So you’re starting a business and looking to build your website, ready to welcome shoppers and introduce your products.

The huge problem is that you’re afraid creating your website might break the bank before you’ve even opened up shop.

If that’s the only thing keeping you from launching your store, fret no more. 

I provide four tips to help you design an attractive website on a shoestring:

1. Create stunning product pages.

Your product gallery is crucial for converting visitors and increasing your sales. It’s where you can showcase your merchandise and wow and entice customers to add items to their cart. That’s why you need to make your product pages look stunning.

One way is to publish jaw-dropping product photos — and, yes, you can do that cheaply with simple DIY photography tips:

• Take pictures of items under natural light.
• Film with white backgrounds to make your photos look clean. Use a sweep (bendable sheet of paper) for this.
• Shoot pictures from different angles.
• Use a flexible tripod or mobile grip to hold your cameras or smartphones in place.

Next, exhibit your product photos in neat website layouts. Choose product page templates with grids to create defined sections for the general and individual product pages.

After that, craft product descriptions that convert visitors into paying customers. Do this by inserting the right keywords, using SEO-friendly product names, and indicating relevant details about the color, size, material, etc.

You can even post customer reviews automatically on your homepage or product pages through social proof tools. 

Doing so lets visitors see how much other people loved your items, motivating them to get one for themselves.

2. Publish compelling content.

Compelling content is another significant part of your website design and overall marketing strategy. 

Through your website content, you can exhibit your offers and how your shop can enhance your customers’ lives. You can even explain why they should get your product. 

Additionally, providing highly polished, compelling content is among the cheapest evergreen marketing tactics. It’s still effective in boosting your visibility and convincing customers to say “yes” to your invitations.

Make the most out of this low-cost strategy with these tips:

Perform keyword research and target high-volume, low-competition keywords. Create long-tail versions and sprinkle variations of relevant keywords around your blog posts, photo and video descriptions, and alt texts.

• Know your customers’ pain points about a topic and address them. Introduce your product as one of the helpful solutions and elaborate on how you can alleviate their stress. Highlight the benefits that shoppers can get from taking your product or offer. 
• Don’t apply hard-selling approaches to your content. Avoid treating your customers as cash cows and see them as real people with legitimate needs looking for tangible solutions. This lets you write in a way that makes them feel that you genuinely care about helping resolve their problems.
• Talk about topics that interest them. This enables them to resonate quickly with your content, consume more of it, and decide to patronize your brand.

You can leverage content management platforms to aid you in your content strategy, especially when designing visuals, including website banners.

These tools will simplify your content and design production, publication, distribution, SEO, and team collaboration needs. With these eased tasks, you can spend fewer resources and lower your website content and design strategy costs.

3. Take advantage of free-for-use website products.

Building an e-commerce website is usually expensive, whether you’re hiring a web designer or using site builders.

Fortunately, you can still create stunning and functional online stores with open-source ecommerce site builders. These tools offer flexibility, security, community support, and incredible site speeds — a crucial factor to converting your visitors.

Additionally, these feature-rich platforms give you more creative control over your site’s design. Magento, Spree Commerce, and Drupal Commerce are prominent examples of open-source site builders you can use.

Leverage also free plugins that can help boost your site’s performance. These can be:

• Yoast SEO to optimize your webpages on search engine results pages
• WPForms to create conversion-oriented contact forms
• Akismet to prevent spam comments on your website
• JetPack to design your website, enhance social sharing, track statistics, and thwart cyberattacks
• Google XML Sitemaps to index your website

You can even install free themes aligned with your brand and business niche. 

For example, to share quick-and-easy recipes for your customers, use food design templates. If you’re an online academy and you use WordPress, install the Learnify online course WordPress theme, and so on.

If these website design tasks are too technical or burdensome to do by yourself, consider tapping an award-winning digital marketing agency with affordable rates.

These companies have cost-effective packages for helping develop top-notch websites (and campaigns) that align with your conversion-increasing goals. 

These digital marketing agencies also have proven track records of growing numerous businesses and optimizing website performances. So, you can certainly rely on them to do an exceptional job — even without hurting your business wallet.

4. Produce relevant and consistent designs.

Relevance and consistency are among the most crucial elements to reflect in your site and convert your visitors.

Relevance implies that your content and design relate directly to your customers’ interests or business niche. It then leads visitors to explore your materials and invitations further.

On the other hand, consistency allows your business to present a unified brand image, which builds trustworthiness. 

If you keep changing how you look — which supposedly reflects who you are — you confuse your visitors. You will make them think you’re fickle and repel them from your brand.

Let’s say you’re organizing a virtual summit, designing a pop-up, and dedicating a landing page to your site for the event. 

In that case, your web page and pop-up designs (including other materials) should correctly reflect the summit’s theme, feel, and dynamics.

To do that, you should know first the difference between a summit and a conference or any other event.

Summits gather high-level organizational leaders for issue-resolving purposes, while conferences invite more generic sectors (e.g., nurses, teachers) for idea exchanges. 

That means your summit landing page and pop-up must look and sound more formal and serious than those for a conference. 

The designs should also contain the brand colors of the event and your company. This helps visitors associate your content with the summit and your business, encouraging them to consider joining.

Final thoughts on building a conversion-friendly website

Developing a conversion-oriented website doesn’t have to be expensive. 

With the right low-cost tools and tactics, you can design one that effectively attracts and turns visitors into paying customers. 

Follow these and other strategies, and you can launch your business, convert shoppers, and drive revenues without breaking the bank