How to choose the right website builder?

The first step towards choosing the most suitable website builder is to understand what kind of website you want to end up with. Perhaps you need a blog or a business card site, a one-pager or a large information portal, a forum, or maybe an online store?

Next, you work out a set of necessary features and try to work with several of the best designers that will allow you to develop a site of the desired type.

When choosing a designer, do not focus only on its cost. Choose the platform that you feel comfortable working with. It may cost you more, but the overpayment for convenience and excellent results is worth it. For a more informed choice of website building platform, you can also check out this ranking of the best website builders.

It is important not only to have the features you need, but also how clear the interface is, what templates are offered and how many of them to choose from, whether there is a set of tools for marketing / SEO and much more.

The best free website builders are Wix, Jimdo, Weebly and Webnode. These are the most popular website builders in the world that will suit everyone – each of the services mentioned is ideal in its class.

It doesn’t matter what type of website you want to create, these platforms are up to the task. Therefore, choosing a designer, first of all, take a closer look at them. Next, you will learn how website builders work, what factors you should pay attention to when choosing them, and how a “good” site differs from a mediocre one.

What are website builders?

Online website builder is a convenient service for creating websites on your own without technical knowledge and skills. Your finished resource will be hosted on a remote server, where platform administrators will monitor its safety and security.

Constructors are, first of all, boxed services, that is, you get immediate access to hosting, CMS engine, templates, and all the necessary functions. Such specialized services have an intuitive interface. All work is carried out through the control panel of the visual editor, changes are displayed in real time. You edit pages, change templates, customize the site and immediately see the result of your actions.

Using a website builder can be a good alternative to turning to web studios working with small and medium businesses. After all, such a service can often offer even more than specialists, and the site will turn out to be of better quality.

The cost savings factor is also often important. In the studio, you will need to pay for every even small editing. It becomes profitable to use the constructor to create a website, because you yourself can edit anything and do it quickly.

The main advantages of using constructors:

• they are easy to learn and use – no complicated work with HTML code, each step is clear and simple;
• design and content are edited separately;
• there are ready-made layout templates – their entire collections. And if you want to get such a template without a constructor, then this will require knowledge in the field of programming;
  images are very easy to load – you do not need to leave the browser for this. You will immediately place pictures on the pages of your site, you can create a gallery or “fit” any image into the
• layout design;
• pages are published very quickly, and all changes on them instantly become visible;
  reliable storage – all concerns for storing site files are taken care of by the designer himself. They will be located on its server, and this eliminates the need to create backup copies of data so
• as not to lose them. Likewise, there is no need to fear hacking;
• transfer to another hosting – some designers also have such an opportunity.

What factors are important when choosing a designer?

Each site solves a specific problem. Factors that must be taken into account when choosing a constructor directly depend on this.

Here are the most important factors for choosing a website builder:

• website builder specialization;
• what audience is it intended for – pros, just experienced users or beginners who have never created their own website;
• templates – how many there are, whether they are adapted for mobile devices, how detailed their editing is possible;
• building a site from scratch – the ability to create a site using ready-made blocks and widgets;
• code editing – is it possible to make changes to HTML / CSS to make the site more unique;
• training materials – are there any supporting materials for working with the service;
• technical support – what ways of contacting it are available, in what language you need to make a request;
• tariff policy – is there a free tariff, and what restrictions does it impose on working with the designer, the cost of paid tariffs;
• trial period – is it possible to test all the features of the constructor for free within a certain period of time;
• payment methods – what payment options for the selected tariff and additional services are available;
• integration with third-party services – is it possible to connect other services in order to use more functions (CRM for importing orders from the site in automatic mode, analytics systems, social networks;
• ways to load goods – if there are a lot of them, it is convenient when export and import are carried out automatically;
• online payment – which payment systems can be connected to the site;
• domain – is it possible to connect your own domain, can it be done for free;
• SEO – whether it will be possible to optimize the site.

Nine Signs of a Good Website

If you successfully implement certain characteristics, then your site can be called good. Not all the results of your work in this direction will be visible to others, but all these characteristics are equally important.

So, what criteria should your site meet in order to be considered good:

1. domain name – choose and pay for a domain. Uncomfortable sub-domains should be discarded, since visitors will not appreciate a difficult-to-remember site address. Immediately pay attention to the conditions of free tariffs from designers – usually they do not allow you to connect your domain;
2. design – should be such that the site is displayed correctly both on the PC monitor and on the screen of a mobile device, that is, adaptive. Another requirement is the observance of a single style in fonts, background, color design, corresponding to the chosen topic;
3. branding – you need to stand out from the crowd. Take care of your own logo and corporate identity. Your customers will recognize you by these details;
4. easy navigation – visitors should immediately understand where on your site they can find the information they need. The menu should be as thoughtful as possible and not overloaded;
5. quality content is the most important thing on the site, for which it will be visited. Texts should appeal to the audience, be unique, relevant, useful, interesting and well-written. Complement them with the same high-quality thematic videos and images. It is not necessary to do it yourself – you can delegate the task to a copywriter;
6. speed of work – do everything possible on your part to increase the performance of the site. Get rid of useless widgets, reduce the “weight” of images, etc. Your task is not to overload the pages. Good opportunities for site optimization are offered by such designers as uCoz, uKit, Diafan;
7. the presence of an SSL certificate is important for resources that use the personal data of third parties (for example, online stores). Such an HTTPS encryption protocol is available for free from many designers;
8. SEO-optimization is needed to promote the site in search engines. It is not enough just to write texts, you also need to add a certain number of keywords that users will follow to you. It also requires high-quality filling in the meta tags of the title, description and anchors. It’s good if there is a competent linking of pages – some of your articles will link to others. And leave links to your site in publications on various platforms, such as Youtube and social networks, this will be a great advertisement. And make sure that everything is in order with the sitemap, with the robots.txt file, and if necessary, set up 301 redirects;
9. collecting statistics – you need this data to analyze the behavior of visitors. After processing them, you will understand how to further develop your site. Therefore, do not forget to connect your resource to Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrika.

Vladyslava Rykova

Expert in legal marketing. Head of marketing agency MAVR.

Business degree “Master of Business Administration” (MBA).