Choosing the Right Website Builder
If you are making a website, choosing the right tools to do so is more than just important; it’s absolutely essential that you choose the right website builder. Because if you don’t, you’re going to end up not only facing a steeper learning curve and taking longer to create the website, but secondly, it could result in a failed website if what you choose to use isn’t designed for what you’re trying to do. If there’s a mismatch there, which might be subtle, you might not realize there’s a mismatch. You might not rank in Google, you might not find the success you’re looking for, you might not have the conversions, and ultimately, you’re going to run into a lot of hurdles that aren’t necessary at all.
Overview of Website Builder Options
This could definitely be a stressful decision. A lot of people might look at this and say, “There are so many options out there. Like, which one should I actually pick?” I’ve actually tested all of them. I’ve made hundreds of websites using all the different options you could possibly think of, and I’ve taught thousands of people how to make websites with a very simple strategy. In this video, I want to break down seven different categories that can help you decide which website builder is actually the best one for you.
Categories for Choosing the Best Website Builder
So, I didn’t want to just rank these 1 through 7 because, of course, everybody has different needs. Some people are selling online; some people have a fundraiser; some people just need a single-page personal portfolio. And whatever your needs are, I promise one of these tools in this video will be a perfect match for you.
Talking about these, we have seven categories in this article. The first one is the best for e-commerce. If you’re selling anything online, this is always my easiest recommendation. Secondly, we have the best for blogs. Thirdly, we have the best for beginners. And by the way, if you’re not sure which category you fit in, I will explain all of that throughout the article, and if there’s overlap, there are great options there as well. Then we have the best for single-page websites. Then we have the best for local merchants, local shops, local brick-and-mortar stores. And lastly, we have the best overall. And as a bonus, I’ll add in another one that’s best for some very advanced customizations that I think some people might actually be interested in.
Best for E-commerce: Shopify
Starting off with the first category, best for e-commerce, kind of in no particular order, the best for e-commerce. There are a lot of tools out there that can help you sell online, but our recommendation is such an easy one here. This is Shopify. It’s great for so many different types of e-commerce, whether you are dropshipping, whether you’re doing print-on-demand, whether you have actual inventory and you’re doing retail or custom-made stuff that you made yourself, digital products, physical products, even in-person sales. Shopify makes it easy to do any of those.
So, there are a couple of reasons that we say it makes it easy. One is that they have tons of commerce-centric themes and templates that help you design the website really built around selling online. That really saves a lot of effort upfront. Next, because it is a commerce-first program, the tools are all really well-organized. There’s inventory tracking, there are low inventory notifications, you can do all types of things with shipping, have different sales, really endless flexibility on how you can set up your store and how you can maximize your profits.
Best for Beginners: Squarespace
So, let me show you something. There are a lot of online stores that you’ve visited on a daily basis that you probably didn’t even realize were built with Shopify. So, if it’s not being sold on Amazon or eBay, odds are it’s probably on Shopify. Shopify also makes it very simple and streamlined with the checkout process. So, they’ve really optimized it over the years, and there are a lot of different ways you can process payments. So, whether people are trying to pay with Apple Pay or a credit card or Klarna or Google Pay, whatever, there’s really endless ways you can accept payments, which again just increases conversions just that little bit more that can really help your business
Best for Single-page Websites: Wix
There are also thousands of apps and integrations. So, because it is so popular for e-commerce, everybody out there wants to integrate with Shopify. Email marketing, if you’re using something like MailChimp, if you’re running TikTok ads, they’re really easy to do and integrate with Shopify. And you don’t have to do any kind of coding to integrate these because, like, they know that a lot of people are using Shopify, so they just want to make that integration as easy as possible. You don’t have to copy and paste any code or anything like that. There are also a lot of SEO tools. So, like I said, you’ve probably already been shopping on a lot of Shopify stores. Many of them you probably found on Google. So, it is extremely possible to rank on Google as long as you do the right things with SEO, and Shopify makes it easy enough to do that.
Lastly, they do have some really good security. Obviously, encryption and two-factor authentication are super important for anybody. If you’re shopping online, you want to make sure everything is as secure as possible.
