Creating a website online should not be a scary thought. You don’t need any coding skills, HTML, or PHP experience. With Wix, you can create a website as easily as 1,2, and 3. I will walk you through it.
Register an Account with Wix
Head over to Wix.com, once you land on the home page, click on Get Started.
Fill in all your details and click on Sign Up. When you are done with the sign-up process you will have to choose what kind of website you would like to create. The possibilities are endless. You can choose from a blog, an online store, a portfolio website, or even just a business splash page. Normally if I create a website for a client, I would search for the type of business. For example, if I am creating a business portfolio website for an electrical company, I would just search “Electrical Company”, and would follow the suggestions that populate in the search bar.
Once you have chosen your type of website and proceeded, you now have to choose what features you want to add to the website (Don’t worry if you are not sure about which features you want or need to choose, you can always edit this later on as your website progresses in development).
Choosing between Wix ADI and Wix Editor
Now that you have completed the website name, type of website, and features of the website, you will have to choose between creating the website with Wix ADI (Wix Artificial Design Intelligence) or with Wix Editor.
I strongly suggest if this is your first time creating with Wix to choose the Wix ADI. The ADI is an awesome tool, it creates the basics and backbone of your website based on the type of website you selected along with the features you’ve chosen.
Before Wix ADI finishes you will have the option to choose your theme and favorite homepage design. It will give you an option of 6 themes and 3 home page designs. Select the theme you like and pages you would like to add to your site. Yet again do not worry, you can edit all of this later on.
Once you’ve selected all that you need, the ADI will do the rest.
You should now see your newly designed website.
What to do next?
First, remove the dummy content.
Wix ADI populates your new website with dummy content, based on your selection of the type of website you wanted to design. Simply hover over a section you want to edit, and then click on “Edit”. Once clicked a sidebar will open where you can edit all the relevant details. When you hover over the section, you can also click on “Design”. The Design button will open a sidebar that will give you the options to edit the design of that section, for example, Color, Text Settings, and Animation.
Second, set up menus and pages.
Menus are a great way to make your website more user-friendly. A more user-friendly website means more traffic retention. Whether you’re creating a one-pager blog or a full-on operational website, I would suggest making sure you set up a great navigation menu.
Setting up a Menu is easy. Simply hover over the header section and select “Edit”. In the sidebar, you will see a section called “SITE MENU”, click on the “Edit” button next to Site Menu. Now you can change your menu.
Menu buttons are basically links. You can link menu buttons to pages, lightboxes (Pop-Up boxes), contact details, or even other websites. The best way to design your menu is totally up to you, as long as it stays easy to use by your website users.
If your website needs pages, simply click on “Add” in the top toolbar to add a page. Once you’ve added a page you can link it in your menu so that your visitors can find the page.
Adding your Domain
Now that you’ve removed dummy content, changed the design to your liking, added a menu, and inserted your own content, you are ready to link your website to a domain. Wix automatically assigns a free domain to your website, however, I would advise that you either purchase a .com domain or transfer a domain you already own to Wix. Premium/Registered domains perform better on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo and it also comes across as more professional to your visitors. If you are ready to connect a domain, hover over the “Site” dropdown button in the top toolbar and click on “Connect Domain”. Now you will have the option to buy a new domain through Wix or to connect a domain that you already own, that is hosted with a different hosted company.
Final Touches
Your website is ready to go live! But before you go live, there is one more important thing to do, Search Engine Optimization or short SEO. SEO is what gets your website ranked in search engines. Wix has got a fantastic SEO tool built into the developer console. Head over to the “Site” dropdown button again, under “Connect Domain” you will see “Get Found on Google”. When you click this button the SEO Tool will open, where you can start the process of SEO optimization. Simply follow each step the tool provides and your website will be ranked in no time. When you are done with SEO make sure your website is running smoothly; test your menu links, make sure details such as contact details are correct, and test the website’s user-friendliness. When you are satisfied hit the “Publish” button in the upper right corner. That’s it you are live on the internet!
Great job on designing your awesome website! All you have to do now is maintain it and drive traffic to it. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions or comments please feel free to comment below. You can also reach out to me personally, at riaan@pc-league.com, if you have any questions or need assistance.