What do a dog-walker, a freelance photographer, and a medical professional have in common? They all need a business website. Fortunately, with various easy-to-use website builders to choose from, creating a website for your small business is easier than ever.
Back in the internet’s early days, unless you had expert coding or web design training, a professional developer was your only hope for having a business website. Today, you can effortlessly create a website and establish an online presence for your business without prior web design training – or any training, for that matter.
Website builders handle the coding for you and offer ready-made templates that can be easily customized with your own text, images, designs, and more.
Choosing the best website builder for small businesses depends on your specific needs. Below, we’ll outline a few key considerations you should take when choosing a website builder.
What are your goals?
Your first step should be to determine the main goal of your website. Are you selling a product? Building a portfolio? Hoping to attract potential customers to your services? By establishing your goals upfront, you can prioritize which website builder features and capabilities will serve you best and avoid buyer’s remorse down the road.
For example, if your primary goal is to sell your products, begin by looking at e-commerce sites like Shopify. If you’re a freelance photographer looking to showcase your work in an online portfolio, Squarespace or Wix would be good starting points.
How much money do you want to invest?
The amount of money you’re willing to spend is one of the most important things to consider when choosing the best website builder for small businesses. Most builders offer multiple price tiers, each featuring a different set of features. If your budget is limited, take advantage of free plans and trial periods.
Website builders usually offer unlimited bandwidth and storage. However, there are exceptions, like Wix, which scales its storage capacity according to the plan tier.
Here’s a side-by-side pricing comparison of five of the most popular website builders and their lowest and highest-priced tiers:
You should also consider website builder features like domain registration and hosting when shopping for a builder. The cost of hosting your website is usually included in your monthly fee. Additionally, some website builders, like Wix and GoDaddy, will cover the cost of your domain name for up to one year.
What can it do?
All website builders offer different features and functionalities within their packages. Some provide numerous aesthetically pleasing templates but offer minimal website builder features. Others may give little-to-no pre-made templates but offer a full shop of widgets where you can implement more complicated elements on your site, such as maps, pop-ups, and forms.
If you aren’t a professional web designer and have no prior experience, you’ll most likely want to choose a website builder that is simple to use and navigate. Some of the best website builders for small businesses offer drag-and-drop editors that allow you to place and experiment with different content blocks on the page. You can follow on-screen prompts with some website builders, while others include tutorials in their packages.
Other website builder features you might be interested in include SEO tools, photo galleries, live chat, and CSS customization.
How will it perform?
After creating a website, you should set up the URL structure, data structure, image alt text, mobile usability, and speed optimization to ensure your website performance is responsive and provides a positive user experience.
A mobile-friendly online presence is imperative to the success of any small business. Most website builders allow you to view and edit your site on a desktop, tablet or mobile device to help you see your site from the user’s point of view. Using a website builder with a device preview tool gives you peace of mind that your website will always perform at its best.
The takeaway
If you’re looking to create a business website on a budget, do-it-yourself website builders are a great way to design and launch your site without the help of a professional web designer. With a little effort and self-learning, you can quickly design a site with complete functionalities.
While doing your research, ask yourself these questions: How much time and energy are you willing to invest? Are you looking for something long-term? Do you have the patience and funds to learn additional skills outside your expertise? The more clarity you get, the more specific your research will be.
If you decide to lean on professionals to create your business website, the web designers at Hyport Digital can create a custom website that communicates your brand and product offerings in seconds.
We also offer customized search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) services, live chat tools, and a variety of other digital marketing services to add to your advertising strategy.
Reach out to us today for more information!
