In the not too distant past, in order to create a website for your business and get it online, you would have to learn HTML code, and build your website from scratch. Then, once your site was finished, you would have to upload the page to your website using a somewhat arcane FTP program. This kept many people from being able to explore their business ideas online. Today, however, it’s possible to find an easy website builder that will bring powerful tools for easily creating professional looking websites into the hands of the most casual users.
It’s possible with newly available software to create a professional looking website from start to finish in five minutes or less without writing a single bit of HTML code. By dragging and dropping pre-built blocks to create a layout, these site creation tools allow new and even experienced Internet marketers focus their time and energy on marketing instead of HTML design and coding. This allows them to get their business online quickly so that they can see a return for their efforts sooner.
Features that you should look for an online website creation package include the following:
* Predefined layouts to speed up the design process-with this feature, there’s no need to start with a completely blank page.
* A library of prebuilt banners covering a wide variety of markets. Again, new marketers frequently don’t have the resources or the ability to create their own custom graphics for website headers. Ideally, this software should provide an easy path for these people.
* Drag and drop layout. The software should allow users to build the structure of their website using drag-and-drop building blocks as opposed to a selection of predefined formats. This will allow new users to easily design their sites, while giving experienced marketers the flexibility to create just exactly the look that they want.
* The ability to seamlessly manage the addition, placement, and resizing of images. Users should be able to add images either from their hard drive or from the web, and the software should intelligently handle the rest. The software should handle other media files such as video or screen shots just as seamlessly.
* Image storage. The software ideally should allow users to store image files so that they could be used on multiple projects if needed. This would help keep users from needing to find images on their local hard drive or on the Web more than once.
* Simple page and site duplication. It should be very simple for a user to create a template using the software and then easily duplicate this page over and over to create his site. Ideally, the software should also make it easy to copy an entire site in case the user wishes to reuse the layout in a different niche.
* Finally, an easy website builder should handle the process of uploading the final web page to the Web host. This eliminates the need for learning and using a complicated FTP program. It also allows for changes to the website to become “live” very rapidly.