Best for Local Businesses: Shopify (Again)
The next category is the best for blogs. Now, this one’s a no-brainer for me. If you are making a blog, you’re going to be needing WordPress. Now, not wordpress.com, WordPress.org, which actually powers about 40% of the entire internet. Basically, every blog you’ve been on, I could basically guarantee is using WordPress. It’s super common. It’s easy to make a massive library of articles and to organize them really well. It’s extremely flexible, and it’s honestly, even though it has a bit more of a learning curve, it’s very, very flexible and not as hard as you would really think. So, the way we recommend going about doing this — I have a link down below to actually set this up, but also a full tutorial, basically a free training on how to make a website with WordPress. We recommend using Hostinger. They’re really the easiest way to do that, but another option would be Bluehost. Either one works really well, and we have videos on both of them in the description below. And, by the way, I should also mention we have discount links to Shopify and all the other ones on this list down there. So, whichever one you want to get started with, be sure to go down and check out those links.
Best for Customizations: Webflow
So, back to why we actually like WordPress here. So, there’s a lot of themes, a lot of plugins, a lot of templates, and a lot of tools. And as I said before, slightly steeper learning curve, yes, but with that, you’re getting way more flexibility. And like I said, I have a tutorial, so the learning curve is really not even that bad. Once you know the ropes on it and you understand where things are, you can basically do anything you would want on a WordPress website. And it’s very scalable too. You could start off making a very simple website based on a theme and a template, and then eventually, if you want to scale into something completely different, you can do that on your own. Moving on to the third category, the best for beginners. You know what? Maybe WordPress is a little bit too much for you. Maybe it’s intimidating. You’re a beginner; you just want to make a quick and easy website. This one’s an easy one. Just go with Squarespace. They’re so easy to use. It’s very intuitive. There’s a lot of clean themes and drag-and-drop editing as well. So, you can start off and say, “Hey, I like how that website looks.” It’ll import that, and then you can just add your own text, add your own images, click and drag things around a little bit, and you’ve got a website up and ready to go.
Advanced Customization with Webflow
In addition, Squarespace is very vertically integrated. So, it starts off very basic, right? So, you can just have your website, and of course, you can get your domain through Squarespace too. But then if you want to add other things, if you want to add scheduling, you want to add a podcast, you want to add all these different things, you can bring those in, and they’re all through Squarespace. They’re little add-ons that Squarespace makes. They’re very easy to enable, but they don’t overload you with tools right away. The interface is very intuitive and, like I said, very user-friendly for a beginner. But that’s not to say that Squarespace is not incredibly powerful as well. They’re great for anybody that’s not a beginner either. Like, if you want to have a larger blog on here, you can totally do that. You can sell things here; you can rank on Google. Squarespace is all-around just a really capable, the jack-of-all-trades, but they just happen to be very easy for beginners as well.
Moving along to the best for single-page websites. This one is a little bit similar to the best for beginners, and in many ways, they are sort of interchangeable. But for what I would say is if you’re trying to just make a one-page website, a billboard on the internet, maybe it’s going to be like your local store, and all you need to post is like your menu or your hours or something like that, like if you’re a plumber, you probably don’t need five different tabs on your website. You probably really could put everything on one. Now, as a little bonus category that I mentioned in the beginning of this article, the best for most customizable, some more advanced customization. If you’re trying to say build something that looks like the iPhone launch website, or maybe you’re scrolling down you want things to move and spin and do really dynamic things as you’re going around the website, then the best recommendation here in my opinion is actually going to be Webflow.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Webflow is one that you might not have heard about; a lot of people don’t know about it. But it’s a really beautiful combination of like, on one side, coding, and you can actually code in Webflow as well. But you’re not writing the full website from scratch, and you’re not using a drag-and-drop editor necessarily as you would with Wix. You’re kind of in the middle where it is a little bit of both, which gives you a lot of flexibility but also makes it a lot more approachable for somebody who doesn’t have a software engineering or a CS degree.
So, it’s a lot more approachable, and again, I have a tutorial on how to use that one. If you’re up for the challenge, like it’s really rewarding, it’s really, you can make some incredible websites on there. Webflow, again, super powerful, and there’s a lot you can do with that.
I hope you guys found this article helpful and enjoyable. Let me know which one you chose to go with and why. So thanks for reading.
