How to Build a Free WordPress Website for Small Business
good afternoon builders today we're talking about how to build a wordpress website if you want to learn how to build a business website like this one and you're curious about how to build a business website with wordpress you're in the right place today i'm going to show you how to build a free wordpress website for small business working in wordpress.com i'm going to show you the basics using my faux account copernicus cameras i'm going to demonstrate how to build a homepage replace your hero image and refine your top menu navigation i'll be adding bonus material including how to modify the blog posts and make them shine on the home page lastly link your first lead magnet if you don't know what a lead magnet is and the magic it can bring for your business make sure to subscribe to my channel and join me friday where i share ideas on the best lead magnet for your small business if you're in the chat say hello if you're catching this on replay type hashtag team builder in the comment section okay if you're here let me know where you're from so let's start the show hi i'm lisa stewart founder of build your own small business and build your own money message i help steam entrepreneurs like you build products that sell connect with your audience and build your business from your workbench where in the world are you watching from let me know in the chat me i'm coming to you from snowy slash sunny seattle let me know in the chat how far along you are on your website meanwhile i'm gonna take a sip of water here okay i've got a tip please chat and leave comments hey andrew because if you've heard me say it once you'll hear me say it multiple times leaving comments creates a breadcrumb trail back to your youtube channel even if you're not making videos you want to build a community of your own and you can start by participating with meaningful comments if you want to know more about that check out my earlier video called how to set up your youtube channel account watch all the juicy details there meanwhile i've been designing and coding business websites since 1997. as a designer i like to say i learned on the board learning print first like logos and layouts for magazines and books when the interwebs was new i then learned how to wield the power of immediate gratification you know communicating by code like this guy but building a website is no small feat just like designing a book designing a website involves a lot of interconnected tasks developing a professional grade website is a big undertaking it can be maddening with so many moving parts and steps much like wrangling feral kittens this is why i've got a process to wrangle those feral kittens i mean moving parts okay there are five steps to the web development process phase one definition phase two design phase three development phase four deployment and phase five maintenance so let's talk about definition definition includes understanding your site goals gathering your business requirements and building a project plan phase two design includes creating a site map developing wireframes user testing putting together content plan establishing the look and feel and getting input from your stakeholders phase three is your development phase this includes producing comps content development media development and building the website with code and style phase four is your deployment this includes quality assurance meaning we have to review and test all the parts and pieces with a fine-tooth comb spelling grammar calls to actions and links that are working properly and phase 5 maintenance making sure that your website is being updated with the updates provided by your isp your web host and then maintaining any plugins content and other changes necessary for the life of your business and your website today it's my objective to show you how to build your own website on wordpress.com it's going to be a high level overview just enough just enough to get you up and running later in another video i'll do a deep dive on things that you'll want to manage on the back end and in your dashboard so lucky for you you don't need to know html or other high-tech programming languages working in wordpress using their ready-made templates will help you build your website like these the reason i currently use wordpress to build my websites is because i want to concentrate on selling my products not coding and managing my site for me managing my wordpress sites comes easy but i think that's because i've had the luxury of history and experience of coding websites by hand and managing large projects like intranets for large companies depending on how tech savvy you're feeling just know that sneaky landmines may get you into trouble as you follow me along on this journey you may determine that's too much for you and there's no shame in that if you need further help let me know i help entrepreneurs build their websites today i want to show you how to build a free website using wordpress.com first i have a question for you what do you want your website to do for you as a small business owner what's the primary function of your website do you want it to show sell educate inform or entertain this will help define your website layout i like to ask these questions to my clients because i like to build in longevity you may not want to sell today but you may consider it next month if you're working with a word web designer for your small business website your focus should be on what should be done on your website not diving into how things should be done how things are done are fully dependent on design and coding principles that your web designer has experience with the layouts are different based on the outcome that you want your customer to achieve as they're cruising through your site for instance if you want to inform your customers is your website a new site like the bbc or national geographic or you might want to entertain your customers as a comedian or a band so the layout would look fundamentally different as a product developer your layout will look different still your website may showcase a custom product or contain a shopping cart option another design and development principle is creating layouts using flowcharts the wireframes and sitemap to help your customer navigate to the pages they need these layouts help the customer efficiently navigate to your product page to learn more if you're just getting started on wordpress.com basic site you shouldn't have to worry about flowcharts for just a few pages now this next section is about what platform you want to develop your website easy for us we've already made that choice with wordpress otherwise why are you here wouldn't you rather be somewhere else okay let's sort the difference between wordpress.com versus wordpress open source first
