Fonts and Colors for the Retail, Healthcare, and Financial Industries

Have you ever realized how colors and fonts influence our lives in a positive or negative way? While sitting at a restaurant, have you ever get offended with the color scheme or font selection? You might have faced this situation that is quite obvious. According to research, many people buy a product after getting inspired by its color scheme.

The color you select or font you choose for the logo says a lot about your retail store or health care center. Your one mistake can bring a huge impact on your business. The right color combination and font selection bring a specific image to the customer’s mind, so make sure it won’t be wrong.

Always remember that Typography makes a huge impact on your brand’s identity. Taking it lightly can cost later. In this guide, I will explain a bit about Healthcare, Retail, and Financial Industries and what font and color combinations they use to make it successful or what should they avoid using. You might get the notes from this article to improve your font and color combination. Let’s get along.

Retail Industries

Let’s begin with a few notable and prominent retail stores operating across the globe.

Color Scheme

You might have noticed that all the popular retail stores have loud and vibrant color schemes that make the store and its products stand out. Isn’t it? It is mainly due to 2 most significant reasons. They want to convey a clear and powerful message through their color scheme, and secondly, they want to attract the maximum customers because people usually get attracted towards loud colors.

Though there is no hard and fast rule to choose a specific color combination you should go for loud colors in order to make your brand established, i.e., Yellow, Red, Orange, etc. It is better to make a powerful contrast to make your brand more prominent.

Font Selection

Now comes the font selection of retail stores that is the main element for any store or website. Choosing a perfect font or font combination has a huge impact on your brand, and one can’t ignore this fact. The main element that you should always consider is; the font should be legible and understandable so that customers won’t find it hard to read your product’s description.

Furthermore, be consistent if you are using many fonts and don’t overuse the number of fonts as it would look odd. Using a Supreme font on the Logo would be an ideal choice as this font is usually used for this purpose. You can use 1 or 2 fonts with the combination of Supreme font to make it look appealing on your designs. Whatever message you are trying to convey through your brand should be legible and understandable.

Healthcare Industries

After Retail, let’s move towards Healthcare, where the selection of fonts and color combinations is equally important and plays a major role.

Color Scheme

Have you ever gone to Healthcare centers and didn’t like the color scheme? Healthcare centers should provide friendly, calm, and professional vibes to the people, so you should be extra careful when it comes to choosing color combinations. Go with cool colors, for instance, Green and Blue.

The green color gives cool vibes, while the blue color is known for being an inspirational and wisdom color. Apart from this, you need to be professional in such places; for example, avoid using Neon green color in Healthcare centers because it is a bright color that would not look professional and would be too loud to the eyes.

Font Selection

Now comes the selection of fonts that is another complicated yet necessary task to perform. Like any other platform, healthcare centers also demand legible fonts that don’t disturb people to read the message. You will come across many serif fonts that deliver security vibes and reflect professionalism.

Now selecting fonts has no longer remain a challenging task as we have unlimited options, so things have become quite easy. Many noted healthcare centers pay special consideration towards these elements that often people or organizations take for granted. Establish your brand identity by choosing the ideal font and color scheme.

Financial Industries

Now comes the financial industries i.e., Banks, cards, etc. Have you ever got impressed with any bank’s logo? It would surely be due to color and font selection.

Color Scheme

Financial services brand often go after colors that develop feelings of trust and reliability. Usually, 1 color is used in the logo as the main color, and the other one is used as secondary to make a pleasant mix. You might have noticed a few banks use red color as the main color while they mix red with black or white to create an appropriate contrast.

Similarly, you can go after any other vibrant color but make sure to chose that secondary color that makes a good compliment. Black, Blue, and red are worth recommending colors for financial services departments.

Font Selection

Now comes the font selection that is another essential element. They also go for such fonts that create professionalism and reliability like healthcare centers. However, you might have noticed that financial sectors mostly focus on using modern fonts and unique color combinations.

Their main aim for doing so is to remind the customers that these services are not old and they can consider them anytime. As a recommendation, you can go for a sans-serif typeface that develops the emotions of strength, unity, and reliability. Furthermore, you should avoid using handwritten fonts in such places or platforms because they are quite casual.

Final Words

Whether we talk about Healthcare centers, Financial industries, or retail stores, there is no rule regarding font selection and color scheme. You have to search for yourself on how to bring charm and professionalism so that it attracts the maximum customers. These are the 2 most important elements that should never be taken for granted.

Make sure to come up with something cool and extraordinary to stand out on the competitor’s list. I hope this article would be helpful for anyone related to these industries or brands. Take notes and act according to them.

from WebsiteHosting.com Blog https://websitehosting.com/blog/fonts-and-colors-for-the-retail-healthcare-and-financial-industries/

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What’s the Importance of Online Reviews?

The post What’s the Importance of Online Reviews? appeared first on HostGator Blog.

Whether it’s an appliance, a pair of running shoes, or a handyman—each time you have a choice to make that involves spending money, you have a process you go through to make that decision. And chances are, somewhere in that process, you check online reviews. 

Why wouldn’t you? For consumers, online reviews are an excellent way to get an idea of what to expect from a product or service before shelling out cash. For businesses, that makes them an important part of the way your brand and products are perceived by the world. 

Why Are Online Reviews Important?

Online reviews are powerful. BrightLocal research found that 82% of consumers read online reviews about local businesses, and they read an average of ten reviews before they feel they can trust a business. 

For consumers, online reviews feel like the best snapshot they have into what they’ll get when they make a purchase from you.

5 Benefits of Online Reviews 

Beyond helping prospective customers in the research phase of the purchasing process, online reviews also provide local businesses with a number of important benefits. 

1. Consumers trust online reviews.

You may feel your branding and marketing presents an accurate and trustworthy picture of the experience you’ll provide. 

But most of us have been burned by a scam, a bad product, or a negative customer service experience at some point. Those businesses can be just as good at talking themselves up as legitimate businesses. For a consumer, hearing from another customer is more convincing. 

A customer’s point of view is immediately more trustworthy than the word of a business, because they have nothing to gain by praising a company or product. They’re unbiased. And as the end user of a product, they have experience that’s directly relevant to other consumers. 

Say you’re considering a pair of shoes you’ll be wearing on your morning runs. A customer review that comes from another runner provides valuable information about how someone like you rates a shoe in the categories that matter to you, be they comfort, durability, or a tendency to get smelly. 

