How To Build An Appealing Branded Website from Scratch in Under 2 Hours | by Neeramitra Reddy | Dec, 2022

No code or technical knowledge required

In the 1970s, a simple webpage would take lines and lines of painstaking HTML — hosting it on the web was a worse nightmare.

Now? Zero code and breezy drag-and-drop to build an aesthetic, functional website — and 5 minutes to go live!

Be it recruiters scouring for talented candidates or customers looking for quality products, it’s all in the online landscape right now.

So no matter who you are and what you do, claim your chunk of the internet.

Props to my friend Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi for drawing my attention to this amazing web app.

Head over to Carrd, sign up for free, and let’s get started:

Step 1 → Decide Your Template Type:

What kind of website do you want — is it a landing page for an eBook, course, or newsletter?

Or a profile page to list all your major links? A blog to host SEO-optimized written content?

Or a full-blown website with payment gateways and stuff?

Choose accordingly.

Step 2 → Choose A Pre-Made Template:

As you scroll through the templates, look for an approximate match.

This is because we can always edit the template to resemble exactly what’s in your mind.

To preview a template, hover over it and click on “Demo”.

Step 3 → Customize the Living Heck out Of the Chosen Template

Open the template and start editing away.

Click on the background — to add/modify/reposition the background image

Change the background image’s positioning, gradient, and overlay texture as you desire.

Change the title and subheadings by clicking on them — I removed them both as I already have a branded logo.

Now, let’s come to the buttons — click on them. For each button, change the display text, icon, and link to redirect to when clicked.

You can also change the button color, width, height, text color, hover color, and other attributes.

Untick “Span Multiple Lines” to make your button text stay in a single line.

Once you’re done with the buttons, hover on the outer box to change the “page” settings.

I’ve widened the buttons and moved them to the bottom — you can also change the vertical and horizontal padding.

For the social media bottom icons, the editing steps are the same as for the buttons.

Remove the socials you don’t use, add the ones you want, change the icon shape, and center-align them if you wish.

Play around with various fonts, colors, and styles until you end up with something you like.

Add/remove/modify the buttons — and double-check the links of each labeled button.

Let loose your creativity and tinker away patiently — you’ll end up with something clean.

To explore Carrd’s full arsenal of tools, check out this ultra-comprehensive video tutorial.

P.S. Check the mobile view before finalizing your design.

Step 4 — Publish Your Website To The Internet:

Pat yourself on the back as it’s now “Go live!” time.

It’ll take a few seconds for the site to be published — once done, you can head over to the URL and view your finished beauty.

If you want to make changes, you can always go back to your site, edit, and republish it.

To make your website look premium, you need your own domain.

While Carrd allows you to publish in a free domain, an “XYZ.carrd.co” URL doesn’t sound professional.

Compare manximize.carrd.co vs manximize.com — both URLs lead to my website.

So, here’s how to buy your own domain:

• Head over to Google Domains.
• Search the name of your brand or the phrase you’d want your URL to possess.
• Scroll through the different domain extensions — and if you get a “.com”, “.in”, “.net”, “.pro”, or “.org” for an affordable price, buy it ASAP.

• Are all the decent domains are heftily priced? Change the search keyword to something more unique.
• Thanks to the rareness of “manximize”, I got a .com domain for under $12 a year!

Once you finalize your domain, add it to your cart, and checkout — for a recurring annual fee.

You can also unlock a professional email address — for example, I can get neeramitra.reddy@manximize.com.

But I don’t yet need a professional email address — plus, it costs 10x as much as the domain itself!

Now, there are two ways you can link your new domain with your Carrd website:

• Add site forwarding to your new domain to redirect to the Carrd website. Navigate to Website → Edit Forwarding → Forward To →Enter the Carrd URL → Forward.

• Edit your Carrd website and publish it to your new domain (requires a paid upgrade).

If you’re just starting, it’s 100% fine to stick to the “carrd.co” domain — it’s not a biggie.

But as and when your brand or business scales, consider getting your own domain and email.

In today’s web scape, all it takes is some fiddling to build nigh anything.

Carrd is only one among the hundreds of no-code website builders out there — Wix, WordPress, and Squarespace are other popular options.

While this guide can help you get a website up and running, I’d encourage you to tinker on your own.

Start with “How-to”s. Experiment with other no-code website builders. Figure out web domains and hosting. Look into web ranking and SEO. Understand basic internet security.

Such tinkering will teach you more than most pricy degrees and fancy courses do.

Then, share your findings in an article just like this.

Happy building!