How to Make a Website in Less Than a Week

Your business website is the heart of your online presence. Without a great website you're never going to get your customers to take you seriously. You need to get a website up and running as soon as you can. Even a small website is better than no website at all.

Getting the job done in less than a week sounds impossible, but you can do it. And it doesn't have to involve employing a huge team of people for a few thousand dollars. This is how you're going to make a website in less than a week.

The Foundation

Forget about independent developers and forget about a custom website built specifically to your needs. These projects can take months to complete. You need a website that can be built on a platform that requires no technical experience. For this, you need WordPress.

The best WordPress sites in the world have been created in less than a week. It's because you can easily pick up a free or premium template. You're not going to get a completely unique website this way, but it's the best you're going to get without employing someone to build you a custom website.

Should You Opt for a Paid Theme?

The difference between a free theme and a paid theme is its accessibility. In terms of getting your website up in less than a week it makes no difference whether you choose a free theme or opt for a premium theme. There's a business argument to investing in a premium theme, however.

It decreases the likelihood of someone having exactly the same website as you. Furthermore, premium themes generally come with more customization options. Your goal is not to become 100% unique but to make sure you're unique enough so as to not be copied by someone else.

Paid themes can be bought for well under $100. And you can even pay out a little bit more to have a designer quickly put together a unique theme for you.

Drag and Drop

To make creating a website easy and quick you're going to have to work with a theme that allows you to easily transfer elements into the right places. It requires a professional designer to do this through code, so you need something where you can easily drag the various elements and drop them wherever you like.

Thankfully, the majority of WordPress themes allow you to do this. There are lots of options open to you, including the standard WordPress themes that are automatically installed.

Use Plugins to Increase Functionality

The reason why building a customized website is so expensive is because of the functionality issues involved. You often need to build an entire content management system, plus any e-commerce solutions. This is a highly technical task that can take a long time to complete.

The way around this is to use the thousands of plugins available online. Again, this is why we recommend using WordPress because they have the largest number of plugins available. There's a reason why over 25% of all websites online today use the WordPress platform.

You should consider picking up plugins that can do things like connect your website with your mailing list and accept payments directly to online wallets like PayPal.

How Long Does It Really Take to Build a Website?

An experienced WordPress user can put together a perfectly viable website in a matter of a couple of days. Once you have settled on the layout and the branding it's just a matter of populating the site with engaging content. This is where the really time-consuming part of the process kicks in.

Building a website is a matter of making plans so you're not aimlessly wandering around trying to think of a theme that works for you. Have some firm ideas in mind before proceeding.

Last Word – Should a Website Like This Serve as a Stopgap?

There's nothing unprofessional about relying on a WordPress website for your business. There are pros and cons to having your own specially designed website, including having to rely on paying a designer/developer time and time again to implement changes.

A lot of smaller companies find it much easier to build a simple website in under a week and stick to that until they expand later. Don't buy into the snobbery of believing you have to have a professionally designed website that costs you thousands of dollars.

How will you develop your website today?