2. Online reviews provide social proof.

Social proof is the idea that people are more likely to make a decision if they know a lot of other people have already done so. It can take a number of different forms—brands promoting newsletters by saying how many subscribers they already have, or businesses boasting that they’re the most popular option in a particular space. 

If someone’s trying to decide what accounting software to choose, for example, knowing that the majority of business owners have gone with a particular brand can serve as a shorthand. Instead of doing extensive research, they can assume all those other people knew what they were doing and go with the same product.

Social proof is a valuable tool for brands in all its forms, but online reviews are one of the most powerful versions of social proof out there. That’s because customers know they’re authentic. And because they often get specific. Knowing a bunch of other people use a product because the website says so tells you something. But knowing a specific person uses it for the kind of purpose you plan to use it for tells you more. And seeing a customer review from them that outlines the specific things they like and don’t like about the product—that’s immensely helpful to someone in the process of choosing between multiple options.

Social proof also comes into play regarding the number of reviews you have. People will trust a star rating more if it comes from an average of 500 reviews versus two or three. So while the content of the business reviews is important, how many people are purchasing your products and then taking time to leave a review after matters here too. 

3. Online reviews are good for SEO.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the marketing field that comprises all the tactics you can use to increase the chances of your website showing up in the search engines. SEO is complex, and search engines take a lot of different ranking factors into account when deciding which links to put on page one of the search engine results page (SERP). 

But for local businesses in particular, reviews play an important role. 

In a 2018 analysis of local rankings factors, experts surveyed by Moz estimated that business reviews account for over 15% of how Google determines rankings for the local pack—the results that show up alongside a map in local results. And they figured they account for about 6.5% of local organic rankings. 

While that means that getting a lot of good reviews isn’t going to put you at the top of Google alone, it suggests they can make a big difference. If your business cares about SEO (and any business with a website should), then trying to get more online reviews is a smart tactic to include in your strategy.  

4. Online reviews increase conversions.

When online reviews are readily accessible to interested prospects, they bolster their confidence in making a purchase. Someone on your website trying to decide whether a product is worth the money or not will be much more likely to go through with the purchase if they can scroll down and see reviews from dozens of other customers weighing in on what they like (and don’t like) about the item.

Research shows that reviews can lead to an 18% increase in sales. No wonder adding online reviews is a CRO best practice.

And surprisingly, it’s not just good reviews that have that effect. Bad reviews can increase a conversion rate by 67%. 

On the surface, that makes little sense. But think about it: when a customer sees a mix of good and bad reviews, it makes the good ones more convincing. If a product has 1,000 reviews and all of them are five stars and only talk about the product in superlative terms, you might start to get a bit suspicious—not one person out of 1,000 had a less than perfect experience?

Having a lot of reviews that show a diversity of experiences and opinions makes them all more convincing and powerful. And anyone interested enough in a product to read through a number of reviews is someone already far down the path of purchase, which also helps explain how a person who reads a bad review might be more likely to convert. 

5. Reviews help you understand your audience better.

One of the golden rules in business is you need to understand who your audience is, and learn how to speak directly to their wants and needs. Businesses go to great lengths to better understand their prospects and customers—audience research, focus groups, customer interviews and surveys, and data analysis on user behavior. All of those are valuable, but reviews give you the same kind of information for free.

Every time a customer provides a review, they deliver unbiased, honest feedback about your product and services. In addition to letting you know whether they’re satisfied or not, reviews often get into the details of how they feel. They may include specific mentions of features they like or think could be better. They may highlight if they like the product, but not the customer service. Or they may provide specifics on how different types of audiences are using your products.

Reviews reveal valuable information you can put to use when making updates to your current products or deciding on new products to add to your business model. They provide insights into who your audience is and what they care about that you can use when crafting accurate buyer personas and creating your marketing strategy. And they reveal the language your customers use when talking about your products, something especially important when choosing what keywords to target in your SEO and pay-per-click strategies. 

If you get enough reviews to give you a cross section of information on how different customers feel about your brand and products, they become a treasure trove of information to help you build a more successful business over time. 

How to Get More Online Reviews

Before your business can reap any of the benefits of online reviews, you need customers to take the time to provide them. Since giving a company an online review takes time and effort, most customers won’t bother. Figuring out how best to nudge them to take the time can be tricky. 

And just in case it needs to be said—online reviews have to be genuine for them to deliver the value we’ve discussed. Paying for reviews makes a business look sleazy. Customers can generally spot inauthenticity. And you risk being penalized by the review site, or even fined by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). 

Your goal should be real reviews from actual customers. Here are a few steps you can take to increase your positive review numbers. 

Step 1: Make sure your product is high quality.

Before you take the step of encouraging more reviews for your product, consider if your product is good enough to get positive reviews from customers. The last thing you want to do is get those review numbers up, only to see a majority of one and two-star reviews come in. Yikes!

The first, basic step to getting more good reviews for your product is to have a really awesome product. If you haven’t yet, do some user testing or quality control testing. Does your product do what you’re saying it does in the marketing? Is it durable and reliable? How does it compare to similar products in terms of quality and features?

If your product’s been on the market for a while already, spend some time reviewing the feedback you’ve already gotten to see if there are key areas for improvement you should address. Once you’re confident you’re delivering a top-notch product to customers, then you can move onto the work of getting more reviews.

Step 2: Prioritize customer service.

When you think about your best customer service experiences—the type that earned your loyalty—they probably didn’t start with everything going right to begin with. 

The times a brand really gets the chance to shine is when customers face a problem or question you have to address. If a package gets lost in the mail or a product breaks, are you prepared to deal with it in a way that will wow your customers?  

You’ll get some reviews from customers that have a straightforward experience with your product. But many customers are more likely to take that time if you deliver an exceptional customer service experience in response to a problem they had. So make sure your customer service team is full of people that are qualified and equipped to provide customers with satisfactory solutions to any issues that arise. 

Step 3: Ask for reviews directly.

Once you’ve checked the most important boxes for getting good reviews—making sure your products and service are good enough to earn them—the next step is fairly straightforward. Ask people directly!

Customers are more likely to take five minutes to leave a review for you if you give them that direct nudge. Let them know it means a lot to you and their opinion matters. Consider including your ask in the confirmation email after they make a purchase, with links to primary review sites. Or send a followup email timed to go out right around the time their product comes in the mail. 

