They say image is everything and when it comes to putting your best foot forward in the digital world, you want to get your brand and image right.
Whether you’re a freelancer looking to promote your services, or an employee or jobseeker in the virtual sphere, it pays to have a carefully crafted online profile which can play an important role in building your personal brand.
When you apply for jobs, most employers will look beyond your resume to find out more about you. They’ll look at your ‘digital footprint’ to see what exists on the Internet as a result of your online activity.
A personal website is a valuable tool which can act as a home for a multitude of career resources, including your resume, portfolio, blog and links to your other professional profiles like LinkedIn or social media accounts.
To help you on your way, here are some of our favourite tools for building a personal website. And the good news is, you can get a professional looking website up pretty quickly without needing a coder.
Wix.com
Wix has you covered with free and low-cost web building and hosting options, designer-made templates that allow you to simply drag and drop, and a huge image collections. You’ll find more than 200 apps to choose from as optional add-ons to optimise your site, including connecting to social media, sending invoices and setting up contact forms. And you’ll find everything you need for SEO and mobile optimisation.
Strikingly
With a claim to fame of helping you build your own website in just 30 minutes, Strikingly is a straight-forward web-builder, even for those with zero design and coding skills. The layouts and designs have been optimised to automatically adjust to any size screen or device, and Strikingly offers 24-7 live support.
Weebly
Weebly is a popular web-builder with all the fill-in-the-blanks template options you could hope for, as well as some extra powerful integration options and tools. It is known for being one of very few budget web builders that allows you to move your site to another host.
Squarespace
Everything is mobile-ready on Squarespace and you can get started without a credit card. It’s easy to purchase and attach a custom domain to your site and each template comes equipped with e-commerce tools so you can start earning money without a single plug-in.
DudaOne
Duda is a great option for anyone wanting to upgrade an existing website. The DudaOne website builder allows you to create a responsive website without coding. You can import all of the content from an existing site into a fresh new template responsive to all devices. The templates also follow Google’s SEO best practices and come with business-driving widgets.
Canva
Canva is an online graphic design program that allows you to create quality imagery and professional branding fast and free. A great option for adding customised imagery to your website, social media channels or CV.
