8 Important Qualities to Consider When Choosing a Website Builder for a Small Business

A website builder is designed to help anyone, beginner or professional, to create a website within minutes. This is possible due to the platform’s drag-and-drop features.

What is a website builder?

From the words themselves, a website builder is any platform, program, or tool that allows you to build a website. And the best part? You do not need to write a single line of code.

A website builder has two main types:

Offline Website Builder

An offsite website builder is like any software program that you need to download and install on your desktop or laptop.

From there, you can work on building your website and saving your files once it is all done. By the time you are ready to launch your website, all you need to do is upload your web files to your web host.

Online Website Builder

An online website builder, on the other hand, is a web-based platform. Meaning there is no need to download and install something. Although, this requires that you need to be connected to the Internet.

The beauty of it, though, is that you can work on your website anytime, anywhere. As long as you have an internet connection.

But whether you would opt for an online or offline website builder, you must know how to choose the right one for your business.

How to choose the right website builder?

Nowadays, more and more businesses of various sizes use website builders because it is an efficient and cost-effective way of starting an online presence.

So, in this post, we will share with you eight tips on how to choose the right one among the many small business website builders available in the market.

1. Price and plans

Of course, the first thing that you should look into is whether or not you can afford a website builder.

Sure, some platforms can offer their services for free. However, the features that they can give you are limited. This could mean that you cannot implement the other functionalities you would like to add to your website.

If you're on a tight budget, you should opt for the cheapest website builder out there. As much as possible, buy the best website builder that you can afford.

2. Customization

Another benefit of using a website builder is that it allows you to customize your website based on how you would want it to look—no need to call for a web designer or web developer.

Although you start with choosing a template, a website builder’s drag-and-drop feature makes it easy for you to move around certain elements to make your site’s layout unique. Thus, ensuring that your website goes in line with your branding and style.

PRO TIP: Make sure that the web design template you choose is mobile-friendly. Doing so eases the burden of having to develop another website.

3. Ease of use

Of course, the reason you opted for a website builder is that you want to have a hassle-free website. And there is no sense in paying for a site-building platform if it is cumbersome to use.

So, how would you know if a website builder features ease of use? Here are some features that you should check:

- Hundreds of mobile-friendly and customizable design templates
- Drag-and-drop and WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) feature
- User-friendly interface and tools
- Third-party integration

4. Migration

There will come a point in time wherein your business and customer demand will grow. Hence, your website should be able to cater to this growth.

Concerning this, your website builder must feature migration options. Although this feature is not available on all website builders for small businesses.

Being able to migrate your website, be it to a new web host or a better plan, should be easy. Doing so allows you to provide a better customer experience and excellent online experience to your customers and site visitors.

5. Growth options

In line with the previous point, it is also important that your website can offer growth options. This includes being able to add a blog section on your website, an online store, a portfolio, or other integrations.

These integrations allow your site visitors to do their tasks on your website with ease.

For instance, you own a local restaurant. Growth options mean that you can accept table reservations on your website. And this is possible if your website builder has a table reservation widget or module.

6. Support

Each website builder offers different levels of customer support. Some only offer live chat support, some are only available via phone and email, while some have a combination of all of them.

When choosing a website builder for your small business, they must provide 24/7 customer support. Doing so ensures that you can resolve issues immediately, whether it is in the wee hours of the morning.

7. SEO friendliness

Here’s the thing: There is no sense in having a visually appealing website if no one can see it. This is where search engine optimization comes in.

Hence, your site-building platform must allow you to easily optimize your website. Otherwise, it will be challenging for you to have an online presence and establish your credibility in your industry. Meaning it will be difficult for you to attract customers online and drive revenue.

Implementing SEO allows your website to rank for your target keywords. Fortunately, almost all website builders allow you to optimize your website. It is just a matter of which makes it convenient for you to do so.

8. Credibility

Last but not least, it is also important to look into your website builder’s reputation and credibility.

For one, it ensures that all features of your site-building platform will work. And if something is not working, you can easily resolve it because you are guaranteed of excellent customer support.

Mind you, there are site builders that even offer a money-back guarantee.

But how can you measure a website builder’s reputation? Simply look at who their clients are and check out online reviews about them. A credible website builder also gets listed on various blog posts often.

Nowadays, any business needs to have a robust online presence. Good thing, you do not necessarily have to hire a designer or programmer. All you need is a reliable website builder.

COMMENTS

  1. shammy peterson
    December 27, 2023, at 11:22 am REPLY

    It did catch my attention when you said that depending on how you would want your website to look, a website builder can help. This makes me think of how travel agencies can benefit from having an event calendar on their websites for their potential clients. I would assume that they would entice more clients if their websites were easy to use when filtering events and available dates for travel trips.

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