If you’re running a small or local business, go ahead and include language in your request that emphasizes how important reviews are to small businesses like yours. You might even mention how leaving a review helps out other customers. Giving them an emotional reason to care about taking that small step makes them more likely to do so. 

Step 4: Make it extremely easy for customers.

People are busy. While leaving a positive review could theoretically take only a minute or two, when your customers have a long list of other tasks they need to worry about on any given day, even that can feel like too much. Anything you can do to remove barriers from the process and make it extremely easy to leave that review increases their chances of doing so.

To start, make sure you already have a profile on all the main review sites. If a customer heads over to Yelp to review you and finds you’re not there, they’re more likely to scrap the whole idea than to go check and see if you have a Google listing. While you may prefer they stick to leaving online business reviews on your own site or a particular review platform of your choice, if they have a preferred place, you want to be there. 

Then put links to all the places a customer can go to leave a review in spots that make it easy for them to access—your website, your confirmation and follow up emails, your marketing emails—anywhere you can think of.

Clicking on a link is easier than navigating to a website on their own. And while the time difference may be minimal, the convenience can be the difference between whether or not a customer chooses to take that action. 

Don’t Overlook the Importance of Online Reviews

Whether or not your business chooses to be intentional in encouraging and monitoring your online business reviews, they’ll still play a role in the decisions your audience makes. 

If you want to increase trust in your brand and drive more sales, making online reviews a part of your business model is smart. You can’t force customers to leave a review, the ultimate decision is always up to them. But you can take steps that increase the likelihood they’ll take the time to leave you an online review. 

Find the post on the HostGator Blog

source https://www.hostgator.com/blog/importance-online-reviews/

How to Host an Online Event

The post How to Host an Online Event appeared first on HostGator Blog.

Many hoped the social distancing required by COVID-19 would be something we could look back on as a temporary inconvenience of the past by now. But in the United States, the news each day reinforces concerns that we’ll likely be spending a lot of time at home for months to come. 

For businesses and organizations that want to maintain a connection with their audience, online events are poised to be a big part of our immediate future.

If in-person events were a regular part of your business model in the pre-pandemic days, then transitioning to online events makes sense. Even if events weren’t part of your business before, virtual gatherings can be a way to connect with and engage your audience at a time when they’re struggling. In this guide, we’ll teach you how to host an online event or a virtual conference for your business.

10 Steps to Hosting Online Events

Hosting online events is an entirely different beast than in-person events. Even if you have ample experience with event planning, shifting to an online environment will come with a learning curve. 

In some ways, online event planning is easier. You aren’t limited geographically, and don’t have to try to find an event space that’s just the right size and cost for your needs. 

But in others, it’s more difficult. You face the challenge of figuring out how to make sure the event is engaging enough not to lose your audience to the distractions around them—from kids and pets to the vast internet just a tab’s click away. And you have to worry about the technical side of things, where a lot can go wrong. 

But online events can be successful. By following these ten steps, you’ll increase your chances of planning and holding a virtual event that goes off without a hitch, and achieves all your goals. 

1. Clarify your why.

If you start hosting virtual events out of some sense it’s what you’re supposed to do, your events won’t have a clear purpose. And they’re unlikely to accomplish anything worthwhile for either your brand or your audience. For an online event to be worth the investment in time, work, and money you put into it, you need to understand what it’s for.

Start by thinking through what your goals are. Do you want to help establish a community within your industry? Are you hoping to build some goodwill with your audience by providing something genuinely valuable? Or is this directly a way to generate new leads to pass over to your sales team afterward?

Understanding what you want to get out of your event, and what you want your audience to get from it, will guide you in every other step on this list. 

2. Figure out your online event format.

Online events can take many forms. Whether your event is meant to be educational, entertaining, promotional, community building, or some combination of those things will determine which format to go with.

Some online event ideas to consider include:

Webinars

Thinking about planning a live webinar? This is a great way to do a video conferencing, especially if you have a guest speaker or presenter. Webinars are a fairly standard format for any event that will center on a presentation. They’re a good choice if your goal is to provide educational content, or promotional content that touches on what your product provides. 

Online Panels

Panels include several experts in discussion. Because of their back-and-forth nature, they can often keep an audience’s attention more effectively than one speaker. And by bringing multiple experts in, you increase the appeal to your audience and gain several partners in promotion.

Online Discussions 

Discussion-based online events can be good for both education and community building. For these, make sure you have something to get the conversation going—whether that’s a list of questions or prompts, a specific discussion topic, or a book all the attendees know to read in advance. 

Online Classes and Tutorials

Online classes and tutorials are great options if you want to provide educational content to your audience in a live, interactive format. 

Virtual Happy Hours or Coffees

The old standard for networking gatherings—happy hours and coffee meetups—can’t happen in person for the remainder of the pandemic. But you can still host them virtually. Have attendees BYOC (bring your own coffee or cocktail, depending on the time of day) and have discussion topics at the ready in case the conversation lags.

Online Trivia and Game Nights

An entertaining take on online events, hosting a trivia night or finding online games for your community to play can be a fun way to bring people together virtually.   

Interviews 

An interview with a relevant industry expert or influencer popular with your audience can be a good way to garner interest in an online event. 

Performances

With concerts and plays no longer safe, sponsoring or hosting an online performance can be a good way to bring value to your audience and generate a lot of interest in an online event. Many performers have shifted to providing online performances to help people pass the time while stuck at home. 

Conferences

Online conferences are often a hybrid of a few of these types of events. They usually last longer than other types of events, and try to pack more value in as a result. They may include time in the schedule for networking, educational talks and panels, and performances or games to add some fun to the experience. 

3. Decide on the audience for your online event.

When you’re planning an online event, your audience should always be top of mind. An important early step in the process is therefore deciding who the intended audience is. Is the event for current customers only? For prospects likely to buy your products? For anybody that fits into your target audience? 

Also consider how large you want your event to be. Should it be open to everybody, the more the merrier? Or will it work better with a contained audience? Decide if you want to set up an online event registration, which allows you to limit the number of attendees, track who decides to join, and give you the option to charge; or if you want to promote the event widely, and let anyone drop in that’s interested. 

If you decide to charge for the event, then you need to choose technology that lets you set up an online event registration that includes payment processing at the same time. And you need to make sure you’re prepared to provide plenty of value to your audience, so they feel they get enough back from the experience to make what they paid worth it. 

