Your website is your showcase for the entire world. While many businesses have chosen to stick to social media to promote their services, they could be doing so much more with their own website.
This series will show how easy it is to create your own website tailored to your business, whether you’re a hairdresser, a restaurant, a consulting firm, a photographer, or anything. With our recommendations, you can have your own website up and running quickly, easily, and ready to get customers in.
Today, we’re getting a little spooky, making a site for witches, ghost hunters, spiritualists, and anyone else who wants to delve a little deeper into the mystical world.
Getting Started
Before you start making your website, work out what you want to put on it. Think about how much information you want to have publicly available, and how much you want to have behind a paywall.
Think about what you want to offer, and how you’ve helped previous clients. Do you have a large collection of written materials? Do you do free consultations? Once you know what information and services you want on your website, you can build your pages around your business strategy.
With these things in mind, you’re ready to choose your web hosting package and get started.
Because this is for a single site, we recommend buying a good basic package, either our Essential hosting package or our Basic Managed WordPress package. Both of which will give you the space and performance you need without costing too much. If you choose Essential, you’ll need to install WordPress on your package, and if you choose Basic, WordPress will be installed automatically.
Releasing Content
If you’ve written books, designed learning materials, or want to create an exclusive space for your clients, it’s easy to get your content online and selling through WordPress.
WooCommerce
The most popular and best-known e-commerce plugin for WordPress, WooCommerce has so many options that you’ll be able to find the right combination to work for your business. Sell e-books, book consultations, and more with this powerhouse of a platform. The initial plugin is free, but extensions, such as payment integration, will have additional pricing.
Easy Digital Downloads
If WooCommerce seems like too much, Easy Digital Downloads might be the right option for you. It makes it easy to sell and release online content, with a wide variety of extensions to make things even easier. The main plugin is free, but extensions will have additional pricing, and there are also tiered payment options for adding more features to the main plugin.
MemberPress
If you’d like to build a community online and release your content that way, MemberPress is a fantastic membership plugin. Build online learning materials, create paywall tiers, and much more. MemberPress starts at $279 a year but comes with payment and email marketing integration as well as a collection of great features.
Integrating Social Media
Along with selling, you need to get the word out about the work you can do. Integrating your social media feeds makes it easy for people to share your work with all their connections.
Smash Balloon Plugins
Smash Balloon has individual plugins for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, giving you an easy way to integrate your specific social media accounts into your site. Each plugin costs $49 annually and gives you a smooth integration from your website to your personal feed.
Spotlight
Instagram is a fantastic way to show off photos and videos, but it’s also a locked-in system, making it difficult for anyone without an Instagram account to see your work. Spotlight lets you put your Instagram feed on your WordPress site, giving you an easy way to show off your work as well as gain new followers. The essential version is $39 annually, and gives you unlimited Instagram accounts and feeds.
Feed Them Social
If you don’t mind doing a bit of work and want to show off all your social feeds across your site, Feed Them Social not only lets you put in your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube feeds, but you can also purchase the Combined Streams version and join them all together. The premium version is $50 annually, but there is a free version with plenty of features.
Getting In Touch
If you want to help people, they’ll need a way to get in touch with you. While you can put your phone number and email address up on the site, a good contact form makes it even easier for potential clients to become regulars.
Forminator
With Forminator, you can create contact forms, calculators, add Stripe to your site for easy payment processing, and even more. The free version gives you the ability to create forms, whereas the paid version adds in payment processing and more features, and starts at $7.50 a month.
Contact Form 7
Built for simplicity, Contact Form 7 is a free form builder that’ll give you an easy-to-use contact form in a matter of minutes. Plus, its basic form doesn’t write any user data to the database, use cookies, or send data to any servers. To use it, you’ll need to be willing to work with code, but only a bit, and there’s a detailed FAQ to help you.
WPForms
WPForms is a drag-and-drop form builder with a huge range of features built in. Create contact forms, payment forms, surveys, booking forms, and more with this powerhouse of a plugin. The Basic version is $79 for a year and includes all the form templates and unlimited messages. You can then upgrade as needed for more features, such as newsletter integration, multiple websites, and more.
Making Everything Shine
Once you have everything set up, you just need a good theme to make it shine.
PressBook Masonry Dark
With an elegant grid design, PressBook is great for online stores and blogs. You can adjust the number of blocks in the grid, add sidebars, and build a beautiful indigo website with the free version, or, for $59, you can change the colour scheme, add in carousels, and use even more features.
Inunity
Flexible and responsive, Inunity is a grid theme that provides a clean and elegant experience for your visitors. Great for online shopping as well as informational sites, Inunity is free to use, with plenty of features.
ArtsyLens
Built for art and photography, ArtsyLens is a beautiful theme that lets you show off your work. The free version comes with a clean and responsive design, and the pro version is $59.99 and comes with even more features and blocks.
So there are some options for your website. Whether you’re doing tarot readings, going on ghost hunts, selling crystals, writing spells, or anything else mystical, having a well-built website is a great way to engage with your audience and show off your expertise.
If you ever have any questions about how a website can help your business, get in touch with us! We’re happy to help!
