Best Website Builder for a New Business in 2018

By David Gariepy

So you’re starting a new business, congratulations! You’re ready to get going, but you’ve got a looming giant standing over you… ?

I need a website! What. Service. Do. I. Pick?

In this article I’m going to share some golden nuggets of tech wisdom that were delivered to my EforAll cohort by Scott Dubois, co-founder of the cutting-edge digital creative agency Pidalia and partner at Gingham Ventures.

TL;DR

Pick the solution that matches your business needs:

• simple website: Squarespace
• ecommerce store: Shopify
• custom functionality: Wordpress

Ok, lezzgo!

Why you would pick one service over the other mostly depends on what you need the site to do (functionality) and how good you are with design and coding. As always, there is a trade off and here it is that more customization requires the need for technical skills.

First, let’s go over some nerd-speak:

Backend: When you sign up for one of these services you create an administrator account that gives you access to a “backend” with a bunch of settings. The settings in the backend control what people see on the public website.

Frontend: This is what the public sees when they visit your site.

Responsiveness: this is when the frontend website reacts to the width of the browser window… huh? Ok, so you know when you’re looking at a desktop website and then you jump to your phone and it looks like junk because its not formatted correctly? That site is not responsive. The elements on the frontend should… respond to the width of the browser window. Typically this is achieved by having the elements laid out in rows on desktop and as a column on a phone using a thing called a media-query. The great thing is that the website builders take of this for you, but this is an important feature to keep in mind since you will be getting traffic from phones and desktops and you want your site to look snazzy on both.

SSL: Secure Socket Layer. This ensures that the data going between the visitor and the website remains encrypted.

Template: this is a pre-built “skin” for your website. Each service has its own standards, but in general there is a basic core and you as the administrator get to install a template that has a unique layout and colors.

Onward to the breakdown!

Squarespace

This is the easiest to use software out of Scott’s selection. If you need help with design this is your go-to. This is also a good service if you have a few items to sell and need a shopping cart.

Squarespace isn’t lacking in features, though. Some highlights include:

• Automatically responsive when using their templates
• Large font selection
• Large set of integrations (social, video, email service providers, blogging, app store)
• SSL is free
• Awesome analytics
• One free GSuite custom email for a year

With monthly plans from $12 — $46 per month, this is a great deal and the fastest way to get going.

Next up!

Shopify

As the name suggests, Shopify is optimized for ecommerce sales and most of the features are designed to help you sell product. Like Squarespace, Shopify has a template system so that you can do one-click template installs to change the look of your site. You can do more customization on this platform, but it might require a tutorial and some basic coding.

Here are some benefits to using Shopify:

• Automatically responsive when using their templates
• Large set of integrations for selling (Facebook Store, Facebook Messenger, Pinterest Buyable Pins, Amazon)
• Point of sale for in-person sales
• Best out of the box shipping partner integrations and generates a shipping label
• State, local and county taxes for all of the US

Monthly pricing for a Shopify store starts at $29 per month. You can get gift card functionality for $79 per month and for $299 you get advanced reporting and some third-party shipping integrations.

Shopify also has an in-person POS system that syncs up with your online store. That’s billed separately at $49 per month.

If you hire a pro to build a custom Shopify store, expect to pay anywhere between $1500 and $7500.

Last, but not least:

Wordpress

Wordpress powers over 30% of the web! This content management system is great if you want a lot of control over the design and some custom functionality using Wordpress plugins. If you need to run a custom application or if you’re a hacker, Wordpress might be for you.

As far as pricing, you’re looking at $10 to $49 per month for hosting, $99 for an SSL certificate plus the cost of any plugins that you need.

If you hire a pro, expect to pay anywhere from $2500 to $12000.

Boom! There you go!

But wait, there’s a bonus round!

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization has gained a lot of attention over the years as sites like Google have become gateways to the web. Scott warned us against gaming the system and to just focus on quality content that is relevant to your brand. With that being said there are some basic things you should consider for your site for SEO purposes.

For your web pages make sure that you have correct Page Title and Page Description — these are set up with meta tags in HTML, but will likely appear as a setting somewhere in your content management system. When you’re creating content make sure to use H1 heading tags in your HTML for your content headings and if you’re feeling fancy you can add alt text descriptions to your images. Finally, you need SSL. Not having it means your site is insecure and that is a reason Google might not send traffic your way.

Domains

Check out namecheap.com and domains.google.com for a good deal.

Company Email

Apps.google.com is a must!

Email Service Providers (ESPs)

Email campaigns are going to be a key part of your marketing strategy so you should look into using Mailchimp.com or another provider like myemma.com. Since this is a different topic comparisons here will have to wait for another day.

Ok, so that’s it! You are officially a nerd!

Now go forth and prosper!