4. Pick your online event platform.

While you can skip scouting for physical event space, putting on a virtual event requires picking the right technology. You’ll find a long list of online event platforms and webinar software products available to consider. The decisions you made in steps one through three will help you determine which features to prioritize.

While you can find free video conferencing services, they tend to have limitations. For businesses or organizations hosting events to instill community or generate leads, investing in a paid product is worth it. Consider how best to balance your budget with your needs, and select the best product for your events.

5. Prepare an agenda for your online event.

Even the simplest of online events will benefit from having an agenda to guide you. An online happy hour will produce more discussion if the host comes with a set of discussion questions in mind, or activities to complete together. 

For more complex events, an agenda is even more important to put together in advance. If you plan to have speakers, you want to determine who to ask and get them lined up well in advance. If you’re hosting an event with games, make sure you know what type of games and have worked out your scheduling so they go off without a hitch.

No matter your event type, this is a crucial planning step. Think through exactly what your event will look like. Figure out the timing. How long will it last, what specific activities will it include, and when will each part of the event begin and end? Even if your event doesn’t match the agenda exactly, having a structure in mind will help you keep things organized and ensure you provide attendees value. 

6. Consider interactive elements.

Knowledge workers are already spending a lot of their time in front of screens every day. Getting people to focus and engage with an event happening on the same screen they’re already spending hours in front of daily is admittedly a challenge. To keep people’s attention and make your online event more memorable, make it interactive.

Most online event platforms provide features that let you slip interactive elements into your online event. Some possibilities include:

• Centering your event on an active discussion – For a discussion-based online event, keeping it interactive is easy, since the nature of the event encourages everyone to participate. Consider having prompts that encourage each person to contribute to the conversation during your online event. 
• Including a Q&A portion – For presentations or panels, give participants the chance to share questions they have with the host, and leave time for speakers to answer those questions before you wrap things up.  
• Hosting polls – Polls are a quick and easy way to include attendees in an event, and to collect information on what they’re dealing with, thinking, or feeling. 
• Enabling chat – Many event platforms include a text chat component. Attendees can send messages or questions to other individual attendees or to the whole group, without interrupting the person speaking. 
• Having quizzes – Quizzes are a fun way to test your attendees’ knowledge, and give them a reason to pay attention during your online meeting. 
• Including offline rewards – Send offline merchandise or goodies to attendees to reward them for showing up or participating. While shipping costs mean this kind of giveaway is more costly than it would have been back in the days of in-person events, it’s a good way to make your event more memorable and valuable to attendees, and to build goodwill with those who make time to show up.

7. Test out your tech.

Everyone that’s had a Skype call drop or watched a colleague get blurry and freeze during a Zoom online meeting knows that technology is the biggest wild card in throwing a successful online event. 

You can’t test out the internet quality of all your attendees, or accurately predict the likelihood of electrical outages on the day of your online event—some things will always be up to chance. But you can test out how well your webinar platform and its relevant features work in advance. Find a few people within your organization willing to join you on your test run. And if your event includes speakers, bring them in as well. 

Go through your agenda and test out everything that will come into play on the big day. If you plan to use the poll feature, have your test group provide their answers. If your speakers will be sharing their screen to go through a PowerPoint, check and see if there are any issues getting that set up. 

Your technology may not work exactly the same on the day of your event as it did during the test run, but by going through all the steps of your event in advance, you can vastly reduce the likelihood of embarrassing technological mishaps once your attendees are present. 

8. Promote your online event.

Even if you do everything else right, your online event can only be successful if people show up. So make sure they know about it! 

Promote it to your email list, on your social channels, and on your website. If it’s an event open to everyone and you really want to drive attendance, consider investing in paid promotion channels like pay-per-click (PPC) ads to get in front of a bigger audience. 

If you took the time to put together an awesome event, all that work will be wasted if you don’t also invest in promotion. Give your audience a chance to learn your event is happening, pitch them on why it’s worth their time, and make it easy for them to complete the online event registration. 

9. Have a backup plan.

Technology is unpredictable. Even if you carefully chose the platform with the best reputation and tested everything out in advance—your speaker could have an internet outage at the exact wrong moment, or the webinar platform could be overloaded that day and slow down. Have a plan in place for what you’ll do if the event isn’t able to go as planned.

That could mean moving your online event to another platform you have set up as backup, having someone else step in to present, or a plan for rescheduling. If the latter, be prepared to offer refunds if relevant and to lose some of your attendees if the new time doesn’t work for them. 

10. Follow up.

No matter what your event goals are, you’ll get more out of it if you follow up with attendees. If the event included a panel, guest speaker, or presentation, share the recording or try live streaming the event. If it was a discussion group, send a brief recap to remind people what you talked about. If it was about community building, tell people where they can find each other and keep the conversation going throughout your digital event.

For example, at HostGator, we publish a blog post after every webinar that recaps the highlights:

An online event may only last a set period of time, but its benefits can extend beyond that moment if you make a point of continuing the relationship after it ends.

Making the Most of Your Online Event

Online events aren’t the same as in person ones. But while you may lose something in translation, you also gain something. They provide more accessibility to people around the world, in all physical and financial situations—meaning you may be able to connect with people you never would have with an in-person event. 

In-person events will inevitably come back in full force when it’s safe for them to do so. But as we all get more accustomed to online events in the meantime—and organizers get better at making them genuinely valuable—they may maintain their popularity even when gathering becomes possible again. 

Ready to host your online event? Check out these top WordPress plugins for events.

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source https://www.hostgator.com/blog/how-to-host-online-event/

What Is WordPress?

The post What Is WordPress? appeared first on HostGator Blog.

If you’ve been researching ways to build your first website, then you’ve undoubtedly come across WordPress. 

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) in the world. It currently powers over one-third of the internet.

But what exactly is WordPress?

At the core, it’s software that powers your website. It controls how your site looks, functions, and performs. It’s what will power the backend of your site, it’s how you’ll publish pages and posts, and it controls how your site will look and how your visitors will interact with your site. 

But, there’s still a lot more to WordPress than that.

Below we’ll dive into what WordPress is, its history, and how you can get started with your own WordPress site today. 

What is WordPress?

WordPress is open-source software that can be used to create and manage websites. It can help you build anything from a simple blog, to an eCommerce store, a business website, a creative portfolio, and anything else under the sun.

Even if you’ve never built a website, it’s not a problem with WordPress. You don’t need to have any design or programming skills to end up with a professional website.