they are two different platforms when you choose to work with wordpress you know that you're in great company many large brands use wordpress like the new york times nbc and even ted talks knowing which is which will help you choose the right platform for your business needs wordpress.com is hosted by wordpress so what are some of the advantages it's great for hobby bloggers and those just getting their feet wet with blogging you get up to three gigabytes of free space for your media after that you have to upgrade to a paid plan but that's just pennies personal plans start at 48 dollars a year granting you six gigabytes of storage the advantage to starting on wordpress.com is that you don't have to worry about hosting security backups or software updates ever they ca they take care of all of that for you wordpress.com hosting service has five plans from free to vip and an assortment in between if you're not sure what's right for you you can always bump up to a paid plan in the future building a base website on wordpress.com will be important if you want to build a larger site using the wordpress open source software this will allow you to connect with plugins and other assorted components to build out your web presence so even if you're not planning on building a website here on wordpress.com at least you've established your wordpress.com web presence okay what are some of the disadvantages
using it as a free blogging website you'll have ads placed on it and you don't make any money from it upgrading to a paid plan will eliminate that you're not allowed to sell ads on your website you can't upload plugins you can't upload custom themes you're restricted to their stats meaning you can't add google analytics to track you can't run a membership site and it comes with a branded domain name much like this one for instance copernicuscameras.wordpress.com and this is fine if you're just using it as a home base to launch your larger professional website lastly you can't integrate any kind of payment gateways unless you switch to the wordpress ecommerce plan and that doesn't include that doesn't preclude you from linking it with your square up account okay having said that you can use all of those things if you upgrade to a paid program depending on the features that you want to unlock some of the more advanced features you have to be on the business plan now the advantages to the wordpress open source is that it wordpress requires you to host your own website personally i use siteground to host all of my websites and by the way if you want to use my link in the description you get a discount and a free trial on your hosting how awesome is that you're free to do anything you want in your own hosted website from customizing it with third-party themes selling your products directly from your website and so much more you own your own website and all its data which is different from other platforms like shopify or squarespace should one of those go down tomorrow you've lost all of your content this is why i'm a firm believer to own your own home domain oh getting dry here so if you're just joining us let me know in the chat where in the world you're watching from i would love to know i'm lisa stewart founder of build your own small business and found your and um founder of build your own money message i help steam entrepreneurs connect with their customers build products that sell and build their business from their workbench now let's get into the disadvantages of hosting your own website there are very few actually to hosting your own website with a free open source framework like wordpress it starts to get a bit pricey when you start adding the bells and whistles and you have to be responsible for updates and backups but it's worth it in the end again if you need help building your website and as your personal wordpress expert i can help you build a website of your dreams meanwhile let's get started on wordpress.com are you ready let's get started okay for transparency purposes i have recorded this next section because i can't count on the interwebs being stable and i don't want to forget anything important i will be here in the chat with all of you so don't forget to chat and if you're watching this during the replay type team builder in the comments okay okay let's set up your account mouse over to your wordpress.com in your browser choose your email address username and password as you can see the username is a unique wordpress.com address i've chosen copernicuscameras.wordpress.com next choose your extension wordpress asks us to choose an extension to our preferred domain name it's smart and it sees camera in our name and evidently there's an extension called dot camera along with dot com dot net dot org dot blog and dot club for now i prefer to just go with the free account next pick a plan in step three wordpress is asking me to pick a plan as i mentioned before there are at least four plans to choose from personal that starts at four dollars a month premium business and e-commerce i'm going to head to the top and start with a free stype we've arrived at the dashboard for copernicus cameras immediately you can see to the left where you can make all kinds of customizations you can make plan updates design customizations get into your tools manage other properties in your free blog another thing i like about wordpress.com is that it shows you how long each task is going to take so if you want to name your site it will take less than one minute on the