How to Build a Website Without Code?
Most people consider coding to be a requirement when it comes to creating a website. But is that true?
You might have heard of websites like Squarespace, Shopify, Wix, and Blogger that provide platforms for creators to build their own websites. And you might be wondering – is it possible to build a quality website without knowing any code?
In this article, we will teach you a practical way to build a website without using any code at all.
Find A Theme
The first thing you need to do to create a website is to find a theme for it. When someone visits your website, they will see a completely different look from what they were expecting because of the theme you chose. A clean, minimalistic, or corporate theme will make a world of difference, and will impact both your visitors and your search rankings. Don’t worry; we will teach you how to find a suitable theme in just a moment!
Pick A Hosting Service
After you found a theme, the next step is to choose a hosting service. Just Google “best hosting services” and you will see hundreds of results. Each hosting company offers different things, so it is important to do some research before making a decision. Consider the features the company offers, the price, and the performance of their hosting plans. With this information, you can make a decision based on what is most important to you.
Launch Your Website
Once you picked a host, you can finally launch your website. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for! When someone visits your website for the first time, they will see a small landing page with a link to your home page. This is called a “landing page,” and it is usually the first thing a visitor will see when they visit your site. As a general rule of thumb, make sure that your landing page contains a concise description of your website, and a call to action (like a button to visit your site or to subscribe to your newsletter) to keep the visitor on your website.
Customize Your Site
Now that you have your website launched, you can start to customize it. You can use different plugins to make your website faster and more functional. You can install WordPress plugins that will allow you to automatically import your Google Analytics, email list, and other important data into your site. You can use plugins like Pretty Links to create beautiful, custom 404 pages when someone visits a nonexistent page on your site. You can use plugins like Jetpack to create a fully functioning blog on your site in no time.
Start Building
Once you have your site launched and customized, you can start building. Your first task is to create a small (about 5-page) dummy content-filled website using a tool like WordPress. You can use the free 14-day trial to get started, and if you need help, you can always call our friend, Matt Cutts, Google’s senior manager of search quality.
The purpose of this dummy website is just to get your feet wet and to build a simple backend that you can expand upon. Don’t worry – we don’t expect you to finish a 5-page website in a day, promise! But creating a simple, content-filled website will allow you to build upon it and will teach you a lot about web design and development.
Expand Your Dummy Website
Once you have your basic 5-page website, you can start expanding it. You can add another page, and then a third, etc. You can also install a free WordPress plugin called LeadPages that will transform your basic 5-page website into a fully-featured sales page. With LeadPages, you can install a form on your website with an “Submit” button that will generate leads for your business. Just remember that you can only install the form on the FIRST page of your site.
Make Money
Did we mention that you can make money from your website? You can install Google Adsense to earn money from displaying ads on your site. You can create affiliate products and sell them through your website (make sure you pick a reputable affiliate program so you don’t have any problems later), or you can even sell your own products (like graphics, games, or web design templates) through your website.
Get A Design Created
There is no denying that designing a website can be pretty challenging. If you want to have a professional-looking site, you will need to hire a designer. We know how difficult this can be, so we wanted to save you the stress and anxiety of trying to design your site yourself. That’s why we created Aweber, one of the most popular email marketing tools available. With Aweber, you can install a form on your site with an “Email Subscribe” button that will automatically send an email to your email list whenever someone subscribes to your site. Once you have your email list, you can start marketing your products (or offering your services) to your audience via email marketing campaigns.
Use What You Have
Even if you found the perfect theme for your website and you have a perfect hosting service to launch it, you need content to make it useful. You don’t necessarily need graphics, but you will need text to make it interesting and readable. If you have a few articles written already, you can use those to populate your site. You don’t need to have lots of articles to make it worthwhile – as long as you have at least a few, your visitors will be able to get the value from your content without having to constantly come back for more.
Once you have content on your site, you can install a tool like Xing to create beautiful, fully-functional affiliate marketing banners using just your content. You can choose from hundreds of different banners, and if you want, you can create unique ad banners for your site.
Keep Improving
Did we mention that creating a high-quality website doesn’t end with just one step? Once you made it to the top of the heap with your own website, you can continue to improve it. Install a tool like Revslider to create stunning, content-driven slide shows using your photos and videos.
Or if you happen to be a fan of Donald Trump, you can install a free WordPress plugin called Trump Plugin that will create animated gifs of your favorite US president whenever you visit his page on your site. You can also use tools like Infogram to create charts and graphs about your site’s performance, or tools like Squeezed Mattress to create custom graphs and charts about your site’s traffic.
If you want, you can install Google Analytics on your site to keep track of your visitor’s behavior. Did we mention that you can install a Google Analytics profile on your site and track up to 3 domains? Pretty cool, right?
The Bottom Line
In case you are wondering, there is a reason we saved this article for last. We wanted to end on a good note by reminding you of three practical ways to create a website without code. That way, you can rest assured that you made the right decision in avoiding code-related headaches and can instead focus on your content.
If you want a no-code solution that will save you time and money, try out Squarespace, Shopify, or Wix – all three of which are great free platforms that don’t require you to code a thing.
Or, if you want to make the most of your existing skills and don’t want to go the “all code” route, you can use WordPress to build your website and then install a tool like Aweber to create an email list and start marketing your products (or offering your services) to your audience.
No matter which option you go with, you will be able to build a quality website and begin monetizing it (if you choose that route). But, if you want to truly save time, invest in a good theme and a reliable hosting service – it will be well worth it!