Your site’s design will be taken care of by your WordPress themes, of which you’ll find thousands to choose from. If you want to add more features to your website, then you can do that via the plugin library.

WordPress started as blogging software but has since grown into a full-fledged site builder. 

It’s currently used by sites such as BBC America, TechCrunch, and Vogue.

Here are a few things that make WordPress completely awesome:

• It’s completely free and open source. All you need is a domain name and web hosting, and you can build your site.
• There’s a built-in community. It’s a project created by thousands of volunteers around the world. You’ll find useful tutorials, help, and guides all across the web. 
• It’s flexible and highly customizable. You can build any kind of website, a massive tech blog, a small online store, a business website, a portfolio website, and more. 
• You can quickly add new features. The plugin library is enormous, and with a few clicks, you can add nearly any feature you desire.
• Your site will look good and perform great. WordPress is fast and built to help you rank. With thousands of beautiful themes, your site will look good across any device or screen size.

The Mission of WordPress

The goal of WordPress is to help democratize publishing. WordPress was designed to help make it possible for anyone to share their services, ideas, stories, or products with the world.

This is why the software is open-source, easy to use, setup, and built on the back of a helpful community. 

Not only is it straightforward to get started with WordPress and create your first website or blog, but this software can grow with you and your site. It powers everything from massive content sites receiving millions of monthly visitors, to brand new niche-focused bloggers who just bought their first domain a week ago. 

The History of WordPress

WordPress was created back in 2003. It’s the successor of a project known as b2/cafelog. It was created to fill the gap for a personal publishing framework built on PHP and MySQL. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little created the original version of WordPress. 

But, since the software is open-source, a lot of the project has been built by a community of contributors. Today the face of WordPress is Matt Mullenweg, who is also the founder of Automattic.

This company has developed numerous plugins that you probably use on your site and operates WordPress.com, the paid version of WordPress. 

The first version of WordPress (WordPress 0.7) was released back in 2003. Since that initial release, there have been a series of releases which bring us to the most recent version, Gutenberg. 

The initial release helped to lay the foundation for the modern CMS we know and use today. It included things like comment moderation, the ability to upgrade the software, permalinks that were search engine-friendly, support for multiple post tags and categories, and more. 

As you can see the WordPress history is a long and fruitful one. Here are some key highlights related to the development of the platform:

• In 2003, Automattic brought on Toni Schneider as CEO, the former Oddpost CEO and Yahoo! Executive
• The first WordCamp was held that same year 
• Automattic purchased Gravatar (you see these avatars present today in the comments section of WordPress)
• In 2008 the WordPress Theme Directory was launched (today this offers thousands of free WordPress themes you can download)
• WordPress 3.0 was released in 2010 and helped to make the transition from blogging system to full-fledged CMS
• In 2015, the eCommerce plugin WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic
• 2018 brought us the release of the Gutenberg editor, which provides users with an intuitive block editing experience

You can expect WordPress to continue to evolve and push the boundaries for what you can do with a CMS. 

How WordPress Works

WordPress is an open-source CMS, which means it’s free to install on your website. 

There are two versions of WordPress: the self-hosted WordPress.org and the paid version, WordPress.com. The entirety of this post is about the self-hosted version of WordPress.

The self-hosted version is going to be the primary version of WordPress you’ll most likely be using. This version offers you more freedom and flexibility, and access to the full suite of plugins and themes out there.

Once you sign up for a hosting account, you’ll have the ability to install WordPress on your site. This is done through a variety of one-click software applications that help you install WordPress in a few clicks.

After you’ve installed WordPress, then you can begin customizing your site by installing a theme, adding a few plugins, or writing a blog post.

The entire process is highly intuitive and easy enough for beginners to build a fully-functional professional website. 

5 Benefits of WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the world. Its widespread use is not only due to its flexibility, but because of all the benefits it brings to site owners.

Here are some of the most significant benefits you’ll realize when you use WordPress to power your site:

1. WordPress is Easy to Use (Even For Total Beginners)

Even though WordPress is a powerful and flexible content management system, it’s still very beginner-friendly. Most hosts also make it very easy to install WordPress; all it takes is a few clicks to install the CMS on your site. 

Once WordPress is installed, then you can start customizing your site by installing a theme and adding plugins.

Overall, building a site with WordPress isn’t as easy as using a website builder, but there are so many helpful tutorials online that if you do run into a problem with your site, you won’t be stuck for long. 

The best thing about WordPress is that even if the learning curve is a little higher in the beginning, you’ll be amazed at what you can do in time. There’s no ceiling on what you’ll be able to accomplish with your site. 

2. WordPress is Highly Customizable and Flexible

WordPress can be used to build any kind of website. From large content-driven sites that have thousands of articles to small business websites that only have a handful of pages.

The theme and plugin library is so vast that you can add virtually any feature to your website, just by installing a WordPress plugin. Some plugins can help you add new features to your site, while others can completely transform your site, like how WooCommerce can help transform your website into a full-fledged eCommerce store. 

Plus, no existing design or programming skills are required to use the plugins. 

When it comes to your theme, it’s also easy to find the perfect theme for your site. There are more general themes that can be customized to your liking, or you can find a niche-specific theme that’s perfectly suited to your site. 

Plus, WordPress can grow with your site as well. Even if you’re starting with a smaller site, WordPress can literally support sites that get millions of visitors per month.

3. WordPress is Free and Open Source

Another great thing about WordPress is that it’s entirely free. This can help to keep costs low as you’re building your first website. The only thing that you need to pay for is a domain name and hosting.

There are thousands of different free themes and plugins that you can use to build out your website too. Of course, you’ll also find a massive library of premium themes and plugins available as well, but you can build a professional website quite nearly for free. 

The open-source nature of the software makes it so anyone in the world can contribute to the software, hence the massive rise of the free theme and plugin market.

4. WordPress is SEO Friendly

A lot of websites are highly dependant on search engine rankings. There’s a lot that goes into SEO and ranking highly in the search engines, but having a well-designed site with clean code and clear organizational structure can help you rank.

WordPress sites tend to rank higher in the search engines than other styles of websites. 

Plus, WordPress is very SEO-friendly right out of the gate. Not only that, but there are some excellent SEO plugins that can take your efforts even further, like Yoast SEO.

All you have to do is install and activate the plugin, and it’ll analyze your existing posts and give you recommendations for how you can further improve your onsite SEO. 

