Every business needs a professional website, but not every business needs a complex website. In my post describing how to pick a website host, I explain that I think businesses should keep their site as simple as they can unless there's a clear story for how a more complex website will make your business money.
And it doesn't get any simpler than using Carrd to host your site. Card is cheap ($20 per year) and basic. So basic, in fact, that they only allow one page per site. One page is plenty for a lot of businesses (you can have multiple sections the user can scroll down to see), but if you need more than that, Carrd isn't for you.
To show you how easy it is to make a website with Carrd, I recorded this 12-minute video in which I make an entire site from scratch and publish it live to the internet. Yup, it just takes 12 minutes. Check it out:
If you're not the video-watching type, here's summary:
- First off, if you're not already enrolled in my course on how to set up a website for your business, you might want to consider doing that. It goes beyond what you see in this video because I give tips on picking your colors, making a logo, etc. It's simple enough that even the least tech-savvy person can do it. Ok, moving on...
- As described above, Carrd is a tool for making single-page websites. There's technically a free version, but you can't use your own domain name unless you pay, so I'd strongly recommend shelling out the $20/year. It comes with a trial so you can get your website up and running before committing.
- The first step is to pick a template. Carrd comes with a bunch of professional-quality template designs. You can customize the design, but unless you're a professional designer, I'd recommend picking one that won't need much customization because every change you make risks making the site look less professional.
- Once you pick a template, you'll go into the website editor where you can customize the content and design. It'll start you out with the generic template, and you can click on elements to modify them.
- The first step I suggest is to get your content entered correctly. Simple websites don't need a ton of content normally. In this video, I upload a logo, enter a title and tagline, and add a section at the bottom of the page for additional info your customers might be interested in.
- Next up, we work on design. You'll want to customize the colors to fit your brand, and possibly tweak things like font size.
- The CTA ("call to action") is the most important part of the site. Carrd supports a few options including a button that links to another site (e.g. an eCommerce store or a Calendly scheduling link), a contact form, or a newsletter signup form.
- Once things look good, you just need to publish the site. I didn't go into how to set up a custom domain name in this video, but you can read more about that here.
That's all there is to it!