Nowadays, over 90% of your customers find you over the Internet. So, the best way to broaden your reach is to develop a website to showcase your products and services.
Back in the day, building the perfect website was challenging as it required coding and web design skills. Fortunately, we’re leaving this in the past. Today, you can use a website builder to create a professional website without technical experience.
This article will help you choose the best website builder, whether you are a small or a prominent business owner. So, let’s get down to business!
Determine Your Business Goals
Before you start building your website, you need to set clear business objectives. It will help you identify the most crucial features of your web page. Therefore, choosing a website builder will be much easier.
Here are some factors to keep in mind.
Target Audience
If you understand your target market, you can create a website that effectively reaches and engages your audience. It involves understanding your potential customers’ demographics, preferences, and needs.
Some website builders offer templates and features tailored to specific industries or target markets, making it easier for you to create a website that resonates with your audience.
Source: https://pixabay.com/vectors/business-target-achieve-moving-6827797/
For instance, say your target market is 30-50-year-old fitness-conscious individuals. You’ll want to choose a website builder with templates tailored to fitness businesses, easy booking system integration, and membership management features to cater to your specific audience and required functionality.
Your business goals will also dictate the functionality your website requires.
Functionality
Do you require eCommerce functionality or advanced features like a forum, membership platforms, or booking systems? Or do you want to showcase your work in a portfolio?
For instance, if you go for an eCommerce website, you must include a shopping cart. You will need a website builder with useful features like various payment methods, shipping, and tax integration. Additionally, you will need templates that support eCommerce platforms.
On the other hand, if you want to create a blog, the website builder should offer tools for organizing content, like tags and categories, built-in social sharing buttons, and customizable blog templates. A commenting section is also helpful for gathering feedback.
Booking websites are also popular. Suppose you tend to develop such a page. In that case, your website builder should include a few key features, such as a customizable booking form, an integrated calendar to display availability, syncing with calendar services for easy schedule management, and support for multiple payment methods like PayPal and credit/debit cards.
Media Type You Will Use
A website without images is pretty dull. First, however, you must define whether your website will come with a photo gallery of your products, videos about how they look or how to use them, or a map that will show the customer where your brick-and-mortar store is located.
By selecting a website builder that aligns with your media requirements, you can create a visually engaging website that effectively communicates your brand message and supports your business goals.
Your website builder must support the content formats you plan to incorporate. But it is crucial to find a builder that can also optimize media to be mobile responsive, as most of your customers use their phones to browse through your page.
Search for an Easy-to-Use Website Builder
Using a website builder is much easier than creating a website by coding. However, not all website builders are that easy to use. Some come with a more complicated platform that may confuse a beginner.
That’s why you should find an easy-to-use website builder with a drag-and-drop feature, which will help you easily add, remove, or move around elements. Additionally, an intuitive editor also helps. It will guide you through the whole website-building process and allow you to easily make any changes.
As a result, you will get a visually appealing website that will attract more customers and boost your professional reputation and credibility.
AltusHost comes with one of the easiest-to-use website builders that requires no coding experience. You can find it in the cPanel under the name ‘SitePad.’ You will enjoy the drag-and-drop feature and the tutorial on using it.
Source: https://www.altushost.com/website-builder/
Find a Website Builder With SEO Features
The best website builder should include SEO features that make on-site optimization simple and effective. On-site optimization simplifies the meta description, tags, and URL structure so that search engines understand it easily.
We already mentioned that finding a website builder that supports all media formats is essential. Still, your website builder should also provide the proper image format as it is related to the file size, tags, and descriptions. This is crucial for allowing the search engine to read the tags and descriptions. Also, image formats affect page speed and performance, which is crucial for gaining a better SEO ranking.
Lastly, the website builder you choose should provide mobile responsive elements. It is another factor that affects SEO because big search engines like Google are moving towards a mobile-first index.
At AltusHost, we care for your and your customers’ experience. Therefore, our website builder will help you develop the perfect website that will provide visible content on desktop and mobile devices.
Source: https://www.altushost.com/website-builder/
Check out the Themes and Features
Imagine choosing a website builder with limited themes and features that can’t fulfill your requirements. It may result in a poorly developed website that won’t attract customers.
Selecting a website builder with various themes and flexible features will help you create a visually appealing, functional, and user-friendly website that aligns with your business goals and caters to your target market.
