Half of your work peers and family is on Facebook – but the other half isn’t. Some use Instragram while others don’t have smart phones. How can you share your holiday thoughts with everyone in one place? What if you want to share your business’ holiday specials or favorite photos? Make a holiday website!
Even if you aren’t technically inclined, it is easy using a free website builder like IM Creator. By using one of the free templates you don’t have to know much about design. The layout is done for you.
Just click on anything you want to change. For images, click the image and then ‘Replace Pic’. Here are some ideas for building a fun site for free:
Thanksgiving Get Together
Change the background to a group photo. Put a photo of the food front and center. Change the text to Thanksgiving 2014 Family or Business Name.
In the ABOUT ME section, change the text to ABOUT US 11.27.2014 and write some details about your get together in the paragraph under the date. Click on Info and write MORE ABOUT US with more details.
Click on gallery and add photos of the food and everyone in attendance. You can create as many pages for photos as you like. You can even add videos or turn some of the photos into a slideshow. Photos can be cropped on the screen and linked to another site (optional).
In the CONTACT ME section you can add contact details for the person in your family, business or group who keeps track of everyone best.
Holiday Specials for Businesses
If you don’t have a website or you have one that requires a web designer to update, you can create one yourself to feature your holiday sales products.
Under the fashion templates is one called Dream Play. Click ‘Customize Now’ and you can swap out the existing images for the products you have on sale.
To see how it worked I created a mock-up of an existing holiday specials page for Ad Premiums Unlimited. I know the owner of this promotional products company and helped them create the specials page within the Sage ecommerce solution they use.
You can compare the page I built using IM Creator (above and at the link to the left) with their specials page on their ecommerce site (below and at this second link):
How IM Creator Works
Much of what you can do is obvious, but if you get stuck you can download their manual or visit the support center by clicking ‘help’. If you decide you love your new creation, you can connect your site to a domain and have it hosted on that domain. This currently costs $7.95 per month and includes:
- Unlimited space and bandwidth
- Custom email address
- Google analytics integration
- Premium support
- Advanced SEO
- Ability to backup and move your site anywhere
- 14 day money back guarantee
Note that the social media icons were already in the template. Just add your url for each of your accounts and save. Be sure to test any links you include to make sure they work and land on the right page.
Experiment with different photos, text fonts and sizes. Just remember that there is no ‘undo’. In order to save the site you created, you need to publish it.
You do NOT have to upgrade to a paid account to have a live site!
What you have published will be saved on the i-m-mx domain under your username and the name you chose for the site you built.
To move between pages, click ‘Pages’. To customize the page, click ‘Add an Element’ to create a text box, an image box, or add a video, gallery, or contact page. There are additional elements, but those are the ones we use most often.
One of the coolest features is a button labeled ‘fit’. Clicking it makes any photo or image fit into the desired space. This is a much easier way to reduce images than learning to use editing software like GIMP. If you’ve ever used Canva you will have a good idea how to use IM Creator.
When using a template, be sure to visit every page and edit example text and change images. You can delete whatever you don’t want to use.
Whether you have a business need for a quick website or you want to share holiday photos with family and peers who don’t use Facebook or other online photo sharing apps, here’s a free solution.
