Google Sites is an intuitive, easy-to-use platform. It provides a professional website on the front end for your customers and a drag-and-drop builder on the back end. If you aren't tech-savvy or not ready to pay a monthly website fee, you need to consider building a free website on Google Sites. The following three reasons are why Google Sites is my free platform of choice for your e-commerce business.
FREE & QUICK
Who doesn't love free? As you grow your business, subscriptions and expenses will be necessary to scale and streamline your business. However, those business expenses depend on the stage you are in for your business or whatever suits your needs. As you build your business, it is possible to be profitable early on in your journey. Therefore, adding a vast array of equipment, stockpiling materials, and signing up for many subscriptions are unnecessary.
If you are a tee shirt seller, a heat press from Amazon is the main expense required to get started. Push yourself to make that money back in profit before investing in your next business wish list item. Getting into the habit of not going into debt for your business will pay dividends later. Instead, work to build up a business account, so you can pay cash for new tools & save with annual subscriptions.
Circling back, a $29 monthly website expense adds up if you haven't hit the ground running or can’t devote time to your business as you wanted. A free Google Site takes the pressure off trying to gather sales early on when you are still working on refining your business processes, craft, and growing your customer base.
Building a Google Site is an excellent choice if you need to get your website up quickly. Please continue reading to learn about how easy it is to create!
EASY TO USE
There is no need to understand how to write code while building your Google Site. This platform is optimized for mobile viewing as well. To get started, you can use one of the pre-made templates provided. After you are ready to launch, ensure you "Publish" your site. If you get stuck, the Google Site resource library has simple, step-by-step instructions you can follow.
If you aren't ready to share your site or want a limited number of individuals to have access, you can restrict that in the settings. If you want someone to work on your website, make them an editor, which grants them edit rights. When you are ready to go live, change the viewer settings to the public! You can work on your site without having to remove it from public view. Your changes will be private to you until you hit "Publish."
Google Sites is the cherry on top of the rest of their user-friendly, cloud-based products, as you can integrate them into your Google Site. You can import information found in any files/folders you have saved on:
- Google Drive
- Google Docs
- Google Slides
- Google Calendar
- Google Sheets
The embedded link will automatically update your website when updating information housed on these platforms. This means you can make changes from your mobile device as required.
PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE
Free, quick to build & easy to use are the stepping stones to getting you your dedicated, professional site. Social media is borrowed land. You do not own your followers. Mark Zuckerburg and ByteDance do. Think about what would happen tomorrow if you lost your social media account. Could you still take orders? Would your customers know where to find you? Not to mention, all of that hard work you put into your social media accounts isn’t building yourself SEO (Search Engine Optimization), but it is for those social media platforms!
Google Sites allows you to buy a new domain or transfer an existing domain. Create a unique website URL that you own! What about customers that aren’t on social media? How are you selling to them? You can still convert sales from customers not on social media with a website. Your unique domain allows them to always know where to find you. To buy a domain, you can do so via websites like Go Daddy. Most URLs can be purchased for $20 for two years and renewed at $20 yearly. Secure your domain here.