5. Managing Your Site is a Breeze

No matter what you’re trying to do with your site, WordPress makes the management process incredibly simple. First off, there are built-in updates, so all you have to do is literally login to your dashboard and click a button, and your site will be up to date.

Managing your growing content library is also incredibly easy. Even with a 1000+ posts on your blog, you can easily update, manage, and create new content. WordPress is built to scale, so no matter how large your site gets. Running a website with a dozen posts will be just as easy as one that contains hundreds. 

It’s no wonder some of the largest blogs in the world have decided to use WordPress to help manage and scale their blogs. 

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WordPress Pros and Cons

While WordPress is the most popular content management system on the market, it’s not the only one. How do you know if WordPress is right for you?

Do what anyone does when they need to make an important decision. Make a list of the pros and cons and see which list better suits your fancy. 

Pros of WordPress

We’ve already talked about the benefits of WordPress, but let’s take a closer look at some of the additional advantages of choosing WordPress as your content management system.

1. WordPress is affordable

Shared hosting plans for WordPress websites start out at $2.95/month and come with unmatched functionality. 

You can host several WordPress websites under one shared hosting plan, you get a free domain, you have site security, and unmetered bandwidth, to name a few.

2. WordPress has hundreds of plugins

If you can dream it on your WordPress website, you can probably do it via one of the hundreds of WordPress free, paid, or third-party plugins. Plugins for WordPress help you design your website without having to do any coding. 

By installing a plugin and clicking a few buttons, you can add social shares to your website, optimize your blog posts for SEO, capture email subscribers for your list, and so much more.

3. WordPress is responsive

Have you ever looked up a website on a tablet or your phone, only to find out you can’t see anything and it’s not optimized for mobile viewing? If so, you know how annoying it is.

New WordPress themes are responsive and optimized for mobile viewing. This means you don’t have to worry about website visitors not being able to see your content when they visit your website via a smart device.

4. WordPress is a DIY software

While you certainly can hire a web developer to build your website, you don’t have to if you opt for WordPress.

WordPress is so intuitive and easy to use that even novice website owners can learn how to build and customize their website.

Cons of WordPress

WordPress is my personal favorite content management system, but it would be naive to say that there aren’t some disadvantages. Here’s a closer look at the cons of WordPress.

1. You have to install updates

I have a few WordPress websites, and sometimes I go a month or two without posting a new blog post. Whenever I log in to my WordPress dashboard, there is always a request for either a software, theme, or plugin update.

To keep a healthy WordPress website, you have to install all the necessary updates. If you’re a more vigilant website owner, then this won’t be a problem.

2. Customizing themes can be difficult

WordPress comes with several beautiful themes. The advantage is you don’t have to do much customization to make these themes look awesome. However, if you do want to customize them, sometimes it can be difficult to figure out how to make the theme do exactly what you want it to do.

3. Open source can lead to vulnerabilities

WordPress is an open-source content management system, which means anyone can contribute to the software. 

This is mostly an awesome feature, but it can open the door to some potential vulnerabilities. Just make sure that you take extra precautions to protect your WordPress website, and you should be fine.

Getting Started With WordPress Today

Even with all of the features that are packed into WordPress it’s very easy to get started. If you decide to host your site with HostGator, then the process is even easier.

Once you sign up for a hosting account and fire up your hosting dashboard, installing WordPress will only take a couple of clicks.

All you have to do to get started is click on ‘Build a New WordPress Site’:

This will fire up the software that will automatically install WordPress on your site. 

All you have to do is input the domain that you want to transform into a WordPress site and enter a few more details about your site.

Once the software is finished you’ll have a WordPress site you can start customizing.

After WordPress is up and running on your site you can access your site by navigating to “yourdomain.com/wp-admin”. Enter your username and password and you’ll be taken to the backend of your site.

This will be your home base for customizing your site, installing themes and plugins, publishing pages and blog posts, and keeping your site up to date. In time, you’ll become a master of your WordPress dashboard. 

Hopefully, by now you understand the power of WordPress, it’s history, and how far it’s come. WordPress is a truly powerful CMS that’s the number one choice for most new website builders, and your new website can be next!

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7 Best WordPress Donation Plugins

The post 7 Best WordPress Donation Plugins appeared first on HostGator Blog.

Charitable giving is an opportunity for people to support their favorite causes and organizations. So much so that “American individuals, bequests, foundations, and corporations gave an estimated $427.71 billion to U.S. charities in 2018,” according to Giving USA 2019.

Whether you’re a non-profit or small business, your organization can start accepting online donations on your website. Plugins make it easy to add a donation option to your checkout cart.

Try one of the seven WordPress donation plugins below. 

1. PayPal Donation

Community engagement is key for small businesses to connect with a growing consumer base who are interested in socially responsible companies. You can give back and boost your brand presence through online campaigns with non-profits.

PayPal offers one reason why you should accept donations online: “Utilizing a secure online payment provider allows for currency conversions, opening the door to accept funds from around the globe.” That way, your campaign isn’t limited to your local area.

The PayPal Donation plugin offers you the flexibility to place the donation button anywhere on your site. It supports 18 different languages and 25 currencies. Also, you can test the functionality of the button before you go live using a PayPal Sandbox account.

2. GiveWP

Research shows online giving grew by 12.1% in 2018. Take advantage of this trend by setting up online donations on your WordPress website. 

GiveWP is a donation platform optimized for online giving. With this WordPress plugin, your non-profit website can accept donations through customizable forms, manage specific donor profiles, and track donation statistics. It also integrates with a variety of third-party payment gateways and marketing tools.

For example, you can build a donation form with progress bars and custom fields to match your donors’ needs. Then, you can access a complete history of each individual donor and automatically email tax-deductible receipts. There’s also a feature to measure your campaign performance to gauge which forms are performing the best across your website.

3. Smart Donations

Strategic collaborations between non-profits and businesses help drive more donations while increasing goodwill for the organizations involved. As a small business owner, consider partnering with a local non-profit to spread awareness about a cause.

When selecting a partner, you’ll want to evaluate their reputation and the impact of their work. Charitable contributions can be more impactful if their mission aligns with your business.

Smart Donations is an all-in-one WordPress plugin that adds a donation button to your website. Choose from many different button styles, including a text box donation option allowing your customers to decide how much they want to donate.

4. Charitable

Online resources are considered 20% more useful than direct mail when it comes to influencing donors. With online giving, you give potential donors the convenience to learn about the specific cause and donate based on their schedules.

