One-page starter website for your food business is quicker and cheaper than you think
Congratulations! You came up with a food business idea and now have a name for your food business. And now you might have set up some social media accounts, including Facebook. But then the stress begins to build as you keep getting asked ‘What’s your website address?’ And while you’re happy to send these new customers to your social media pages, you want a main page that holds all those links.
Starting out, a one-pager website may be all you need. It’s literally a single page that identifies what your business is, and can have buttons to take them to other outside links for more information, whether it be your social account, email, or perhaps a third party site where you sell your products. Simply put, it’s the main hub where all your information is.
And while Squarespace and Wix may be what you first reach for to build a website, this may be a little too robust ---and costly if you’re still thinking up of what to put on the website you hope to have. So, while you are planning this big website, there’s no need to stall in having an actual website for yourself, and it’s free to start with carrd.co
What is Carrd?
In their own words, Carrd is a platform for building simple, responsive, one-page sites for pretty much anything, whether it's a personal profile, a landing page with a MailChimp signup form, or something a bit more elaborate. It's fast, flexible, simple to use, and 100% free.
Some templated layouts, access to analytics, and a few other features cost a little more money, at the tune of less than $20 a year.
Here are some basic steps to take toward publishing your one-page website.
Step 1: Buy your website domain name.
Use something like Google Domains, Namecheap or any other vendors and go ahead and secure that website address. Keep it simple, or get someone with knowledge about web address length to help you come up with a good one. Even if your website isn’t ready, you will want to get this paid for before someone takes the domain name of your dreams from you.
For an average price of around $10 for each year, this is a cost that you should be able to afford. Afterall, it’s your business.
But! If you don’t have the $10 right now, you can still build a Carrd website and publish it for FREE.
Step 2: Go to Carrd.co and try it out.
Sign up for an account, and get started. With the pro account at $19/year, you get a many more features like forms that may be really useful for you already. But the main objective is to get your web presence in order, not perfected. Pick a template that looks good to you, and just start.
Here’s a little guide on Business Insider on how to use Carrd. And the Carrd website also has plenty on documentation on how to use their tools.
Basic information to remember as you build your site:
Your business name
What you do
Menu / Products offered
How can people reach you? Is there a specific page (like Facebook) where people should visit for the most up-to-date information?
Social media handles and any other places where you are visible and sharing often.
Step 3: Forward your domain to go to your carrd site.
Ready to publish this version of your website? If you have the free version of Carrd, you can forward any domain to go to your carrd site. This should be a relatively quick ‘fill in the blank’ sort of process in the dashboard of where you purchased your domain. If you do have the pro account, no one needs to know you used carrd to build the site. Follow the instructions on Carrd if you want to use your custom domain. If you have trouble with this step, reach out customer support of your domain provider, or maybe you have a friend who knows about these things. Either way, this is the critical process in connecting your custom domain to your Carrd site.
When your ‘real’ website is done, just make sure to change the settings at your domain hosting.
Step 4: Publish. And direct people to this site.
Let’s go! Remember: a website is a work in progress, but the best one is the one that’s up and visible to people so they can easily find you.