How to Build a Great-Looking Website When You Are Short on Time and Money

So you’ve just started your wedding business and now you need a website. The problem is you don’t have the budget to hire a designer and you need something that looks nice and is fast and easy to use.

Where can you turn?

Here are 5 build-it-yourself options for professional-looking websites:

1) Strikingly

Strikingly offers simple and beautiful mobile-friendly sites that get the job done when you are just starting out and don’t have a lot of information to put on your website. There is no code or design experience needed, you can use their interactive on screen builder to create your website in under 30 minutes. They have a free plan, but the upgraded plan for a custom domain name (recommended as it is more professional to brides and grooms) is only $8/month.

2) Squarespace

When you need more features, Squarespace is a great option. You can create galleries, add a blog and even an online store. All of their templates are clean, modern and mobile-ready and easy to customize. When you pay annually you receive a free custom domain. Plans range from $8-$24/month.

3) Wix

Wix offers a selection of fully-customizable templates and uses a drag n’ drop site builder to make things simple without coding. You can optimize your website for mobile as well. If you don’t want to do it yourself, you also have an option of hiring a pro to get your site done fast. Plans range from $8-24/month. (There is a $4/month plan, but it includes ads on your site, which you don’t want).

 4) Weebly

Similar to the others above, Weebly  uses a drag & drop website builder that makes it simple to create a professional website without any technical skills required. Plans range from $4- $25/month.  There is a free plan, but it includes Weebly branding, which is not recommended for a pro site.

5) Themeforest

To have ultimate control of your website, working with a website designer to customize a WordPress theme would be ideal. If you are comfortable learning and using WordPress yourself, check out Themeforest for a ton of great themes made by developers that can be used out of the box now and then when you have more cash to spare you can hire a designer to customize it for you.

Whichever platform you choose, you’ll want to use a custom domain for your business. Don’t forget to check out the 7 things brides and grooms look for in a wedding vendor website.

Have you used any of the above? Share your pros and cons below!

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