You want to build a website but can’t pay thousands of dollars. What do you do? Build one yourself using a website builder. It will allow you to create a stunning website for your business or blog without the help of a professional. 

Creating a website through website builders usually involves simple drag-and-drop for designing. Many website builders enable you to create your site for free and offer advanced features for a price. 

Maintenance of your website is crucial. If you want to succeed, all the content on your site must be up-to-date and engaging. With website builders, simple format editing and managing the content of your website becomes a lot easier.

Things to Consider While Choosing a Website Builder

Image is taken from Strikingly

Before we talk about our preferred website builder, here are some things you should look for in a website builder. There might be features not listed below, but this list would make the site-building process much more convenient for you.   

1. Ease of Use

The whole point of using website builders is to ease the site-building process. Ensure the tool you choose offers an intuitive site editor to give your website the appearance and feel you want. Many website builders offer a drag-and-drop feature that lets you design your site by moving things around on the screen. 

2. Responsive Web Designs

When it comes to attracting more customers, the responsiveness of your website matters a lot. It lets your site present your brand nicely to users across all devices. Moreover, search engines are favourable toward websites with a responsive layout. Ensure the website builder you choose automatically makes your website mobile-responsive. It’s a plus if it lets you add some features to mobile or desktop separately because many elements are suited for either only desktop or mobile devices.  

3. Social Media Tools

Social media plays an important role when it comes to marketing your website. Ensure the website builder allows you to add social media sharing options, social feeds, and other social media tools to your site. 

4. Good Customer Support

You may encounter issues while creating your website or after it’s published. You might need help from the website builder’s customer support to solve those issues. Ensure you go for a website builder that is known to provide the best customer support.

What Website Builder Should You Use?

We found Strikingly to be one of the most potent yet straightforward website builders. Over 12 million users worldwide love Strikingly for its ease of use and excellent customer support.

You can build your website using Strikingly’s responsive website templates. They offer more than 200 unique template options. Here’s how you can develop your website using Strikingly.

1. Getting Started

Go to Strikingly’s landing page and fill in your first name, email, and password. Click “Get started” to sign up. In the dashboard, tap “Create a new site.”

2. Select a Template 

Image is taken from Strikingly

You will be redirected to the templates section. Strikingly offers templates for every kind of website, be it a blog, online store, or portfolio. You can either explore and choose from pre-designed templates or go for a blank page to create your design from scratch.  

3. Add New Sections 

Strikingly allows its users to add different sections to their site, such as an online store, a Simple Blog, Big Media, Gallery, a Bookings section, etc. These sections are the building blocks of your website.

In the menu on the left, click “Add a new section.” Select the section you want to add to your site. 

If you’re a product or services seller, you can add an eCommerce store section to showcase and sell your products online. On your Strikingly site, you can sell more than 500 products. You can add products to your store by clicking “Add products.” A window will pop up. Tap on the “Add new products” button. Fill out the required information and save it. 

Image is taken from Strikingly

Strikingly’s Simple Store features are dedicated to making shopping easy for your customers. You can categorize your store products, customize checkout forms to ask consumers for additional information, create store coupons, accept payments through different methods, and showcase customer reviews.  

Along with an online store, you can add a blog to your website to implement content marketing strategies and gain traffic for your site. Managing your Strikingly blog is effortless. Once you’ve added the blog section to your site, click “Manage blog posts.” From the menu that just opened, you can create new blogs and edit the existing ones. 

Image is taken from Strikingly

In your Strikingly blog, you can enable comments to engage with your readers, categorize and pin your posts, activate Accelerated Mobile Pages, enable RSS feed, and schedule your blog posts.  

4. Design Your Site

Once you’re done adding sections, design your website. You can replace the background of your website with a solid color, image, or video. Click “Background” in the right corner. If you want to add color, then choose the color of your choice from the color panel. You can also upload an image or video background by embedding a URL or uploading it from your computer.

Play around with different colors, images, videos, layouts, buttons, and other things to see what suits you best.

5. Include a Footer on Your Website

Image is taken from Strikingly

Footers are often used to display your contact information and policies. To add a footer to your Strikingly website:

a. Go to “Settings” from the left menu.

b. Choose “Headers and Footers” from the options.

c. Check the box that says “Display footers.”

Here are some web pages you can link to your footer.

• About us page
• Terms and Conditions page
• Copyright and Protection page
• Sitemap
• Contact information page

6. Publish

Lastly, preview your website in mobile and desktop mode to ensure it looks gorgeous across all devices. If you’re satisfied with your design, click the “Publish” button in the bottom-left corner.  

Strikingly offers almost every tool you need to create, launch, manage, and market your website. You can check your website’s analytics, make changes to the design from the dashboard, and promote your site using marketing tools such as newsletters and custom domains. 

If you’re stuck, you can contact Strikingly’s 24/7 available customer support through live chat or email. Strikingly values its users’ time and effort and they respond fast, making it one of the best website builders out there.