right side you can see all the steps to set up your site it also indicates what you've accomplished you can see i've already confirmed my email address here i'm going to visit the site to see what the front side of my new blog looks like it's the default theme and you can choose from plenty of themes that you think might align well with your business model show sell educate inform or entertain if you want to explore the new themes you can do that under the design tab our current theme is hover and for this demonstration that's where we'll stay let's visit the site when you first arrive pop-ups will appear and act as guides showing you around the homepage is laid out nice and fresh with what we call the hero shot a background image with title and call to action blog articles are found at the bottom and the top menu that includes home blog about and contact click the menu items at the top to see the subsequent pages look within your new theme regarding the about page i would very much like to see you share who you are what you do and who you do it for please don't hide like many entrepreneurs this is the first level of trust you can provide with your customer if your customer doesn't know who's running the blog or website they will hesitate to do business with you this is an invisible wall that many entrepreneurs create for themselves i don't want that for you site title and tagline i'm adding the title and tagline to my website you can see that wordpress is thinking about it as it goes white to help make changes on the fly don't stress about it just make sure that in the end you save your changes after each task navigation menu a long-standing usability feature in website design is clicking on the logo that takes you back to your home page for whatever reason many themes top navigation the menu also includes the word home to get you back home this is redundant visitors rarely click this and it just clutters up your top navigation menu bar so i would recommend removing that because we're product developers i'm going to add a new menu item called products at this point your new menu name is going to pop up at the end and you can move it to the head of the list although i found this quite fussy so just hang with it until you can get your menu items in the arrangement you want finally okay save your changes always be saving okay homepage hero photo let's replace the hero image i've already uploaded my preferred photo that has a camera that i've blurred blurring helps to add more contrast for the visually impaired it only takes a millisecond for the brain to decide whether or not it wants to stay on the page let's encourage your customers to stay a while in this hero section let's create a call to action you can easily replace the type modify the color and block section i'm going to remove this particular block section let's change the text and color on the button make sure to check the background color as well as the text color in both the styles section and the color settings and background color section they coordinate and allow you to have a white outline around your button that matches your text color now let me show you how i change my default colors to my copernicus camera's brand colors colors and background inside colors and background you can see they have three default color ways for you to choose from feel free to scroll through these palettes to see how they interact with the web page i would recommend that you go with a lighter colorway so that your customers can read dark text on a light background that's best for usability and people with low contrast sight challenges because i've created a style tile for the copernicus cameras i've pulled my colors from that my hex codes are all included so it will be pretty easy to adopt wordpress allows me to transfer my hex codes into the little box beneath the gradient color palette presto okay home page let's go back to the homepage a moment and take a look at the rest of the components here you can see i've got example blog posts in three columns i've been able to adapt my brand colors into the headers of each there are some advanced settings here that i'm not going to get into today you can see where i can include borders if that's what i want but there's enough gutters between the text blocks that will provide the framing around each block if you want that's completely up to you let's add categories and tags categories and tags are going to help your customers find you and the specific topics they're looking for so what's the difference between categories and tags you ask good question think of categories as broad topics and tags as narrow and specific i'm heading into my main dashboard over to the left side you'll see a section called manage inside manage you'll find the subcategory called settings click that you'll find four different settings head to the one labeled writing under writing you will find subcategories called categories and tags sorry for the interruption i need to make a very important announcement do you see this specific element called uncategorized it often goes unnoticed by many small business owners and does absolutely nothing for your seo when you begin to fill out your categories rewrite this one as i'm doing here it makes you look more professional now where was i that's where we're going to add hours for instance categories would include names like equipment and classes tags would include more specific topics inside those categories think of the first category equipment examples include camera bodies lenses flash and lighting for the second category classes our quick examples would include mountain and ocean you get the idea now these will be available to us when we create posts what's the difference between pages versus post you ask yet another great question think of pages being static one-off pages like your products or about page or privacy policy posts are what bring life to your website posts are where you add updates about where your customers can find you at shows if and when you're adding classes any scheduling updates any specials that you're running these can be found in chronological order and also show google that