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Microsoft has just launched a free tool for building websites. It is part of Microsoft’s Digital Marketing Center and enables you to create a website from scratch or by importing content from a social media page or advertising campaign. The main objective of the service is to help small businesses improve their marketing efforts. The Small Business Association reported that Microsoft highlights over 36% of small businesses do not have websites. There might be an issue between 70-80% of people research a company online before visiting the business or making a purchase. So, you need to sign up for a Digital Marketing Center account to use the website creation service. You can click the “My website” button in the top-right corner of the page after entering some information.

You can choose here how to build your website. If you choose to build a website off of a social media page, it will pull information to create the website, such as your summary and images. You can customize and add any of the following including Headline and description, Customer action button (Call now, Send an email, Get a quote, etc.), Cover image, Business summary, Social posts, Reviews, Gallery, Business contact information, and Social links. Microsoft has confirmed that it hopes to remove the barriers of cost and lack of time by providing a free and simple solution small businesses can leverage to get started with a website. The Redmond-based software company follows WordPress, which launched the Built By WordPress.com service last month in January. However, Microsoft’s offering is completely free of cost.

Microsoft also said that the new service can automatically import a majority of the content either from a business’ Facebook page or from an existing advertising campaign. It will then use this information to fabricate a website complete with a relevant layout. You can modify any of the content and choose another template to customize your website, before publishing it. Point to be noted that Microsoft hasn’t specified how it aims to monetize the service. The Digital Marketing Center is Microsoft’s ad platform that helps create, execute, and manage advertising campaigns across social media platforms and search engines. It appears Microsoft hopes to rake in on the advertising dollars when these small businesses feel the need to advertise their new websites. The FAQ on the Digital Marketing Center says the ability to create free websites is available to users all over the world, but currently only supports US businesses that advertise within the US.