? Or you can even go with a zone if you want to
15:00
like I'm pretty sure they have different zones. You could see Asia, Africa
15:06
So let's say I'm going to go with Asia. And for Asia, I'm going to keep, you know, standard shipping rates
15:11
So standard with tracking is going to. going to be first item I'm going to keep it $9
15:18
And each additional item, I'm going to keep it for $2. Approximately three to five days
15:24
And once you've done that, you're going to click on done. So the next day, which is like one day, delivery, obviously you're going to keep this higher
15:31
We're going to keep it $19 if I want to. And each additional item, I'm going to keep that
15:37
And customer pick up, customer picks up, you can keep this slower because like the customer is coming to you
15:45
don't really need to go anywhere. So yeah, let's keep it like that
15:49
Add shipping method if you want to. I'm going to keep it blank and I'm going to click on save
15:53
So we just added a shipping profile for Asia. And then you can keep adding more for different regions and places on the face of the earth
16:02
Now, obviously, once we have discussed about all of this, what we're going to do now is we're
16:07
going to go ahead and go to product shipping profiles. Okay? So add product shipping profile
16:13
And here we are. So yes, your product profile was successfully created
16:18
Edit product shipping profile. Now, obviously, first of all, there's the name, okay
16:24
In the name you can keep anything, I'm just going to keep it this. There's the shipping rates
16:28
Now in the shipping rates, create a country or a zone. So I'm going to go here
16:34
Again, I'm going to go with everywhere or let's go with Europe, okay? So once we've entered Europe, again, keep standard tracking if you want to, keep the prices
16:44
you want to keep. I'm going to just keep random prices, to be honest. And once I've done that
16:50
I'm going to click on save. And once you click on save, there you go. Your shipping rate was created
16:55
and this is obviously your product shipping profile. Now I'm going to go ahead and head back
17:01
And once you head back, what we're going to do is we're going to see more things. Like, you know
17:07
you have your main essentials, like your other shipping profiles, if you do. And like, let's say, I'm
17:14
going to go on dashboard. And here we are. Connect a payment processor. So you also need to do this
17:20
now. So we're going to go and connect the payment. Now once you're over here, this is your get paid
17:25
option. So to add or edit your payment processor, simply navigate to your account page. And once you've
17:32
done that, in the get paid section, you can choose to connect Stripe or PayPal. You may need a few
17:37
things to get started. So let's review. Stripe allows you to accept debit and credit card payments
17:42
We also use Stripe for in-person checkout with our iOS and Android apps
17:48
And if you want to set up subscription payments in your shop, Stripe is necessary for that too
17:53
Then if you click on Next, PayPal allows your shoppers to be using their own PayPal accounts
17:59
or they can check out as a guest. If you have PayPal-enabled, customers can basically pay Venmo or PayPal credit too
18:09
And then obviously click edit your payment options to, get yourself started basically. Now what we're going to do to get ourselves started
18:18
we're going to come here and basically you can go ahead and set up payment options if you want to
18:23
but what we're going to do is I'm going to come here, set up payment options. Okay. Now once you've done
18:32
that, it's going to take you over here. Now either stripe, okay, which isn't available in our country
18:39
okay, you can connect your paypal. Connecting your PayPal business, account lets your customers pay using PayPal's options, which is like a great feature to have
18:48
by your side. Okay? So we're going to head over here. We're going to go and connect PayPal
18:53
Now obviously it's going to ask you for your PayPal email and stuff like that and you're just
18:56
going to add that. And yeah, that's how basic and simple it is to add a payment method for yourself
19:02
So pretty basic stuff. Now, finally, we come to the cream of the ice cream
19:08
So here we are. Design your shop. Your shop is all about you, customer
19:12
your layout, colors, fonts, and upload your logo. So let's go here. Now, once you're over here, you're probably noticing a pattern here
19:19
There's a ton of features and settings on your account page that can help you run your shop
19:24
Be sure to explore the other sections if you want to. Now, we're going to click on next
19:29
Here it says you can change up the look of your shop easily here in design
19:34
The tiny images here only represents the theme you have selected, not what your shop will look like
19:40
So not to worry, we're going to go on next. You can choose a theme and edit your colors, fonts
19:45
images, and logos, product layout, and more to really get the look of your shop dialed in
19:50
Let's go. So we're gonna go on design, okay? Now once you go on design, this is obviously
19:56
where the whole designing bit is gonna take place. This is how you're gonna, you know
20:00
design the website that we just set the settings for Now as you can see here our product There our website name and stuff like that Now first of all we going to go in themes You going to choose the theme you want okay
20:14
Now there are tons and tons of themes and they all look amazing
20:17
I'm going to go with Ranger. Okay, Ranger looks pretty good. Let's go with Ranger, and here we are
20:23
Ranger has given us this. Now, we're going to go in settings
20:27
Now, first of all, we're going to choose our header logo. Now, just choose any good image that you're going to go
20:33
you want, I'm gonna like upload a totally random image. This has nothing to do with my website
20:38
but you get the point. And I'm just gonna add a header logo
20:42
Now once you add a header logo, and I'm just gonna wait for it, and there you go, there's your header logo
20:47
which is gonna be the main logo for your website, which could be your initial, your business initial
20:51
stuff like that. Then you have the welcome image, okay? Again, the welcome image, I'm gonna add a totally random picture
20:58
which will have nothing to do with my page, but you get the point
21:01
So you're gonna add Welcome logo. Now, do know this. Like, having a website with no images is like, it's totally
