Table of Contents
You’ve made the smart decision to get your equine business online – high five! Having your own online space is essential for building credibility, getting discovered, and growing. Now comes the fun part: actually building it.
Starting a brand new equestrian website from scratch becomes significantly easier with the right design tools and plugins. Here are my top five recommendations to help you build a professional online presence with confidence.
1. WordPress: Your Website's Foundation
WordPress is the powerhouse of content management systems (CMS)—robust, reliable, and versatile. It powers over 40% of all websites on the internet, and for good reason. It’s free, open-source, and infinitely customizable.
For equine businesses, WordPress offers particular advantages:
- Plenty of equestrian-specific themes and templates
- Easy content management for adding services, blog posts, or event updates
- Scalability as your business grows
- Robust security features to protect your online presence
Unlike platforms with limitations (ahem, remember my thoughts on Wix?), WordPress gives you full ownership and control over your digital property—much like owning your own facility instead of renting elsewhere.
2. Elementor: Design Without the Drama
Elementor transforms WordPress from powerful-but-technical to accessible-and-intuitive with its sleek drag-and-drop interface.
With the free version, you can:
- Design beautiful pages without touching code
- Create mobile-responsive layouts automatically
- Start with pre-designed templates that save time
- Customize colors, fonts, and spacing to match your brand
The Pro version (aka the paid option) gives you unlimited customization options for pretty much every piece of your website. You can make your site look and work exactly how you want, without knowing how to code HTML or CSS.
Insider Info: This is what I use to build out client websites so that they’re beautiful and professional, but still easy for my clients to manage on their own.
Elementor also offers a LARGE library of videos that will walk you through anything and everything you need to know.
3. Hello Elementor: The Lightweight Theme That Performs
Hello Elementor is a minimalist theme designed specifically to work with Elementor. This simple WordPress theme eliminates unnecessary code bloat that can slow down your site.
Why does speed matter? A slow website loses visitors. Research shows that 40% of people abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load—and as I mentioned in my website necessity article, equestrians in rural areas with spotty internet need sites that load quickly.
Hello Elementor gives you:
- Ultra-fast loading times
- Perfect compatibility with Elementor
- Responsive design for all devices
- A clean starting point for your design
4. RankMath SEO: Help Clients Find You Online
Remember when I mentioned SEO in my article about why your equine business needs a website? RankMath is the tool that makes good SEO accessible to non-technical equestrians.
Think of RankMath as your digital marketing assistant—guiding you through the steps to make your website more visible to potential clients. It helps you:
- Create search-engine friendly content with real-time suggestions
- Generate sitemaps that help Google understand your website
- Optimize images (perfect for showcasing your facilities or services)
- Track your keyword rankings to see improvement over time
The free version offers more features than most paid SEO plugins, giving you everything you need to help local clients find you when they search for “horse trainer near me” or “equine boarding facility in [your area].”
5. Google Analytics: Understand Your Website Visitors
Just as you track your business metrics and progress, Google Analytics helps you track your website’s performance. This free tool from Google gives you insights into:
- Who’s visiting your website (demographics, locations)
- How they found you (search, social media, direct)
- What pages they spend the most time on
- When they visit (helping you time announcements or promotions)
This is some of the most valuable information you’ll be able to access for your website. It will help you figure out popular topics, products, and more – which will help you make better decisions about your marketing efforts.
For example: You see that your equine massage services page is getting a ton of interest and page views. That’s your cue to make sure you beef out that page with anything + everything a client might want to know, including an easy way to get in touch with you.
From "Why" to "How": Building Your Equestrian Website
Now that you have these tools, you’re ready to create a website that reflects the quality and professionalism of your equine business. These tools combine to create an online presence that:
- Gives your business the credibility it deserves
- Makes you discoverable to new clients 24/7
- Showcases your expertise and services
- Grows with your business over time
All the benefits I discussed in my Why Your Equine Business Needs a Website article can be achieved with these five powerful tools.
When DIY Becomes "Do I Want To?"
These tools and plugins will definitely make it a little easier for you to tackle building out your own website – but it won’t necessarily be a walk in the park. Building out a site takes time and patience. And honestly, having experience helps.
If you’re feeling frustrated with the technical aspects or just don’t want to spend the time, remember that professional help is available (hey, hi – that’s what I’m for!).
There are so many equine business owners (like Rachel from Rachel Sloan Photography) who start with DIY attempts but eventually realize their time is better spent doing what they do best – doing horsey things, not wrestling with website code.
Ready to Launch Your Professional Online Presence?
Creating your equestrian website will be much smoother with these tools and plugins in your toolbox. And if you decide that building your own website feels more overwhelming than you anticipated, I’m here to help. Check out my website design packages to learn more about how.
