How do I quickly set up a web presence when I’m a brick and mortar?

- [Sharon] As a small business owner, I understand that you may have a limited budget or you don't have the skills to create a website. I'm Sharon Bennet, a senior IT instructor at LinkedIn Learning, and I'm going to show you how you can create a website for very little expense and with no coding skills. This is exactly what I did when I started my own company. The first thing you'll need to do is to select a provider that you want to create your website with and there are several to choose from. I'm going to show you a few, but by no means is this a full list. Squarespace has been around forever. Weebly is another very simple website creator. Carrd is unique in that it will create a one page website. Very simple, very easy. To sell online, you can use Shopify. And if you have some time and experience, and you want a little bit more control over your website, WordPress could be your solution. I started off with a very simple site, and as I became more comfortable, I myself, moved to WordPress. For our demo, I'm going to use Wix. Wix has been around forever, and it's a great place to start. Wix will walk you through the website creation. Let's get your creativity on and get started. The first thing you'll need to do is sign in. If you don't already have an account, you'll need to sign up for one. I already have one. I'm going to go ahead and log in. Your landing page may look a little different than mine. What you're looking for is the button that says Create New Site. And now, the fun begins. Choose what type of site you want to create. Maybe you want to start blogging or sell your wares online. For our demonstration, I'm going to select business. I'm going to have Wix walk me through the website design, but I could also use the template option to make my own. If you're new to website design, you may find it easier to use the walk through as you get your feet wet. Select the type of site that you want based on your business. This will customize the site for you. For our demonstration, I'm going to be a flower shop. We can then select the type of features that we want on the website. You'll notice that the chat box is already selected. It's a handy way to chat with your customers online. To sell flowers, you could add in the online store. You'll notice that there's additional features as well. Don't worry if you don't add in a feature that you may need later. You can always do it after the fact. Now provide the name for your business. If you had an existing website, you could import it. You can also add your address. Wix will now provide you with a review and you can edit the information if you need to do so. Next, we need to select the theme. Since this is a flower shop, I'm going to select wild rose. And finally, you can pick your favorite homepage design. And that's it, your basic site has been created. You can then edit this website as necessary. One of the features that I like is the ability to view the site as it would look on a desktop, as we see here, or on a mobile device. I'm going to flip back to the desktop mode. After you have made all of your edits, then you'll want to publish the site. I would highly recommend that you don't publish until you're mostly happy with the site itself. When your ready to publish, select publish. If you're using the free version of Wix, you'll provide a name for the page, or you can upgrade and buy a domain name. We're going to publish. And that's it, our website is up and ready to go. Let's take a look at it. And there we have it. In a few minutes, we have a website that we created without knowing any code or spending, in this case, any money. If you haven't created a website for your business, now is a great time to do it. You can use Wix, or any of the other platforms that I showed you. And have fun with it.