3 key steps for putting a showcase website online
A showcase website enables you to be present online. It's a "window" that shows your brand, organization, or business. It's purely informative and its purpose is to provide internet users with information about your products & services.
Determine the main purpose of the website
Determine the main purpose of the website that you have in mind.
- Do you want to provide information? Create content? Go for a blog!
- Sell products and services? Go for an online shop.
Plan your website
What will be its title? Logo? Sections?
An effective showcase website should, at the very least, fit on one page:
- an introduction into your business
- an image
- a contact form
Choose a Gandi website pack
We take care of it all!
- Your domain name
- Your hosting
- Your content management system (e.g. WordPress)
- Your email addresses
- Your TLS/SSL certificate
What solution should you choose to create a showcase website?
New hosting customer? Get 50% off your first web hosting for a yearly subscription!
Create a showcase website with the WordPress CMS | Create a showcase website by coding it yourself | |
|---|---|---|
Create a showcase website with the WordPress CMS | Create a showcase website by coding it yourself | |
| Solution | Solution WordPress | Solution Generic hosting |
| Technical competence | Technical competence None. Automatic installation | Technical competence Required |
| Ease of use | Ease of use Easy | Ease of use You develop and install your own interface |
| Budget | Budget Ideal for small budgets | Budget No budget required if you are able to develop your solution yourself |
| E-commerce CMS | E-commerce CMS Add WooCommerce plugin for free | E-commerce CMS Any CMS is posible (Magento, Drupal, Joomla, etc.) |
| Product catalog | Product catalog Yes, with the WooCommerce plugin. Meet the needs of selling online: flash sales, subscription management, etc. | Product catalog Requires manual development |
| Customization | Customization Wide choice of free themes ou for sale | Customization Requires manual development |
| Features | Features Ability to add numerous additional plugins | Features Requires manual development |
| Multi-language sites | Multi-language sites Plugins can be added | Multi-language sites Requires manual development |
| Support | Support Used around the world Free resources available in all languages | Support No free support available |
| Welcome Offer New Hosting Client | Welcome Offer New Hosting Client Pay by the year and get 50% off your first web hosting | Welcome Offer New Hosting Client Pay by the year and get 50% off your first web hosting |
| Domain name included | Domain name included Yes, Free | Domain name included Yes, Free |
| email address | email address 2 email addresses included (10 GB of storage) | email address 2 email addresses included (10 GB of storage) |
Select from a list of over 80 TLDs
Only available with a domain attached to web hosting pack.
The advantages of this pack
- Security: Your professional website in https for free—no configuration necessary
- Ease of use: A single management interface and automatic content management system (CMS) installation so you can get your first few pages online instantly
- Growth: Is your site a success? Upgrade your plan at any time to grow along with your professional website
- Gandi support: technical support available by chat and email 24 hours a day, 6 days a week to help you create your professional website
WordPress is the most widely used website creation solution in the world.
Get started right away by automatically linking:
- your free domain name
- your hosting
- your WordPress content management system
- your custom email addresses
- your SSL certificate, guaranteeing your data and your visitors' data is secure
Whatever your level of technical expertise, you can get started quickly and easily with your showcase site creation!
Create websiteWhy choose Gandi to create your showcase website?
- Transparency and integrity
We provide quality service for the displayed price. Your data are hosted in France or in Luxembourg, with no surprise bills.
- Security is a priority
Spike in traffic, hacking, technical outage, etc. are all unforeseen events that we do our best to guarantee the continuity of service of your projects.
- An open web for all
Our goal is to make the internet as accessible to the wider public as possible. Our origins are in internet neutrality and the open source philosophy.
More possibilities to succeed online with Gandi!
E-commerce website
Sell your products, everywhere, at any time and increase your brand awareness.
Blog
Share your passion or demonstrate your expertise and improve your credibility
Need support? Here are all the ways you can reach us
Step-by-step guides for and explanations of how to use all our products and services:Check out our documentation
Help from our Customer care team: Open a support ticket
Chat live with our Customer care team: Open a chat window
Do you have a suggestion or a comment? Send it to feedback @ gandi.net. We read and respond to every email.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's a showcase website?
A showcase website is a website that enables you to present a business, brand, organization, or product. A showcase website takes is name from commercial showcases, where a physical store puts their items on display. Contrary to an e-commerce website, a showcase website's purpose is not to directly sell products online. But it can still enable you to identify and persuade your website's visitors.
How much does a showcase website cost?
There's a wide range of possible prices, but in general, the price of a showcase website is linked to the amount of computing power allocated to it and the amount of autonomy that you have over the creation of your showcase website. The budget can vary from a few dollars to a few thousand. For a showcase website at Gandi, the price includes your domain name, your hosting, your content management system (CMS) and a certificate SSL.
How do create a free showcase website?
Some software offers free solutions for creating a showcase website. These free solutions are very successful and are a great option for launching your site risk free. However, these options require compromises that in the long run can undermine your showcase website's credibility, such as in:
- the features or numbers of unlimited pages limited
- data storage and low bandwidth
- the name of your website provider is in the URL
- presence of ad banners on your webpages
- less reactive or support only for an added fee
- no control over where your data is stored
For a credible and professional showcase website, it will need to be quickly upgraded towards a paid version. At Gandi, our web hosting is 100% reliable and secure.
How do I create a showcase website with WordPress?
WordPress is the most widely used solution for creating showcase websites, and it is today available with one click with Gandi's all-in-one website packs. Follow these three steps to create a showcase website with WordPress:
- Determine the goal of your showcase website
- Plan out your website's sections and layout of your content
- Choose the size of your Gandi all-in-one pack
You can get your site online instantly thanks to automatic linking of your domain name, your hosting, your content management, your email, and your SSL certificate. Let our intuitive interface guide you through the process. All you'll have left to do will be to choose your website theme (a preset website template) and then customize it as you see fit. And if you get stuck, our documentation is there to help you use WordPress on your Gandi Simple Hosting instance.
Once you're in the WordPress interface, click on Themes in the Appearance tab in your dashboard to choose a graphic design for your showcase website using themes (both free and for sale) provided by WordPress. The Pages tab is what enables you to then organize different sections in your showcase website with WordPress, for example:
- Home
- Services
- About us
- Contact
For specific needs, like translation into multiple languages, a contact form, a tool for measuring your traffic, or one for improving your search engine ranking (SEO), you can install plugins available from your dashboard.
Which CMS should I use for a showcase website?
A CMS (Content Management System), is software that enables you to design, manage, and update websites, including showcase websites. What makes a CMS so useful is that it makes website design intuitive, and enables you to build a website without knowing how to code (Javascript, HTML, CSS, etc.) and without having any particular web development knowledge. Joomla and Wix are examples of CMSes. WordPress, though, is by far the most popular content management system in the world. Part of what makes it the most popular are its regular updates, numerous design templates (called themes), as well as an active community. It also has the advantage of being very easy to administer. No matter what your level of technical competency, you can quickly and easily get started creating your showcase website.
What's the difference between a showcase site and an e-commerce website?
If you're not sure what the exact difference between a showcase website and an e-commerce site is, we're here to help you figure out which is better for your business. A showcase website is a communication channel for your company, whereas an e-commerce website is a sales channel. A showcase website is informative and presents a company's business: its identity, where it's located, as well as the products and services it sells are all the type of information you'd find on a showcase website. An e-commerce website (or online store) is a virtual shop where you can sell things online, complete with the ability to make online transactions, pay with several means of payment, and customer interaction. For more information, this article about whether you should create a showcase site or an e-commerce website might interest you.
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