How to Create Amazing Personal Websites (in Just 1 Click!)
You don’t need a web developer to build your personal website anymore. Gone are the days of shelling out obnoxious amounts of money. It’s the 21st century now and you can build your own personal website with a few clicks.
In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through how to create your own personal website in under five minutes. Let’s get started.
The Case For Having a Personal Website
In the post How to Brand Yourself for Remote Work in 2 Easy Steps, I showed you why personal websites are invaluable to your personal brand and to your remote job search.
To summarize: recruiters love personal websites. Domain.ME, a provider of the “.me” domain extension, conducted a survey in January 2015 of 300 HR professionals and found the following:
- One-third of respondents agreed that a personal website provides an advantage for job seekers.
- Half the respondents believe a personal website helps to humanize a candidate.
- Four in 10 recruiters are more inclined to contact the candidate with a personal website when considering two candidates with seemingly equal qualifications.
A personal website allows you to showcase who you are, without the limitations of professional networks like LinkedIn. Few people have their own websites, so having one will make you stand out, look more professional (if done the right way), and make you appear tech-savvy.
The Surprising Benefits of Having a Personal Website
Before we jump into the meat of this article, I want to stress that so many doors have opened for me because of my personal website. For example:
- A year after creating my personal website, it became the first link on Google when searching for my name “Victor Kung”. With that, I surpassed another Victor Kung, a San Diego Realtor who has been the bane of my existence throughout my entire life.
- I got an internship as a web developer with a tech startup in Chicago because I was the only applicant who had a personal website.
- I started receiving emails for freelance work from people all over the United States who found me on Google. One company I have worked with for over two years was a startup based in Canada. Since then, the’ve been acquired and have relocated to Florida!
These are just a few of the surprising things that have happened to me since I created my personal website in Summer 2013.
You Don’t Have to Know Code to Use a Website Builder
That’s right. You don’t have to know how to write a single line of code to build a website. Thanks to website builders, the process is broken down into 3 simple steps:
- You sign up for a website builder
- Select an available domain or URL
- Use a web editor to create your personal website via selecting options, dragging-and-dropping, adding text and images.
Website builders are easy-to-use, intuitive and popular. They operate on a freemium model, meaning that you can use them for free or pay to have more features.
Free versions usually offer less customizability and restricts your options for domain names. For example on Strikingly, the website builder we will be using, free domains all use the “.strikingly.com” domain name. Therefore your website would be “your-website.strikingly.com”.
Paid versions will give you access to all features and will allow you to have your own domain. Using the example above, you would be able to use the domain name “your-website.com”, providing that the domain is not taken by someone else.
Create a Website in One Click Using Strikingly
The website builder we are going to use is called Strikingly. It is a simple and beautiful website builder that allows you to create websites in minutes.
It is the first website builder I ever used and the tool I used to build my first personal website and portfolio page back in Summer 2013:
Strikingly’s coolest feature is their 1-click website generator. By connecting your LinkedIn profile, Strikingly automatically generates a unique personal website in seconds.
Polish Your LinkedIn Profile Beforehand
If you don’t have or need to polish your LinkedIn profile, make sure you read my tutorial titled 6 Ways to Demand Love and Attention on LinkedIn. We are going to be using the information on your LinkedIn profile, so make sure everything is current and updated.
Using a Website Builder Is Cost Effective
Price-wise, using a website builder like Strikingly will be much cheaper than hiring someone to build the website for you. Strikingly’s monthly fee is $16–20 depending on if you sign up on a per month or year basis.
Walkthrough of Strikingly’s LinkedIn App
To start, go to Strikingly’s homepage. There you will scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “LinkedIn App” in the footer.
On the following page, click “Connect to LinkedIn” and sign into your LinkedIn account. Strikingly will take a few seconds to load your website. And that’s it! You have a website that will look something like this:
Now that you have the basic framework of your website, you can start editing and tweaking to make it better. Here are some suggestions:
– Add in images on the “Experience” timeline. Strikingly does this automatically but make sure you double check for mistakes.
– Get rid of the clutter. Your online resume should act as an overview of your professional life, what you stand for. The longer your page, the easier it is for the reader to lose attention.
– Under “Skills”, group your specific skills and interests into sections.
Things to Know
- Strikingly pulls in some of your data, not everything, from your LinkedIn profile.
- If you update your LinkedIn profile, your site will not automatically update because data is pulled only once (when you sign into your LinkedIn Account during the initial site generation).
- You can manually update your site by going to your site editor in Strikingly.
For more information about how to create and edit your website, refer to Strikingly’s knowledge base. I would also recommend checking out Strikingly’s library of starter videos for new users.
Share Your Website With the World
Once you’re done editing your website, make sure to publish it so that it lives on the world wide web. Now that it is published, here are some tips to make the most out of your website:
– Put in your professional name as the domain. The one-click page provides a placeholder URL, for example site16884–4391–5615.strikingly.com. You will want to update your URL to something like “your-name.com” to optimize your personal branding. You can choose your own domain through Strikingly. Find out more about Strikingly domains here.
– Attach your site to your resume, LinkedIn profile, business card, etc. There’s no replacement for publicizing the site yourself.
There Are Other Website Builders Out There
As a beginner, I encourage you to try Strikingly first. However, if you would like to look into other website builders, I got you covered.
Here are 14 Stunning Ways to Build Your Personal Website, a list created by The Muse author Sarah Chang (follow @sarahlichang). This comprehensive list runs through all the most popular website builders in the market.
Now Get Started
If you’ve been following this series, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have your own personal website within the next five minutes. We are living in a tech-enabled world and it is time for you to get with the times and have your own personal website.
Let me know how things go through email or in the comments section below!
Victor runs The Remote Lifestyle (http://theremotelifestyle.com), where he teaches you step-by-step how you can become a successful digital nomad.