Charitable helps you collect online donations without ever charging you transaction fees. With this top-rated WordPress donation plugin, you can create fundraising campaigns in a matter of minutes. Create a form to accept ongoing donations, raise funds for a time-sensitive need, or collect donations for a specific fundraising goal.

Without hiring a developer, your organization can accept donations through PayPal and automatically track a donation’s status. Charitable is also GDPR-ready with a feature to export and erase personal data in WordPress. On top of that, you can send customized emails to donors with unique subject lines and content.

5. SKT Donation

For small businesses, charitable giving is a chance to make a real difference in your community. Molly St. Louis, an Inc. contributor and an executive-level creative consultant, agrees:

“Charitable donations help better your community, and the public will notice if a company is making a real effort to improve its surroundings. Your company’s charitable donations could help improve schools or parks, giving children safe places to learn and play,” 

Get involved in your community by hosting online fundraisers on your site. With the SKT Donation plugin, you can facilitate donations during the customer checkout process. You can accept donations using PayPal or credit and debit cards through the 2Checkout gateway. 

You’ll get access to a donor list showing the amount given by each individual. Plus, it only takes five minutes to set up.

6. Donorbox

Technology has become an integral part of most people’s lives. We bring our mobile devices with us everywhere—grocery stores, salons, and restrooms (yikes!). This behavior is reflected in how we use technology to donate. Research uncovered that mobile-responsive donation pages yield 34% more donations.

You can achieve the same level of success in your organization with Donorbox. This plugin helps you embed a donation form on your WordPress website. You can provide set amounts for donors to select or allow donors to specify their own amount. In addition, Donorbox forms are optimized for mobile devices. 

7. Woo Donations

The goal of a fundraiser is to collect as much money as possible for your desired cause. So, it makes sense to streamline the donation process for potential donors.  You don’t want people taking unnecessary steps to donate. Paige Kutilek, a crowdfunding expert, writes:

“While this is obvious, it can be easy to forget: Make it easy for people to make a donation. Include the link to your fundraiser in your ask, and don’t be afraid to point out exactly where the donation button is located on your fundraiser.”

If you’re using WooCommerce, try Woo Donations to display a donation button on your checkout page. Donors can choose the amount they wish to give, and this plugin allows you to customize the location, color, and text of the donation button to fit your brand.

Start Accepting Online Donations with WordPress Plugins

Supporters are seeking new ways to donate to your fundraisers. Make the process simple by accepting donations on your website.

Try one of the above-mentioned WordPress donation plugins to get started today.

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source https://www.hostgator.com/blog/best-wordpress-donation-plugins/

7 Simple UX Tips to Instantly Elevate Your Website

The post 7 Simple UX Tips to Instantly Elevate Your Website appeared first on HostGator Blog.

When visitors land on your website, it only takes a few seconds for them to decide whether to stay or leave. So, it’s imperative that your website makes a good first impression.

An effective website design enhances the visitor experience. Your site should make it easy for visitors to read and find content and provide ample white space and images. As a result, you’ll keep visitors engaged with your content.

Check out these seven simple UX tips to elevate the look of your website.

1. Embrace white space

White space is the empty space between the elements on your page. You can have white space between text, graphics, or any other media. 

The purpose of white space is to guide your visitors to specific parts of your site. It also makes it easier for visitors to read your content. John Hughes, a blogging addict and WordPress fanatic, agrees:

“The point here is that using enough white space on your web pages is key to making them both visually appealing and easy to navigate. Having enough white space between elements has also been repeatedly shown to increase reading comprehension.”

When designing your website, consider adding margins or padding and using line-spacing within the text. That way, your site isn’t cluttered, and you can maintain your visitors’ attention. 

2. Add high-quality images

According to Venngage, 60.8% of marketers believe the use of visual content was absolutely necessary for their marketing strategy. Images play a vital role in helping visitors understand more about your brand. 

Before adding your images, you’ll want to follow a few best practices. For starters, adjust the image contrast to make it brighter. Dark images often get overlooked when visitors scan your website. 

Next, resize your images to fit the column width of your blog. Visitors shouldn’t have to squint to see your image, and alternatively, the image shouldn’t expand across an entire page. When resizing, keep the proportions the same to not distort your images.

The final tip is to optimize your images to avoid slow load times on your website. You can keep the visual quality high and the file size low by using a tool like Optimizilla.

3. Consider visual and typographic hierarchies

Visual hierarchy informs visitors where to look on your webpage. It signals to the readers what they should read first. Using typography is one type of visual cue to achieve this goal. 

Typographic hierarchy helps contrast different page elements. You can do this task through the use of font, font size, capital and lowercase letters, placement, and color.

Let’s say you’re announcing a contest on your website. You’ll want the prize of $20,000 at the top of your page in bold, red font. This typography will catch the eye of your visitors and encourage them to keep reading. Here’s more insight from Daniella Alsche, a content marketer for G2:

“The larger an element is, the more likely we are to see it, moving it towards the top of the hierarchy. Elements that aren’t as important can be made smaller to reduce visibility and emphasis. This moves these elements towards the bottom of the visual hierarchy.”

4. Maintain color consistency

Visual consistency is one major UX design principle. It increases the likelihood that a visitor will recognize your brand—which is important when marketing across multiple channels. 

Color improves brand recognition by up to 80%. So, you’ll want to use the same color palette on your product packaging and website. Consistent colors will allow potential customers to identify your brand quickly and facilitate the shopping experience. 

Having a hard time selecting the right colors? Muzli Colors by Invision offers an easy-to-use color palette generator to help you pick the perfect combination of colors. This site also offers recommended color presets like the ones shown below. 

If your brand is fairly new, don’t be afraid to make adjustments when necessary. Your brand colors should evolve as your business grows.

5. Place key details above the fold

Above-the-fold in web design refers to the content at the top of your page. It’s what your visitors see first before they scroll down.

Your above-the-fold content should highlight your brand’s value proposition. What makes your company unique? Why should visitors buy from you? Sharon Hurley Hall, a professional writer for more than 25 years, explains: 

“First impressions are crucial. If your ‘above the fold’ website content doesn’t grab your visitors’ attention the second they land on your site, they won’t bother to stick around any longer. But if you get their attention, they’ll stick around, subscribe, and buy.”