your website is still active the interesting point about posts is that they also encourage conversation they have a built-in comment tool along with tracking and ping backs blog posts as tempting as it is we can't change the title of our blog post up here we have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the word edit okay i'm adding my title and i'm now going to add my feature image update in this section called permalink i pasted the title of the blog post so that it would be seo friendly it no longer says example post three it's replaced with meaningful words that my customers will find because who is going to look for example post three right the categories i added show up here the default was to check equipment instead i am checking the classes box that only makes sense if you need it you can also add a new category i'm also adding tags and an excerpt that will show up on the home page for show and tell purposes i also copied and pasted this information inside the blog post just to demonstrate how easy it is okay blog page on the blog page let's replace the hero image with something a little more meaningful like this spider silhouette i'm also going to add another title inside it for seo purposes we can reformat this title to our hearts content with alignment and linking now how do we get our blog images to appear on the home page you've probably noticed we don't have any gorgeous photos here representing our blog posts they're the featured photos we add inside each blog post but we still need to allow them to be present on the home page and we can add them one of two ways as i edit this block the editor bar reveals itself on the right notice how i'm turning the display feature image to reveal the spider photo above the blog title i can choose how big the featured item is going to be as i scroll from thumbnail size to medium and then to large i can also decide if i want to display the post content author name and date as you can see i've modified the last two blog posts i've changed the title and added photos i kept the text but what is showing are the excerpts from the blog posts included earlier social media accounts if you were establishing any social media accounts this is where you can include your links they auto magically show up at the bottom of your page in the footer colloquially it's called the kitchen junk drawer the key is to match your social media accounts with your business name as closely as possible you don't want to make it difficult for your customers to find you if you do have to change the name make it easy for them i've had to do that on a couple of my accounts just because the length of my name wouldn't fit the character count so just keep that in mind customizing your blog footer with widgets there is so much opportunity to make your new web presence flexible and interactive i'm adding categories as a widget so that it supports findability via seo a calendar and location that includes the local market where you can regularly find me with a phone number and dates of course this is all hypothetical so don't try finding me at the local farmers market okay let's link your lead magnet you can link your lead magnet in at least three different ways using different methods from free to paid the bootstrappers way is set up your button to send an email to you and you reply to that email with your lead magnet attached another way is to set up your email account with a new signature so that all you have to do is respond with one click to your recipient and lastly you can send it instantly from your email provider like convertkit i have a discount link in the description box below if you're curious about lead magnets and which one is the best for you be sure to subscribe and whack that bell like a kitten why to get notified when i go live decoding the magic of lead magnets this friday during my live at five okay now we are ready to publish click the link that reads launch your site wordpress wants me to purchase an extension either copernicus.camera or copernicuscamera.com they even offer me a chance to link a domain
i already own but at this time i want to scroll right down to the bottom to skip purchase wordpress is also showing me the four paid plans to choose from but head up to the top near the header that reads getting ready to launch a website and you will find a link that says choose a plan or start with a free site i'm going to click start with a free site for now another upsell by wordpress on the congrats page is to register more extensions skip down to the bottom where it reads no thanks i'll stick with copernicuscameras.wordpress.com hooray my site is now published isn't this gorgeous and it didn't take much time at all and i'm guessing you could accomplish this in less than 30 minutes provided you have all of your content ready to upload this includes text copy photographs and lead magnet congratulations you've learned how to set up your own wordpress.com site you've replaced your hero image you've refined your top menu to add product page you've modified your blog post and added their feature image to shine on the home page you've added widgets and finally you've connected a lead magnet at least three different ways i hope this inspires you to build your own small business website welcome back what did you all think do you have any questions let me know in the chat i know that was a lot of information but i just want to make sure that you can get up and running with your vital information as well as your lead magnet which is very important when it comes to pull marketing so if you have any questions in the chat let me know meanwhile if you're starting a new business or you've been established a while grab your copy of the small business brand toolkit to get started this is a free small business brand toolkit that i start out with all of my clients as a system that contains everything they need to know to get up and running so make sure to grab that link in the description box below anyhow i want to thank you so much for hanging out with me today to learn how to build your new business website on wordpress.com great things take time so keep building
2021-02-26 13:10
