Whether you‘re starting a new business or just want to change web-platform, website builders have made it extremely easy to quickly build great looking, fast, and functional websites with little or no background in web development. However, finding the right web builder for your needs can be daunting, so how can you make sure you choose the one that will serve your business the best?
It’s useful to split the process of choosing a new web builder into three parts:
1. Narrow the list down to the most popular ones in the market
Choosing a popular web builder ensures that every obstacle you will encounter using this web builder will have a solution online, and also narrows down the possibility that any dev you hire to work on your web won’t be familiar with your specific web builder.
2. Identify the main purpose of your website
Will your website be focussed on blogging? Or perhaps on driving bookings to a restaurant? Might you be selling things online? Each web builder has its benefits, however choosing the one that lends itself to the functionality you require, will mean it has more out of the box features to help you build a functional website to meet your business goals.
3. Carry out in-depth comparison
Finally, once you have narrowed down the list enough and feel confident about a few options, you can start a more in-depth comparison between them. Some things to take in consideration would be:
- Price
- Web design options – how much freedom do you need to best represent your brand?
- Plugins/apps – do you need a lot of additional features that need to go into your website?
- Hosting, SEO, Marketing, Advertising – some web builders will offer you all these additional services for little extra price or for free, while others will expect you to take care of these things yourself
- Admin controls – can you work on your website or do you need a developer to help you out? What kinds of things do you want to be able to manage yourself on the website?
Below are some of the industry leaders when it comes to web builders. These options will have you sorted with literally anything you might need for your business. This list covers web builders which cater for a wide variety of usages from restaurant bookings to personal blogs:
WordPress
The most widely used web builder in the world, powered with heaps of features, fairly easy to use, and scalable. WordPress will give you all the control over your website allowing you to make sure it works exactly the way you need it to, as well as allowing you to go crazy with web design! WordPress also comes with thousands of pre-made templates that you can choose from which you can customise to make it really representative of your brand. Websites built with WordPress have no limits in functionality. If you need a blog, but you would also like to have a forum and want to add extra services, WordPress enables this. Everything is possible with thousands of plugins and apps that you will be able to access and to top this off, WordPress is also the cheapest option out there.
As fantastic as this all sounds, you shouldn’t rush into making your choice, all the freedom WordPress offers comes at a price. You will have to manage your own website, you will be responsible for it looking good on different devices, have to make sure all the plugins function as they should, and that they are updated in a timely manner, etc. Learning ins and out in WordPress can be a bit of a challenge, so make sure that you are willing to spend some time learning before you invest in this web builder.
Squarespace
If you don’t want to invest lots of time/money in the web design but you also want a stunning site that will look great in any browser and cross-device, Squarespace might be just what you are looking for. With some significant improvements over the past few years, this web builder comes equipped with some of the best looking and least bug-prone templates in the market. It is also growing in popularity due to its easy to use and understandable admin control panel. It is also a great choice if you are looking for a package deal that will take care of your email marketing, domain, and SSL needs. Some of the other great features Squarespace has to offer are good, is that it is easy to manage your SEO efforts and to integrate with social media, allowing you to sell directly on Instagram.
While Squarespace is rapidly growing and improving, it is better for a non-commerce sites due to its limited third-party services integration, making it much harder to scale. It is also not great if you are looking to implement an intricate web design feature and is pretty costly compared to other web builders. However, if you need to build a simple website with the sole purpose of looking great and working smoothly, Squarespace will get most of your needs handled right off the box.
Wix
Wix offers you hosting out of the box and is popular with users due to its intuitive drag and drop site builder since this allows flexible site customisation and creative freedom. However, if you’re not feeling creative, Wix also has hundreds of pre-made templates ready for you to use and/or customise in minutes. Unlike some web builders, Wix will provide you with a lot more creative freedom, so have fun! But keep in mind just like in WordPress, more creative freedom means more responsibility to make sure everything looks like it’s supposed to in every device and browser.
Wix is also compatible with heaps of third-party services and offers hundreds of plugins and apps to add to your website for additional functionality. Another great feature of Wix is its SEO Wizz, which allows you to easily set up your SEO while simply following Wix provided instructions, ensuring your website will be ranking as high in Google searches as it possibly can without you knowing a thing about SEO! Some of the cons however, would be that while Wix has a lot to offer and so it will be a learning curve for you, however once you’ve got the hang of it, web building will be as easy and fast as can be. Furthermore, Wix provides you with hosting in order to keep you using their services, so if you decide to change the platform, but want to keep the website, it will be a hassle.
If you are looking to build a powerful website that is going to be scalable but also unique, and you are willing to put the time needed to learn, and you want to do this all on the budget, WordPress is the one for you. If all this freedom seems intimidating and you don’t think you would ever need that many features or intricate designs and would rather settle for more things out of the box, but would still like your site to be scalable and powerful, Wix might be a good option. Finally, if you are writing a blog or using your website as an online presence to represent your brand and all you really need is a quick beautiful site that will have most of your needs fulfilled out of the box and ready to go, Squarespace is the one for you!
Shopify
All of the web builders mentioned above can also be used to build an e-commerce site, however in order to make sure you get most of your commerce needs met, it would be better to choose a web builder that was created specifically for that. Two of the most popular e-commerce web builders are BigCommerce and Shopify.
Shopify is an e-commerce specific web builder and an all-in-one fully hosted solution. Shopify has you covered with inventory management, auto-backups, updates, unlimited products, easy marketing solutions, shipping, and stats management tools. It is scalable and compatible with many third-party solutions, as well as being easy to manage. It offers a convenient drag and drop menu allowing you to customise your store frontend without a line of code, as well as it can be integrated into WordPress offering you the best of both worlds. Shopify has lots to offer, but it is also one of the more expensive web builders out there. While it is a hassle-free e-commerce builder, if you ever decide to move your site to another platform, the process can be complicated.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is hands down the best e-commerce builder in the market at the moment. It is a powerful and scalable fully hosted e-commerce solution, that will make sure your website is fast and always up to date. On the design side, BigCommerce provides a wide range of good quality templates, and on the technical side of things, the BigCommerce team support has got you covered. Lastly, BigCommerce integrates with all popular payment gateways including Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Square, Amazon Pay, Visa Checkout, Chase Pay, Ayden, and more. With all the features and services out of the box, BigCommerce is also cheaper than most e-commerce web builders.
If none of these sound like a perfect match for your business, there are plenty more ‘fish in the sea’. Follow the narrowing down technique and you’ll be building your website in no time!