Features encompass the functional elements of your website, allowing you to add specific capabilities tailored to your business goals. Several key features examples include eCommerce functionality, SEO tools, contact forms, and social media integration. Moreover, the best website builder includes the option to integrate third-party applications and plugins to further extend your website’s capabilities.
Themes, in turn, determine your website’s layout and design. Therefore, a good website builder should offer a wide variety of professionally designed, mobile-responsive themes that cater to different industries and purposes.
At AltusHost, we offer you over 500 templates with various features that can be the right fit for any business. You get to pick a designer-made template and customize it before you publish it live.
Source: https://www.altushost.com/website-builder/
Select a Scalable Website Builder
As your business grows, your website may experience an increase in traffic. Therefore, a scalable website builder that can handle higher traffic volumes without harming your website performance or uptime is essential.
Moreover, by using such a builder, you can make frequent changes, add new features and integrations, and customize your page to keep up with your business growth and the increased page traffic.
The ideal website builder should provide customizable themes and templates and allow easy updates and modifications without rebuilding your website from scratch or causing downtime.
So, opt for a scalable website builder with various pricing plans with different feature sets, enabling you to upgrade to a more advanced plan as your business grows. Usually, the website builders that are part of a hosting provider are linked to scalable hosting plans that can support your business website growth.
Opt for 24/7 Customer Support
Even if you choose an easy-to-use website builder, you may encounter some difficulties with it. Also, if you have a larger business, you need a more complex website, which will require using more advanced features that can be tricky to learn and understand.
That’s why you should check whether the website builder offers customer support, such as live chat or email support, or other resources, such as tutorials or knowledgebase.
The best website builder will come with 24/7 customer support, which you can contact anytime for any issue. Moreover, the expert team should also be able to resolve the problem effectively.
More so, it should include tutorials on using its features and making any changes. This is crucial for an issue-free experience while building your website, as some people are better visual learners.
As a result, we at AltusHost offer you a few support options, such as tickets, live chat, and phone support. What’s best, you can use the unique, thorough tutorial on how to use the website builder.
Research the Website Builder’s Reputation
To ensure that the website builder will work properly and is easy to use, you should choose a company with a good reputation for its service. It will guarantee that you won’t waste your time and money.
The best way to see how the website builder performed in real life and whether it fulfilled everything it promised is to read customer reviews. It will also help you determine whether it’s is beginner-friendly.
Yet, remember that people with similar or the same knowledge as you are the best indicator of the issues you may run into and how to overcome them, of course, if they have experienced any.
Source: https://pixabay.com/vectors/feedback-star-rating-user-rating-2800867/
Consider Your Budget Limit
You must figure out how much you can spend on a builder, as there are other costs than that, such as purchasing a web host for your site and a domain name.
Therefore, it would be best for you to research and compare different website builders and see which of them offers you the most perks for the least amount of money. Sometimes, the cheapest website builder might not help you achieve your business goal due to a lack of essential features.
The best option is to choose web hosting with a website builder in its hosting plans. This is ideal if you are on a limited budget because you will get two services for the price of one and significantly save costs.
Here at AltusHost, we offer you an easy-to-use website builder with many templates and all essential features, such as drag-and-drop, in any hosting plan you choose!
Test the Website Builder
Last but not least, testing your website builder is crucial for you to not waste time and money on a platform that is not worth it. To do that, you can sign up for a free trial, as most website builders offer it. This will give you a better insight into whether it is easy to use, what features it provides, whether it allows third-party integrations and whether it has decent customer support.
If you are unsatisfied with what the builder offers and how it works, you can cancel your account anytime.
Additionally, if you go for a website builder that is part of a hosting provider, you can still test it for a while. Then, if it doesn’t meet your needs, you can request a refund due to the money-back policies of most hosting providers.
At AltusHost, we allow you to test our website builder and ask for a refund if you are unsatisfied. You will receive a full refund due to our 45-day money-back guarantee.
Conclusion
Choosing the best website builder is a must for developing a professional website without any web design or coding knowledge.
Being aware of your technical knowledge and determining your business goals will significantly help you make the right choice. As a result, you will know what to look for and find a website builder that offers themes and features that will fulfill your business needs.
Overall, building a website may indeed sound hard and frightening, but by choosing the best website builder, you can establish a solid online presence and boost your business growth!