Written by Matilda Howard, Marketing Specialist
Matilda Howard is a seasoned marketing professional with a passion for brand storytelling and consumer engagement. Focused on driving digital innovation and brand growth for clients she enjoys sharing her knowledge with the wider community online.
Whether you’re a startup, entrepreneur, SME, or someone who wants to learn the basics of building a website, you might find it a bit overwhelming when choosing the right tools at the beginning.
Where do you build your website? How do you reach your customers? How do you process payment? These are important questions that need answering before you dive into the website-building process.
Planning out what tools you need to build a website helps you streamline your process, provide a solid foundation to grow your business, and save you a lot of time.
4 essential tools to build a website
1. HubSpot & WordPress.com for CMS & hosting
Building a website is like building a house (stay with me). The CMS acts as the framework and the tools that shape the website, while the hosting provides the foundation and the infrastructure. Both require a solid foundation and structure to create a liveable and accessible environment.
HubSpot and WordPress are excellent choices, let’s look at why.
HubSpot offers an all-in-one solution combining CMS, marketing, and sales automation. Whether you’re a veteran web designer or a newbie, HubSpot’s CMS allows you to design and build your website with ease.
Using their range of pre-built templates, themes, and modules, you can customize your website to align with your brand identity and offer your customers a seamless user experience.
This is pretty important, considering 73.1% of web designers believe that a non-responsive design is a top reason why visitors leave a website, and 61.5% believe bad navigation also plays a part.
HubSpot’s websites are also SEO-friendly, allowing search engines to crawl and index your pages. Both will help aid your organic rankings and drive more relevant traffic to your website.
WordPress
WordPress empowers businesses of all sizes to create websites tailored to their specific needs. It is renowned for its versatility and scalability. According to data from W3Techs, it is now used by 43.2% of all websites on the internet, which is a 39.5% increase from 2021.
Whether you're starting a blog or launching a giant e-commerce store, WordPress offers you a huge variety of themes, plugins, and customization options to help with user experience, website hierarchy, and internal linking for SEO best practices.
For example, you can use WordPress's CMS and e-commerce plugins to easily manage inventory, process orders, and provide seamless shopping experiences. The flexibility of WordPress ensures that your website can grow and evolve along with your business.
It’s super easy to use too, whether you’re a fan of their newer Gutenberg block editor or their WordPress Classic Editor, which you can still switch back to, by the way.
Both HubSpot and WordPress offer intuitive interfaces, making it easy to manage your website effectively. They also provide:
Powerful SEO features.
Responsive design options.
Analytics to track your website's performance.
Comprehensive solutions for content management.
Sales automation.
Scalability.
With these platforms, you can create a captivating website, drive conversions, and effectively engage with your audience, setting a solid foundation for your success in the digital realm.
2. Link whisper for SEO
Another extremely helpful tool to kickstart your new website into gear is Link Whisper - an app designed to drastically speed up the internal linking process.
One of Link Whisper's most unique (and incredibly helpful) aspects is its automated internal linking feature. Instead of manually searching for relevant anchor text and related articles, Link Whisper analyzes your content and suggests internal links with a simple click
For example, if you're writing a blog post about the benefits of exercise, Link Whisper can automatically identify other articles on your website related to this topic.
This not only improves your readers’ experience but encourages them to bounce around your website, increasing site duration and generally boosting your SEO endeavors.
Link Whisper also provides a comprehensive overview of your internal linking structure, meaning you can easily visualize the relationships between different articles and identify any gaps or areas for improvement.
Internal link building can be a complex and monotonous task, so having Link Whisper take this stress off you frees up time for you to focus on other areas of your website.
3. Canva for design
Unlike Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or other high-end design platforms, you don't need to be a professional graphic designer to create eye-catching visuals on Canva.
Canva provides over 610,000 pre-made templates that you can customize to create pretty much anything, from presentations, physical marketing material and videos to social media posts and website banners.
Alternatively, if you’d rather stay well away from design, Canva also provides seamless collaboration capabilities.
So, if you’re working with a team or collaborating with freelancers, Canva allows you to invite team members, share designs, and provide feedback in real-time.
Moreover, Canva also offers integrations with WordPress, Mailchimp, and social media networks, which allows you to directly export and publish your Canva designs to your website or social media profiles.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of the things Canva can accomplish. The above are just a few of the reasons you should entrust Canva with your design duties.
4. Mailchimp for emails and automation
Mailchimp is still one of the most popular email marketing platforms (holding 57% of the email market share) for veterans and startups, and it’s no surprise why. For startups especially, Mailchimp’s free plan is leagues ahead of their competitors.
For a start, you can:
Easily integrate it with WordPress.
Email one group of up to 2,000 contacts.
Access six customizable email templates.
Benefit from a simple reporting system to see how your campaigns are performing.
They also have a helpful array of other features, like landing page builders and social media post creators.
However, one of Mailchimp's biggest benefits when it comes to building a new website is its user-friendly and intuitive email builder. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or new to email campaigns, Mailchimp makes it easy to create visually appealing and engaging emails.
Customizable templates and drag-and-drop functionality make it easy to design professional-looking emails, newsletters, promotional offers, and automated follow-ups.
Mailchimp's robust automation features are another standout aspect. You can set up targeted email sequences based on customer behavior, such as welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, or personalized recommendations.
For example, you can send a special discount offer to your loyal customers or create a re-engagement campaign for inactive subscribers. Rewarding devoted customers and prodding those who are idle keeps them engaged and aware of your brand.
Mailchimp is just such a strong companion for any business or entrepreneur building a new website. Its user-friendly interface, easy email automation capabilities, and cost-effectiveness make it a must-have when building your website.
Your foundations are set
As you continue to design, build and develop your website, you can discover more ways to optimize it and make it your own.
Setting the foundations with core plugins, apps, and platforms is crucial to provide a cohesive brand experience for your customers and help your brand grow and move forward quickly.
Yes, investing in software isn’t always free, but the efficiency and time-saving benefits of this approach often justify the costs.
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Read more from Matilda Howard
Matilda Howard, Marketing Specialist
Matilda Howard is a recognized leader in marketing, a seasoned professional who is passionate about driving digital innovation and growth for global brands. Matilda leads initiatives across a range of digital marketing disciplines, content creation, and brand management. She's passionate about blending creativity with data-driven insights to achieve impactful results for clients.
