Almost any kind of business today need a website – whether it is an online business you are building or a local brick and mortar business, it is a great way to get customers.

Websites can be expensive to buy and complicated to make. But it does not have to be like that.

It is actually something anybody can do, and you can even start building a website for free.

In this article. I will give you the foundation you need to know to build a website and give you a way to start building your site for free today. As mentioned, it does not have to be complicated, so no matter your technical skills, it will be possible for you.

Disclosure: Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. This means at no cost to you, I may receive an affiliate commission, if you purchase something through one of these links.

The most important aspects of a website

Before getting to actually building a site, I just want to go over the most important aspects of a great website to give you a good start.

A good website needs:

• to be easy to develop and maintain
• to be easy to navigate
• to have good content that helps visitors
• to have user-friendly design
• to have a reliable hosting company

Below, I will explain a bit more about each of these bullets and show you how you can easily meet these criteria.

Use WordPress to build a website – easy and reliable

When making a website it is important that it is easy to develop, but also that it is easy to maintain. I have seen many times throughout the years that somebody buys a website from a web developer that uses a complicated system. This can make it more or less impossible for the person buying the website to update or maintain it, because the system is too complicated. That is not the point of a website – it should be easy to update, maintain, and develop. If not, it quickly becomes a “ghost website” that neither the search engines nor the visitors care much about.

That is one of the reasons WordPress has become very popular. You have probably already heard about WordPress, but in short it is the most popular CMS (Content Management System), and it makes it easy to develop and maintain websites. My website you are on now is also built in WordPress, and I love using it, as it is very user-friendly and is continuously updated and developed (and it is free to use).

So to make it easy for yourself to build your site and to maintain it, WordPress is a great option, and one that I highly recommend.

Below, you can click to open a small video that shows you just how easy it is to get started with building a website on my favorite building platform SiteRubix, and how you can be online with your site in only 30 seconds

Click the picture to open and see the video in a new window:

Give the visitors a good experience

Before starting to build the site, there are a few things that are good to have in the back of your head. You do not need to be a designer or developer to be able to make a really good website.

There are a few aspects that you just need to think about when making your site.

First of all, make your site easy to navigate. People are not very patient online, and if they cannot find what they are looking for quickly, they just go to the next website (and there are a lot to choose from). So do not make things too complicated. It is a very normal mistake to try to use all kind of fancy designs and functions, but very often it confuses the visitors more than it helps them. So just think about keeping it simple. A great way to test this is to ask a friend or family member to have a look at your site when it is done and see, if it is easy for him/her to find information on your website.

Also, focus on giving valuable information on your website – what does the visitors need to know, what are they looking for, and how can you help them? Too many people think about just telling what the offer and forget about the visitor and what they are looking for. So think about providing information that does not only explain what you can do and who you are, but also what the visitors (and potential customers) want to know more about, and what they are looking for answers for.

Build on a strong technical platform and avoid problems

When you build a website, you also need a hosting company. It is basically a place where the data is stored so that is can be available for everyone to find on the internet.

There are however big differences in the services provided, and it is very important to find a good host, and is really worth it in the long run. The hosting company will for example affect the speed of your website, which is very important for getting good rankings in the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.), and it is also very important for your visitors’ experience.

Furthermore, a good host will make sure your website is up and running (at some hosting companies your website will be down quite often), and if you run into problems, they should be able to help you immediately. Also, it is very important to have a host that has good security that protects your website and data from hackers etc.

Personally, I use SiteRubix as a host as it is super fast, have 24/7 support, is very secure, and takes daily backups of your data. You get really good value for money here compared to many other companies, and you can even have 2 websites for free here and that way get started without having to pay anything.

Let’s build your website

Now you know all you need to know to start building your website. There is no need to over complicate it, so you might as well just get started.

The very first thing you need to do is to find a name for your website. Below, you can check, if the name you want is available on the SiteRubix platform, and after that you can build it for free.

Once you have registered for your free site, you will also have access to step-by-step guidance about how to start using WordPress, if you need this.

If you have any questions or need any help, you are also very welcome to leave a comment below, and I will be more than happy to help.