If you want to tell the world about yourself and your business, you need to use social media. However, even this will not be enough. If you’re going to reach a vast audience, you need a website with accessible navigation and good content.
Such a site will look like your business card and present you as a serious organization. And this is no longer a page on the social network – you are the complete owner and manager of this site, along with a dedicated development team that creates and maintains it. You can implement your brand image on your website, offer products for sale, and integrate third-party web services.
These days, it is easier than ever to build such a professionally designed website with a unique design. You need to use DIY website-building tools.
Statista reports that Wix is the leading website builder globally, accounting for over 22 percent of the global website market. Squarespace and Weebly ranked second and third most popular website building platforms, accounting for over 15 percent of the total market share. Let’s take a look at these and other website-building tools.
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Wix
It’s a reasonably simple drag-and-drop website builder. It’s great because it has hundreds of themes, apps and is easy to customize.
It’s not for nothing that it’s one of the most popular website building tools:
- It’s easy to use.
- It creates beautiful websites.
- It lets you customize whatever you can think of.
The usability and user-friendly design are the favorites of those who use Wix.
That being said, it’s important to remember that Wix may not work on every small business website. And the cost of working with this tool is not the lowest. Therefore, if you have a minimal budget or do not plan to make significant sales through the site, it is better to choose another tool.
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Squarespace
Squarespace lets you create a simple, beautiful eCommerce store. There are also many drag-and-drop components, built-in tools, and designers.
Squarespace offers everything you need to create a small online store. It has built-in features that allow you to accept credit card payments, track customers, create gift certificates, and more.
This tool, with ease, makes vibrant, clean websites. The disadvantages of this tool include not very convenient search engine optimization and the fact that tabs and sidebar menus sometimes hide the functionality.
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Weebly
It is a tool that is great for regular shops.
Weebly has an intuitive dashboard, a drag-and-drop platform, and a user-friendly builder.
Weebly is great for building a beautiful website at an affordable price. If, at the same time, you do not need a lot of non-standard functions. Its drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to customize pages the way you want, and its default templates look great on desktops and mobile devices.
That being said, while the Weebly platform technically has a lot of eCommerce tools, you will have to pay for a premium package if you need specific website tools.
Weebly is ideal for brick-and-mortar stores looking for a simple (yet beautiful) website to guide people to their store.
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WordPress
WordPress is an optimal tool for anyone who wants to take complete control of their website. Forbes writes that WordPress is the most reliable content management system for web design and development today. This tool includes website creation software plus web hosting. WordPress has more customization options than any other website builder, thousands of theme options.
WordPress can do just about anything. It has a variety of themes for any website you want to create. It comes with exceptional blogging functionality built-in. It can provide excellent and robust eCommerce solutions that can compete with the best website builders with one or two plugins.
But keep in mind that WordPress requires more work and know-how from you; when you need control and features – and many of them – then WordPress is exactly what you need. We should note that plugins and a complete set of SEO analysis tools will be limited to the selected tariff plan. To achieve the best result when creating your website, you will need to fine-tune all the parameters very well.
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GoDaddy
GoDaddy comes in handy for those looking to get the fastest website setup possible. There are many builders here, and the tool has a low starting price.
This tool is perfect for those who don’t want to spend a lot of time building their website. With this simple website builder, you can create a website in literally half an hour. Of all the tools described, GoDaddy has the most limited customization options. If you’re building a website that points people to your business like a business card, GoDaddy is the place to go.
Should you choose a website builder or a website development team?
You should understand that the answer may be different for each project. Business owners are fully capable of creating a website, thanks to such builders.
Still, if you need something more particular and professional, uniquely customized and made by professionals, it is better to order web development, for example, here https://mlsdev.com/services/web-development and create something unique and unrepeatable.The choice depends on your business and is always up to you.
Author’s bio: Anastasiia Lastovetska is a technology writer at MLSDev, a software development company that builds web & mobile app solutions from scratch. She researches the area of technology to create great content about app development, UX/UI design, tech & business consulting.