New Year, New Site! Get your business website live before the end of January in 5 steps

If getting your business website live has been languishing at the bottom of your to-do list for a while now, you really shouldn’t wait any longer. It’s more important than ever to have a strong online presence. Also, you can actually get a business website live in less than an hour if you use a web builder like Wix or GoDaddy!

What better way to enter a new year and forget all the troubles of the previous one (inflation, cost of living, you get the idea) than to explode onto the online scene with a new website which will kick-start a new business – or elevate your existing one – and help start a fruitful and profitable 2023.

For this article, we’ll look at the main steps you should take to get online with speed and ease being the most important factors. (And don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you have to compromise on having a quality site!)

5 reasons to build your business site this January (and no later!)

• The sooner you get it done, the sooner you can begin reaping the rewards of increased brand exposure and if you plan to sell online, sales and revenue!
• Deals deals deals! The New Year tends to bring discounts on all the essential things you’ll need from domain names to software
• You’ll kick-start the year by getting ahead of your competitors – you can be certain that most of them, if not all, will have a website already
• The “beginning of the year energy” will help you stay focused, enthused and consistent
• You will have a whole year, right from the beginning, to spend building your new client base, audience, and brand. This could also be a final push for exposure and sales before the end of the financial year in March!

Quickfire website building guide: 5 steps and your site is live

1. Choose and register a domain

Choosing a domain name is one of the most exciting parts of building a website! It is the way people will be able to discover, remember and find you so you want to make sure it’s memorable – and for extra points, somewhat explains what your website will be about.

We definitely recommend Bluehost to register your new domain; this is a web hosting company that allows you to name your website, select a design template and start building with the right hosting plan all in less than five minutes! But if you want to use a different web builder (like Wix), you can use Bluehost to simply register and buy the domain. Our in-house research and testing show Bluehost to be the best provider out there right now for everything to do with hosting and domains.

2. Choose one of the easiest web builders to use

We’ve tested hundreds of website builders over the years here at Startups, and have performed extensive research on each, so the ones listed below are the ones that came out from our research/testing as the easiest to use to get a site up and running fast.

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OUR TOP PICK
Wix	Squarespace	GoDaddy	Hostinger	Shopify
BEST FOR Best all-in-one website builder	BEST FOR Design flexibility & businesses looking to scale	BEST FOR Ease of use and simplicity	BEST FOR Cheap builder	BEST FOR Ideal for growing your online store
Ease of use 3.9	Ease of use 4.7	Ease of use 4.0	Ease of use 4.5	Ease of use 4.3
Price £9-£119 per month £8.10-£107.10 with code “TAKE10”	Price £12-£35 per month, billed annually Use code “SU10” to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans	Price £7.99-£13.99 per month, billed annually (first term discounts available)	Price £2.59-£3.79 per month Up to 81% discounted with code “STARTUPS”	Price £5-£259 per month, billed annually £1 for first month
Try Wix	Try Squarespace	Try GoDaddy	Get Hostinger	Try Shopify

Wix and GoDaddy may be the easiest to get started with, and they offer free trials.

Don’t I need to choose a web hosting provider?

Not when you use a cloud-based web-building platform like the ones above! With web builder products, hosting comes included, making this the quickest, easiest option for creating a site.

4. Get building and customising with drag-and-drop editors (a.k.a the fun bit)

As well as most website builders being cloud-based, they will also all typically allow you to customise your site using the drag-and-drop method too, which is incredibly fun and a great way to get your new website exactly how you envisioned it.

According to our research, Squarespace has the highest design functionality score in this area with an excellent 4.7 out of 5, notably due to its new ‘Fluid Engine’, its very own original and intuitive drag-and-drop system. Wix and GoDaddy place not too far behind with a rating of 4.4 out of 5 and 4.3 out of 5 respectively.

Find out more about Squarespaces’ Fluid Engine below:

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5. Preview and tweak

You’re going to make good use of the ‘Preview’ features your website provider offers so you can check what your new website will look like to visitors when it goes live.

You can check as many times as you like, in a mode that hides all of the editing features that only you can see, so you get the authentic client or customer experience and can decide if anything else needs to be tweaked or changed before your launch.

My site is live! What next?

Congrats! By this time in the process, you will have a fully functional website, all ready to be published to the world.

The things we mentioned are all it takes to get a site functional and live. There is more that can be added or configured over time, like blogs, articles, pop-ups, and tweaking for search engines, but the five steps above are the bare bones of it.

The sky’s the limit now that you have the know-how to get your new website into action. You’ll be able to watch your sales soar; get your brand, voice, and mission/purpose out there in the digital world where it deserves to be, and actively grow traffic and exposure over time into a truly profitable client base.

So what are you waiting for? You could have that brand new website you’ve been dreaming about live and ready for the new year as soon as, well, today.

Let’s launch this thing.

Good luck!