21:08
inconvenient. No one is going to be attracted to your website. Your website needs to, you know
21:13
have that flare. It needs to have all the essentials to it. Now, once you've done that
21:19
you're going to mess around with color schemes. So you can change the color schemes. I'm going to
21:23
keep it to a nice light yellow. There we go. Now, once you have kept it as that, I'm just going to
21:32
wait for it to load us in and there you go as you can see it's created that for me now the
21:37
content background where you have all your content you can keep that to whatever color you like
21:42
i'm going to go with a light green shade okay it's going to wait for it to load up and there you go
21:46
it has a light green shade on it you can choose the accent background which is this background over here
21:51
okay you can go with a light blue on this to be honest doesn't really you know phase i'm just going
21:58
to do that there you go there's your accent background now Now the accent text color, as you can see over here, you can see it's a bit hard to read
22:06
You can keep black coloring on it. So look at that. Much easier to read now, isn't it
22:11
Then there's the accent pattern color, like this pattern right here. You can choose to change that color as well
22:18
Obviously this will look better as black as well, in my opinion. So just keep of that
22:23
And there we are. So the pattern is pretty much good too now
22:28
Now, button and status text color. So the button statuses are basically any buttons you add
22:34
like you know this over here. So we're gonna keep it like that. We don't wanna change that
22:38
Button background color. Button background color is basically this over here, this background
22:44
This also pretty much looks good. So you get the point. Basically, these are all the things
22:50
that you can mess around with, all the settings you can mess around. So as you can see, these are the buttons
22:54
for shop now and stuff like that. Now, you can also change the fonts by coming here
22:58
You have your primary font, you have your secondary font, you have your secondary font, you can, as I said, change all the fonts you want
23:04
Totally depends on you. It's pretty easy and basic stuff. You get the point
23:08
So change the fonts to whatever you like. Let's say I want to change it from, you know, the one it is right now
23:13
I'm going to keep it to cops, okay? I want you to keep it to cops. Look at that
23:18
Changes the font and looks pretty good. Looks pretty nice. Then you have the announcement text
23:22
Displays an announcement message on top of every page. You have the welcome adder and everything
23:26
You can like to keep all the text. You can also put in different, you could say
23:30
the codes if you want to. As I said, you can add coding
23:35
You can also add new pages if you want to, by the way. So you can name a page
23:40
Like let's say this page is the, let's call this page the art exposure
23:48
Let's call it that. And this is where you're gonna have all your different arts and stuff like that
23:53
So I'm gonna click on done. Okay, now once you click on done, you're gonna go on art exposure
23:57
You're gonna go in art exposure and you're gonna like give all the details around it. And then obviously there's also code where you can like make your page better by a
24:05
default CSS code if you want to. You can also upgrade to an integration code if you want to
24:11
but yeah, you get the point. So again, I'm going to go on the home page now. Right. I'm going to go on
24:17
here. Here we go, the product page. Now obviously if you come here, you can see the starry night and
24:22
everything. You can select the options. So you have the Van Gogh option. You're going to click on
24:26
add to cart. And when the person clicks on app to card, look at this. They're going to
24:30
going to be redirected over here and it's pretty basic stuff if they keep one they're going to enter
24:36
look at that changes to 19 pretty good and like fun stuff to have in your arsenal and yeah that
24:42
once you've done that all you're going to do is like if you like what you've created all you're going to
24:47
do now is just like make sure that your website is good to you know mess around with with like
24:54
the phone view is good the you could say desktop view is good, the Apple view is good, and once all views are good, what you're finally going to do is
25:07
you're going to basically save your website. Now to save your website down here, you can see it says publish
25:13
You're going to click on, you're going to click on publish basically. And once you do that, here we are
25:18
Our website has properly been saved and published. And there you go. This is going to be your website now
25:23
Now, obviously to tell people about your website, you can just go on your URL that we created previously
25:32
And yeah, that is how you're going to basically market your website
25:36
So that's pretty much about it. And once you have obviously published your website, you're going to launch it
25:43
Your store will have most chance for success if you complete all the steps above and then, you know, launch it
25:48
So once you take your shop out and stuff like that, preview your shop. Okay, I'm going to go in preview
25:53
So here we are. This is going to be the preview of our shop
25:57
Again, click on shop now and stuff like that. You get the point. And once you've done all that, you like what you see
26:03
Finally, just click on launch. And there you go. You have congrats
26:08
You have officially launched your new shop. This is your link. You're going to click on it
26:13
You're going to send it to people. You're going to click on it if you want to. Okay, I'm going to copy
26:17
I'm going to open a link a new tab. And yeah, that is basically how easy and simple it is to create a website for
26:23
yourself. That is basically how you're going to create a free website for your small business
26:28
in the easiest, most simplest way possible. Now, if you enjoyed this video, please drop down
26:33
a like, subscribe to the channel. And if you want to see more videos like this in the upcoming
26:38
future, please I'll go down in the comments below and I'll make more for you. But yeah
26:43
basically, that was all for me. I hope you all keep having a great day. Thank you for watching to
26:47
Leanne and I will see you all next time. Goodbye
#Other
#Web Design & Development