With the growing popularity of the startup culture, most professionals generally strive to kickstart their entrepreneurial journey.
Since we live in a digital age, you must build a website to generate traction for your business and connect with your target audience. Your website should focus on providing easy access to relevant information. It will help engage your target audience and help them connect with your brand.
This may be easier said than done because startups often struggle with limited budgets and resources. However, one can’t deny that having a website makes it easier for you to increase brand awareness and generate quality leads for your business.
This article covers noteworthy tips that may help you save money while building a website for your startup.
So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Importance of Creating a Budget-Friendly Startup Website
As a startup, you have access to limited funds and resources. You don’t have the luxury of spending a ton of money to have an online presence. So, embracing a budget-friendly approach is the way to go.
You have to avoid unnecessary expenses and use the available resources in the right way.
By keeping your costs and expenses at the bare minimum, you get to utilize your budget and allocate resources efficiently for promotional activities, maintenance, and the scalability of your business down the road.
Plus, this helps you cultivate a budget-conscious mindset early on, from which you benefit as you grow your business.
A smart utilization of your budget during the website development process makes you more financially flexible and resilient to unforeseen challenges down the road.
Furthermore, making do with a limited budget enables you to think outside the box and come up with creative ways to do what needs to be done. The skills and exposure you gain during the process may help you throughout your entrepreneurial journey. Also, make it easier for you to make the most of opportunities.
How to Create a Startup Website
The following are a few easy steps that you may consider to create a stellar website for your startup.
1. Find a Fitting Domain
To create a website, you need a domain that aligns with your niche. A domain is like your digital identity and allows visitors to access your content through a URL.
Finding a suitable domain for your startup may be a bit challenging. Because the domains that may appeal to you may already have been taken or parked by resellers. This makes finding the right domain for you a daunting process.
When looking for a fitting domain for your business, always prioritize getting one composed of a single or three words at maximum.
Since .com domains are 33% more memorable compared to other TLDs and fuel your SEO, getting one should be your top priority.
2. Choose a Reliable Hosting Service
Once you’ve purchased a suitable domain for your startup, the next step is choosing a reliable hosting service.
The core objective of creating a website for your startup is to attract and engage your target audience. This won’t be possible if you offer a lackluster user experience.
A subpar hosting service may significantly reduce the performance of your website and often lead you to grapple with load-time issues.
It’s reported that a 1-second delay in the load time of your website may cause up to a 7% loss in conversions. So, you should never compromise on your website’s speed or the experience you offer through it.
A reliable hosting service not only makes it easier for you to attract and engage your visitors but also secures your business and customer information from unauthorized access. You, therefore, should be careful when selecting a hosting service for your startup website.
3. Select a Website Builder
Building a startup website may be even more challenging if you lack coding skills and exposure. In this case, you may need to hire a professional to create the website for you. It may often cause a major dent in your wallet.
Fortunately, there are certain solutions to building visually appealing websites from scratch without knowing how to code.
This is where website builders come in and make it possible to create a budget-friendly website for your startup with little or no coding knowledge. There are a variety of options you can choose from, keeping your needs and preferences in mind.
4. Choose the Best-Suited Theme
A common mistake businesses make is thinking that visitors generally access their websites through desktops.
It’s reported that 52.2% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices.
Therefore, when creating a website, it’s important to choose a responsive theme that helps you offer a seamless experience across all devices.
Around 88% of visitors will leave and likely never return to a website if it offers a poor experience. So, choose a theme that aligns with your brand image. And your visitors can access the content through different screens.
5. Install the Necessary Plugins
Plugins are powerful tools that complement the functionality of your website. They help you do different things to generate more traction and ensure a seamless user experience.
Therefore, it’s important that you explore and install the right plugins that facilitate access to necessary functions or capabilities.
By leveraging plugins, you can improve your SEO, enhance your security, boost website speed, implement social proof, generate quality leads through web forms, access useful insights, create backups for your data, and do much more.
6. Add Necessary Pages
After installing suitable plugins, the next step is to add the necessary pages to your website. The main objective of adding these pages is to help people learn more about your brand.
A few of the essential pages you may consider adding to your website are: home page, about us page, feature pages, privacy policy, terms of service, contact us page, 404 page, and so on.
These pages help your visitors navigate the necessary information and interact with your brand.
7. Test before Launch
Before taking your website live, it’s important that you test it and ensure that everything is working fine.
The last thing you would want is to offer a clunky user experience to people visiting your website. A poorly performing website may have a devastating impact on your brand image and severely tarnish your reputation in the industry.