One professional tip is to include a compelling image in your above-the-fold design. You can add a high-quality photo or a one-of-kind graphic that matches the color scheme of your brand.

6. Use standard design conventions

Research found that 75% of website credibility comes from design. Visitors have a certain level of expectation when coming to your website. Standard design conventions help visitors understand what actions to take. 

For instance, your visitors expect the name of your site at the top of your homepage along with the main navigation bar. Your homepage also should include a hero image with a welcome message to greet your visitors. As individuals scroll down the page, they should receive more details about your business. Here’s an example from ColorLib:

Deviating from standard conventions often causes mishaps in the user experience. So, you’ll want to stick to what your visitors know, rather than experimenting with unknown design elements.

7. Design compelling calls to action

A call to action helps visitors take the desired step on your website. It can appear in the form of a button, a link, or even an image. 

You want visitors to take action to make a purchase, subscribe to a newsletter, or maybe watch a video. So, your goal is to design a persuasive call to action. Meiling Wu, a marketer, writer, and entrepreneur, suggests:

“Make it easy to find so that it will stand out from other links. Use bold colors that stand out from background colors, try to use colors that you never used anywhere else on the page.”

In addition, use an imperative statement, rather than a long descriptive text. You’re aiming for words, like: “Get started now” or “Create an account.”

Enhance the Design of Your Website With These UX Tips

The appearance of your website impacts the visitor experience. You can elevate your site’s design with white space, color consistency, and attractive calls to action. 

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source https://www.hostgator.com/blog/simple-ux-tips-website/

How to Build Your Vacation Rental Website [6-Step Guide]

The post How to Build Your Vacation Rental Website [6-Step Guide] appeared first on HostGator Blog.

Do you have a gorgeous mountain cabin, a beach house, or a country cottage that you only visit a couple times a year?

If this describes you, then renting out your vacation home might be the perfect side hustle for you.

Renting out a vacation home is a solid way to make gobs of cash, and there’s an added bonus. It’s mostly a hands-off business. You can hire someone to manage the property, clean it, and maintain it for you when you’re not there.

If this sounds like a dream, the first step to getting started is setting up a website. This article will review why you need a website for your vacation rental, and how you can set one up with HostGator.

Why You Need a Website for Your Vacation Rental

It’s never a bad idea to list your rental on sites like Airbnb and Vrbo. However, you should also create an individual website for your property.

Here are the reasons why:

• You can take direct bookings. Did you know that 65% of guests prefer to book directly with the provider rather than using OTAs (Online Travel Agencies)? Not only will you secure more business with your own website, but you don’t have to share a cut with anyone.

• You create online credibility. The more places your vacation rental exists online, the more credibility you establish. Not to mention, savvy vacationers will often look for a property on an OTA portal, and then try to find the property online at a better price point.

• You build your brand. Let’s say listing one property goes extremely well. When you’re ready to expand, you’ll already have an established website presence that people know and trust. It’s a win-win.

It’s also affordable and easy to set a website up with HostGator.

How to Build Your Vacation Rental Website Quickly with Gator Website Builder

You’re excited about renting out your vacation home, but you may not be jazzed about building a website. We get it, and that’s why we want to share some good news with you.

When you build a website with HostGator’s Website Builder, you don’t need a lick of web design experience. HostGator has already done all the hard work for you and provides pre-designed, customizable templates. 

All you need to get your website up and running is to follow six easy steps. Here’s how to get started.

Step 1: Pick a hosting plan for your vacation rental website

The Gator Website Builder has three hosting plans available. Which one should you choose for your vacation rental website?

The eCommerce plan is for entrepreneurs that are looking to sell products or services online. This package comes with full eCommerce functionality, which may be useful if you plan to take payments and bookings through your website.

The starter plan includes a free domain, 200+ customizable templates, a drag-and-drop editor, cloud hosting, and website analytics.

The premium plan has everything the starter plan has, but also includes priority support. If you know you’ll need priority support while creating and maintaining your website, then opt for the most recommended package—the premium package. 

Once you’ve picked your plan, click “buy now” and you can set up your account.

Step 2: Pick a domain name for your vacation rental website

Every website needs a domain name. To choose your free domain name, all you have to do is type something in the “get domain” box. 

If your top choice for your vacation rental website isn’t available, then select another until you find one that is available.

Pro tip: If you can, try to choose a domain name that includes a location-specific keyword. This may help online searchers find your property.

Step 3: Create your HostGator account

Once you have selected a domain name for your vacation rental, it’s time to connect your HostGator account.

Enter your email address or connect via Facebook. Then, enter your payment information, and your account is official.

Step 4: Pick a template for your vacation rental website

Another advantage of HostGator is it comes with more than 200 professionally-designed templates. This means you don’t have to design your website or know how to code.

All you have to do is pick a template that you like and customize it with the drag and drop builder, and add your unique content.

Step 5: Add pages and content to your vacation rental side hustle website

Once you have selected the perfect template for your side hustle website, you can start customizing your pages. Clicking “start editing” will send you to your dashboard. From there, you can add, edit, and delete pages with ease.

For a vacation rental side hustle, here are some pages you may want to include on your website.

• Home. The home page is the first page a vacationer will see when they click on your website link. As such, you should include an image and content that will catch the eye of your website visitors immediately.

• About. This page provides information about you and your vacation rental.

• Gallery. The gallery is one of the most important pages for someone with a vacation rental side hustle. Include professional photos that show how awesome your property is.

• Contact. A contact page helps potential customers reach out to you via email, phone, or contact form.

The drag and drop builder makes it easy to design your pages and add content. All you have to do is point and click. However, if you have any questions, there’s also a free and easy step-by-step guide for reference that you can access at any time.

To access this guide, click the “menu” icon next to the Gator by HostGator logo and select the “getting started tour.”  

Step 6: Review your content and launch your vacation rental website

The last step is to review your website, make any changes, and then publish your vacation rental website. By clicking “preview,” you can see your site in full, and make sure it looks perfect. 

During your preview, review your website and make sure your content is polished, and your images look nice.

If everything looks great, then click the “finish preview” button at the top and then “publish website” at the top of the dashboard. 

Gator Website Builder will present a series of quick steps to help you go live.

Create Your Vacation Rental Website Now

If you’re looking to make some extra money by renting out your vacation home, then it’s time to get your website up and running. 

To get started with your vacation rental website, check out the Gator Website Builder today.

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source https://www.hostgator.com/blog/build-vacation-rental-website/