How to Build a Website with WIX: Step by Step Guide

Website building platforms have become a great commodity recently. Companies providing customer-facing products and service are including these tools to provide comprehensive solutions with a one-stop shop to deliver the best customer experience possible. The acquisition of Weebly, another popular website building platform, by Square in April 2018 is the latest example.

Building your own business WIX website is free and relatively straightforward. But if you’re unfamiliar with the process, you might not understand how many different options are available for you to use on the platform. Here’s a quick tutorial on how you can use WIX to build your very own business website.

Building A WIX Website: A Step-by-Step WIX Tutorial

Sign Up for an Account

Just like signing up for basically any other online service, getting started with WIX requires you to sign up for an account. To do this, you just enter your email address and a password or you can sign in with a Google or Facebook social account.

Choose a Type of WIX Website

Then you’ll need to choose the kind of website you want to start. Begin by clicking “I Need a Site For …” and then browse your options.  Some of the selections most useful to small businesses might include a business website, online store or blog. But depending on the type of business you operate, you might also select “Photography,” “Restaurants,” “Accommodation” (for hotels or other similar businesses) or “Beauty & Wellness.”

Just remember, the type of site you select will impact the kinds of options and templates you get to choose from later, so choose the option that best represents your business and the kind of website you are trying to build.

Select a Template

 

Once you’ve picked what type of website you want to create, you’ll be directed to a selection of different templates to choose from. You can browse from the popular templates or search for something specific. You can also search within specific categories like websites made specifically for consultants, service providers or marketers. Or you can choose from a selection of mostly blank themes and then build up from there.

Change Your Details

When you’ve selected a template you like, WIX will take you to a preview of the design that you can edit by clicking, dragging and dropping the different elements on the page. But one of the first things you should do is update your business name, tagline and any other text elements on the page that aren’t specific to your business. To do this, just click on the text that you want to change and then you’ll see a text editor that lets you type in new text and change the size, font and other elements.

Update Media

You’ll also have the ability to change some of the more visual elements of the site. If there are any photos included on the template, you can click on them to change them to a photo that’s more specific to your business. And you also have the ability to change the background of your page. Just click on the background option on the sidebar, and then you can choose a color or upload a photo or video to serve as the background of your website.

Add Different Elements

Your template is really just a starting point for your new website. You can also add other elements to the page to really make the site look complete. On the sidebar, click the “add” button to bring up a list of potential page elements you can add to your site. You might choose to add things like text boxes, images, slideshows, buttons, menus, videos or shapes. When you click on one of those elements from the menu, you can see a few different options for the type of style you want to add to your site. Then you can add and move around different elements to make everything look exactly the way you want it.

Repeat for Each Page

And once you add whatever elements you want to your homepage, don’t forget to do the same for the other pages on your site. You don’t have to add the exact same elements. You can customize each page to look exactly the way you want using the same method. Just click on the page you want to edit in the navigation bar and then add whatever elements you want on that page. Save your work and move on to edit the next page.

Add a Blog

You can also choose which pages you want included on your website. One page that you might want to consider adding, if you didn’t choose it as your main web page, is a blog. You can add a blog to your website by adding that page element using the tools on your sidebar. Then you can manage your posts and add new content from the sidebar as well.

Include Your Products

Also included on the sidebar is a store manager. If you have an eCommerce site or want to include any products for sale on your site, you can use this section to add the products you have to offer, along with supplementary elements like photos and prices. You can also edit things like payments, shipping and store settings from this section.

Publish Your Site

When you’re happy with every part of your website, it’s time to publish. You can preview your site by clicking the button in the top right corner, just to make sure everything looks and works like it’s supposed to. Then just click “publish” in the top right corner and your site will go live. You can see your domain in the popup that appears. Or you can choose to connect your WIX site to your own branded domain. When you’re done, the result should be a website that effectively represents your business and that you’ll be proud to promote through social media and other channels.

* * *These are the basics of creating a free website for your business using the WIX platform. Of course, the platform includes other options you may wish to consider including a premium subscription and the highly touted “app market” that allows you to add special features ranging from newsletter signup forms to live chat and more.

Images: WIX.com

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