How to Choose the Best Website Builder for Small Businesses

Meta Description: A dedicated website builder allows you to build any site with ease. But how do you choose the best website builder for your small business? Find out here.

If you’re a small business owner, you would already know how critical it is to have a website for your brand. Not only does it provide your business with a unique digital identity, but it also improves its online visibility to attract more customers and increase sales.

That’s why around 71% of all small businesses across the globe have a website. When it comes to building a website for your small business, one of the most efficient ways is to use a dedicated website builder.

However, choosing the best website builder can be challenging, as the market is filled with all types of options. That’s where this guide comes in. It’ll help you understand how to choose the best website builder for your small business.

Choosing the Best Website Builder: Important Factors to Consider

Here’s a list of the most important factors that you should consider while choosing a website builder for small businesses. It’ll help you choose the best option that suits all your unique needs.

Alignment with Your Goals

Before selecting a website builder, it’s advisable to have a clear picture of what you want to achieve with your website. Are you planning to develop an online storefront as an entrepreneur, a platform for lead generation, or a service-based site?

It’s also important to take into account your industry and/or niche, as well as the preferences of your target audience. It’ll help you adjust the design and content of your website accordingly.

This way, you’ll be able to identify a website builder that offers the features, themes, and customization options you need to support your business objectives.

Ease of Use

The ease of use is arguably the most critical factor to consider when looking for a website builder. You don’t want to spend hours or even days on a website builder to understand its features and functionality. Instead, you want a tool that’s intuitive, with self-explanatory navigation and drag-and-drop functionality, and even enjoyable to use.

Almost all website-building tools come with some sort of introductory guide to help you get started. After going through that, you should be able to understand what you can’t and can do with the features it offers. It means that the customization options should be easily accessible rather than buried under multiple layers of navigation.

Even better if the builder offers quick prompts or tooltips for all its features, especially when you use them for the first time.

Design Flexibility

You must have already heard the phrase “first impression is the last impression”. But did you know that 94% of first impressions of your website are related to its design?

So, it’s safe to say that design is the most crucial factor to improve user engagement and attract new website visitors. Therefore, the website builder you opt for should offer the features you need to build a functional and aesthetically pleasing website.

Additionally, it should also allow you to ensure mobile-friendliness so that your website displays its contents on different screen sizes and browsers flawlessly. That’s because people use different devices to access websites, and a responsive website will offer them a seamless browsing experience.

Built-In SEO Tools

No matter how user-friendly and visually appealing your website is, it’ll fail to reach its target audience without SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It’s SEO that allows search engines like Google and Bing to understand and rank your website based on the content it contains.

Without it, your website won’t be indexed, which means it’ll make it harder for potential customers to discover your business online when searching for relevant keywords.

So, go for a website-building platform that offers built-in tools for search engine optimization. It’ll improve your search rankings and drive more organic traffic to your business.

Scalability

Almost all businesses naturally aim to grow over time. If your business grows, it’ll expand your customer base, increase revenue, and provide opportunities to enter new markets. To accommodate these changes, you’ll need to scale your website so that it can meet all your needs.

So, if you anticipate that your business will expand over time, make sure that you select a website builder with scalable features.

For example, if you’re planning to add a blog to your website, opt for a tool that offers blogging functionality. Similarly, you can also look for email marketing features if you want to improve your reach.

Social Media Integration

Recent statistics show that more than 93% of businesses across the globe use social media for marketing. That’s because these platforms, in total, have 5.07 billion user accounts, and if your business doesn’t target them, you’ll miss out on a lot of potential customers.

While most modern website builders offer social media integration features, there are tools available in the market that still lack this option. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that the website-building solution you select does come with social media integration functionality.

Other Features

Here’s a list of some additional features to look for in a website builder for small businesses to improve your site's performance and usability:

• Video Embedding: Allows you to embed videos from platforms like YouTube or Vimeo directly into your site to make your content more engaging.
• Fast Page Loading: Delivers great load speeds so that your website can load quickly to improve user experience, enhance SEO rankings, and decrease bounce rate.
• Migration: Offers easy migration options so you can easily switch platforms or host your website without losing data.
• Security: Comes with security features such as SSL certificates and encryption to keep your site safe from cyber threats and protect your data.
• Offline Website Builder: If you’re always on the go, you might want to consider an offline website builder, as it’ll allow you to work on your site without requiring an internet connection.

Pricing

Price is one of those factors that you should always consider while investing your money in something. However, instead of focusing on the absolute cost, it’s important to evaluate value for money.

Example:

Let’s support you have two website builders to choose from, including A and B. Option A comes with dirt cheap subscription plans but its most expensive one has less than half the features of the most basic plan that option B offers.

If you focus only on the absolute cost, you’d want to go with option A. However, when it comes to value for money, option B will be a far better option.

Customer Support

It’s common to come across roadblocks when you’re using a new tool, which can be inconvenient. But what can be extremely frustrating is not having timely customer support that helps you resolve the issues you’re facing.

Ideally, the website-building tool that you choose should offer 24/7 customer support. It’ll allow you to get all your queries resolved and questions answered as quickly as possible.

Final Words

While choosing a website builder for your small business might seem like a daunting task, it doesn’t have to be that way. You only need to make sure that you follow the right approach and take your time before making the final decision.

We hope this guide has helped you understand the right way to choose the best website builder for your small business to succeed in the digital world.