So, you should always test your website before launching it to connect with your audience without any unwanted interruptions.
7 Tips to Save Money When Creating a Startup Website
Since startups have to make do with a limited budget, the following are a few tips that may help you save money when creating a startup website:
Consider an Affordable Domain Name
Finding a fitting domain for your website is a difficult task, especially when the ones that generally seem appealing are expensive. These are premium domains and generally encompass popular or trending keywords.
Since you have a limited budget, it’s not wise to invest in premium domains from the get-go. You may consider buying them down the road when you scale your business. But it’s not viable for you to go for one when getting started.
So, consider taking a balanced approach here. It’s understandable that you may not want to go for cheap domains, as they may not align with your brand image. However, that doesn’t mean that you have to buy the expensive ones by any means necessary.
Try to dig deep. It’s possible that you may find one that is best suited for your brand at an affordable price. Also, consider using discount codes or coupons when purchasing a domain for your website.
Leverage Shared Hosting
When you’re on a tight budget, buying a shared hosting service may save you some money.
Shared hosting is best suited for startups or businesses that have just gotten started. Shared hosting services are generally affordable because websites using this type of hosting collectively share the storage space on the server.
Since you share the storage space with other websites, there may be some downsides to using shared hosting, such as load time and downtime issues. Furthermore, shared hosting may also make you susceptible to security exploits. However, it’s the affordability that makes shared hosting a desirable option for startup websites.
Choose a Fitting Website Platform
To build a budget-friendly website for your startup, it’s essential that you carefully consider your options when selecting a website platform.
There are a variety of platforms to choose from, but most startups just go with WordPress. It’s one of the most versatile and user-friendly platforms. WordPress also provides you with a wide range of ready-to-use responsive themes and useful plugins. That’s why the platform powers around 43% of all websites around the globe.
WordPress is an excellent choice for startups and small businesses that have to make do with a limited budget. However, there may also be other platforms that entice you more. In the end, it all comes down to your preference and your investment power.
DIY Design and Development
For startups, it’s not wise to outsource website design and development.
Doing it yourself without hiring a professional. It saves you a ton of money and gives you better control over developing your site as you want, ensuring that it aligns perfectly with your vision.
There are a variety of online resources that may help you with this. Plus, you can leverage user-friendly website builders with drag-and-drop simplicity to create a professional website without knowing how to code or having any technical expertise.
Furthermore, designing and developing your website yourself enables you to structure your pages and fine-tune the navigation. This likely gets you the best results from your efforts.
Use Free or Low-Cost Website Templates
Selecting the best-suited theme for your website may be tricky. Premium templates come with better customization capabilities. They are generally better looking than the ones available for free access.
But since the goal here is to create a budget-friendly website, it’s best to go for the free or low-cost options available.
This may lead you to compromise on the visual appeal of your website. However, you will be able to save some money. Later you can spend this money on essential items or resources that may help you keep the needle moving.
Install Free Plugins
Plugins boost the functionality of your website. Also, optimize your platform to get more traction.
There are a variety of options you may consider, from free to premium plugins. However, it’s advised that you go with the ones available for free access.
Premium plugins may give you access to a wide range of features. However, you may not even need most of them when getting started.
So, you may consider investing in them when scaling your business. But when getting started, just install the plugins that can get the job done.
Skip Installing an SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate encrypts your data and makes you less vulnerable to security exploits or loopholes. It helps you improve the security of your website, ensuring the protection of your business and customer data.
Installing an SSL certificate helps you cultivate trust and makes it easier for you to attract the intended audience. However, getting one may cost you a certain amount.
Therefore, if you’re on a low budget, you may consider not having an SSL certificate when getting started. However, it’s highly recommended that you get one, as it’s a necessary investment.
Final Thoughts on Building Startup Website within A Budget
There you have it: the complete process of how to create a startup website from scratch and seven useful tips on how to save your budget.
You don’t need to invest huge amounts to make your website visually appealing and offer a seamless experience to visitors. You just have to be mindful of a few things:
- Focus on building a simple website
- Avoid having a complex navigation structure
- Ensure easy access to the important information
- Create a glitch-free platform for your visitors with no bugs
- Publish content that’s highly relevant to your audience.
Do you want to improve the user experience on your website? Check out the top 12 UX design trends you should consider for your business website.
Are you ready to build your first business website? Use the comment section below if you're facing any difficulties while designing your site.
Author Bio: Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.