What Does it Take to Build Your Own Website for Your Handmade Business?

If you’re like most handmade business owners, you probably have an Etsy shop (or ArtFire, or Zibbet, or Aftcra… there’s really tons of them!)

And maybe, as you’re continuing pursuing your craft as a form of income, you come across some business advice… chief among it may be that you need to create a standalone website for your brand.

There are a lot of advantages and reasons why you should most definitely have your own business website: improved communication with your visitors and customers, better customer experience, ability to control how your brand and business is perceived, and increased credibility for shoppers (and that’s just to name a few!!)

Maybe, on more than one occasion, you’ve considered what it would be like to run a standalone website for your handmade business. But if you’re like most crafty folks, technology isn’t your thing. You’re not even sure what the first step would be in getting started with creating your website!!

In this article, I’m going to break down for you the major parts and pieces of getting your website up and running.

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy (and yes, affordable!!) running your own website really is.

Anatomy of Websites

In this section, we’ll take a look at what are the pieces behind the scenes that make it possible for your
website to exist on the Web.

Web Hosting

First things first, you need a space on the web where your website will live. Enter: the web host.

These companies run large amounts of servers all over the world, and all the content, photos, and data for websites lives on those servers. Think of this as a vast network of computers that are turned on 24/7, making all the websites accessible to the public.

Starter packages run between $3 and $5 per month, and usually limit the number of websites you can have, the space your websites can take up, how many times your sites can be accessed, or all of the above.

Midtier packages go for $6 to $10 per month, and usually most of the restrictions of basic packages are lifted.

Higher tiers are for those websites that receive large amounts of traffic and/or have special needs.

Most craft and handmade businesses would do fine with a midtier package.

Web hosting packages across companies are very similar, although not all web hosts are created equal. There are two web hosting companies I highly recommend: BlueHost and SiteGround. They both have easy installation of WordPress (the most popular website building software… see below) and excellent customer service.

Domain name

Now that you have a space for your website to live online, the next thing you want is to make an address for it. I’m talking about of course the URL, or the “link” to your website and its contents. This is called the “domain name”, and it’s usually your name or the name of your business. A great place to register your domain name is NameCheap.com. In addition to your domain name, you will also get the first year’s privacy protection for free.

You definitely want to get privacy protection on your domain. Otherwise, your personal information (name,
address, email address, and phone number) will be publicly viewable by anyone. Yikes!!

Most domains can be registered for around $10 per year. That’s an incredibly small cost to having a professional presence for your brand. You should get a .COM address for maximum versatility. You can easily check whether your business name or desired domain name is available when you first go to NameCheap.

Side note: I strongly recommend for you to register your domain name at a different company than the one where you purchase your web hosting. The reason for this is that you may outgrow or wish to switch where you host your website, in which case you will have to deal with transferring your domain registration as well. If the two are kept separate, you are free to use whichever hosting company you want, and your domain registration can stay put to avoid transfer fees.

Website Building Software

Excellent! Your website now has a place and address online, so it’s time to get to the question of how you actually create content to show up on your website. Enter: WordPress.

WordPress is currently the most popular website building software, and it’s completely free. Think of WordPress as the program that you install to your website space that will allow you to display text, photos, videos, and whatever it is that you want to include on your website.

You can easily install WordPress to your website by following the instructions of your web hosting company, or by contacting their customer service. There is definitely other website building software available, like Joomla or Drupal. However, WordPress is definitely the easiest to use out of the three.

Website Theme

After you install WordPress, the next steps are the fun ones: getting your website to look nice and spiffy!! WordPress websites have “themes” which create the outward look of your website. You can search the Internet for these themes, and you’ll find that there are free themes as well as paid themes. Paid themes range from $50 to $150, but it’s definitely not necessary to get a paid theme from the beginning.

When you’re researching themes, especially free ones, it’s important to pay attention to what features the theme supports (for example, mobile responsiveness is an absolute must these days) and what the documentation of the theme looks like. Make sure that there are good tutorials and explanations of features available on the website of the theme.

If you feel too overwhelmed by the choices out there, or you are not sure which features you need for your website, check out Virtue Theme. It’s a very versatile theme that has many features, and the documentation is superb. There are free and paid versions of the theme, with the paid version having more features.

Website Plugins and Settings

Finally, all that’s left is to make sure your website has the right stuff going on in the background so that your website functions as you want it to.

Plugins extend the functionality of WordPress. For example, you should get an antispam plugin, that will automatically detect spam comments and filter them out for you (I recommend AntiSpam Bee). Another useful plugin is an SEO plugin, that will make sure your website and content will show up properly in search (Yoast SEO is a popular choice). Additionally, you’ll want to look into a way to automatically back up your website (UpDraft Plus) and website security (WordFence).

My personal preference is to have as few plugins as possible. Sometimes, you will find that plugins don’t play well together when there are too many, so if something isn’t working right, deactivating plugins and then activating them back one by one will usually find the culprit. WordPress also has settings regarding how your website looks and how visitors can interact with it. You can change colors, specify where visitors can leave comments, and customize how links to different pages on your website look.

Feel overwhelmed?

Not to worry. As is with any new adventure, building a website will begin to make sense as you dive in. In order to help you get over that initial bump in getting started, I prepared a Website Strategy Game Plan for you, which will not only walk you through the steps needed to set up your website, but also includes helpful information to include as well as links to many resources to help you. You can download this guide for FREE following the link in my bio at the end of this post.

Now I want to hear from you: what part of setting up a website seems most challenging to you? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll stick around for the next few days to answer your questions.

There is a Strategic Website Game Plan that you can download for FREE right here.