The short answer is… it’s possible to use Dubsado as a website.
I’ve got a few ideas on this one. (Even if you HAVE a website, you’re going to want to read the rest of this post, because there are some great ideas here for creating a proposal in general.) This article was actually written because one of my weekly newsletter readers asked for a post about this. Want to make sure you don’t miss any of my great weekly content? Sign up here.
Here’s what we’ll go over in this post…
The pros and cons of using a Dubsado form as a website
Two options for forms that’ll work as a website and how to choose which
Sections for a one-page website
Design ideas to get your one-page website done faster
How to make your links show up like a website when you share them
While Dubsado WON’T get you amazing Search Engine traffic. You CAN create forms that will act like a one-page website for your business. First of all, let’s talk about the pros and cons of this.
Pros
I absolutely love the idea of using something like this as a Website for a new business. It helps you avoid added costs for a domain, hosting, theme/web designer, learning to do SEO, and all the other things while helping you present a great first impression to prospective clients. It allows you to quickly and easily create a sales piece for your business without a big learning curve.
As someone who has spent a boatload of time figuring out SEO, flipping through numerous Word Press themes, and writing and re-writing and re-designing my website, I can tell you, it can turn into a HUGE time suck that can prevent you from getting to the important stuff like marketing your business and booking clients.
Bonus: You can book clients or at least have them schedule a discovery call from it as well.
Cons
The downside is, that it’s not hosted online, so people won’t be able to find you with Google. However, if most of your marketing is through social media (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube) you are probably not as focused on SEO. People can click on your profile and view your “webpage.”
Let’s get into how to make this work.
There are two ways that you could make this work… a Public Proposal and a Lead Capture Form.
Here’s an example of what a one-page website built on a proposal could look like. (A lead capture form would look similar, but wouldn’t have the ability to make a purchase from the page.)
This is a wedding venue proposal that I put together for The Emerald Cottage on Hidden Lake. It doesn’t have all the possible sections you could include for a website, but I think you get the idea. (This one isn’t being used as the website, but it has a similar format.)
Both of these options will allow you to create a sales page. It really depends on what action you want your lead to take from your “website.”
If you want them to fill out a form and book an appointment use a lead capture form
Just design your “website” on the form and add in your lead capture section at the bottom.
You can follow up with a scheduler to book an appointment using a simple workflow. (If you aren’t using Dubsado’s scheduler, you could redirect to your other scheduler with the re-direct option in the lead capture form’s settings or embed it in your lead capture form.)
If you want them to be able to purchase your services right from your “website” use a Public Proposal
A public proposal will allow you to create the website at the top. When you get to your services, you can create packages in Dubsado and add them to the proposal with buttons to allow people to book and purchase from your one-page website. You can even make it so they can sign a contract and pay an invoice.
I used this Canva template for the example above. If you like it, feel free to grab it and customize it to fit your brand and information.
Design Ideas to Get Your One-Page Website Done Faster
Yes, you could create your entire website from scratch in the Dubsado form builder. As someone who has built a lot of proposals for clients, this can take a few hours. Plus, if you’re not super design-inspired, it can come out looking so-so.
One of my favorite things to do is look to Canva or other website designers for inspiration and then recreate that inside of Dubsado using the containers and other elements. This gets you a better design, but it’s still time-consuming.
If you want to get it done fast and you aren’t concerned with being able to edit everything inside of Dubsado, you can find lots of small business website templates in Canva. Customize it to fit your brand, and edit the text. Download all the graphics, upload them to Dubsado, and voila you have a website-style form.
Note: Make sure to remove any references to links or you’ll end up with unclickable links on your photos.
Sections to Include in Your One-Page Website
Here are a few section ideas to get you started.
- Header
- About Me
- Examples of my Work
- My Services
- My Process
- Book a Call
- Footer (with linked social media icons)
Add a Menu to Make Navigation Easier
You can pretty easily add a menu to the top of your site using HTML code blocks.
Step one: Add anchor points for each section of your website by adding an HTML block above the point where you want the menu item to scroll to. Make sure that this anchor text is in it’s own container. I tried to do this first by just adding the HTML blocks in between the graphics I downloaded from Canva. That didn’t work.
Add this HTML code there.
<div id=”sample-anchor”></div> replace sample-anchor with a name for that point. This won’t be visible, but it needs to be unique and one to two words long.
Don’t put any spaces in it. You can use a – to separate the words.
Step 2: Create your menu
To keep things simple, we’re going to create a horizontal menu. Add a 4-column container to the top of your proposal. Add the text for each menu item. Then add a link to the text with the anchor points that we created in Step 1. Put a number sign in front of each anchor point. Each link will look like this #sample-anchor.
Watch this tutorial showing you how to build a menu in your Dubsado forms
Want to see this lead capture website in action? View the lead capture form. I actually created this website using a Canva template. This is their design, not mine. I was able to put this together in just a few minutes by customizing the Canva website template. If you like this one, you can grab it here and make it your own.
How to Make Your Links Show Up Like a Website When You Share Them on Social Media
If you want to go a step further, pay for a domain and hosting so you can white-label your Dubsado account. This will make it so that when you share links on Facebook or Instagram, the information that shows up with the link (the logo, image, and website description) is yours and not Dubsado’s. It’s a bit more pricy, but it’ll allow you to share your links and have them look like a link to a real website instead of a link to Dubsado.
That’s a wrap
I hope you found this helpful! If you went ahead and created a website using a Dubsado form, send me a link, I’d love to see it. If you already have a website, but had some great takeaways from this post, send me an email at amy@amysgould.com. Tell me your best takeaway. I’d love to hear from you.
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