Website builders
Choosing a website builder
You need to build a website for your business or your personal portfolio, no worries, it has never been easier. There are affordable, intuitive website builders that can help you develop a robust website without any coding knowledge. And we’ve rounded up the seven of the best ones for 2019 below.
1. WordPress
Powering over 30% of the websites on the internet, WordPress is arguably the most popular website builder out there. Whether you want to develop a website for your business or your own personal projects, you can use WordPress’ intuitive editor to build an entire website and blog.
With WordPress, you can also easily add images to your website with their drag-and-drop editor and embed audio, video, and documents in your website. If you want visibility into your website’s analytics and SEO data, WordPress has these features built into their platform.
Additionally, WordPress offers hundreds of themes that you can leverage to build a beautiful website without much coding knowledge, as well as an online store builder.
2. Google Sites
Google Sites is affordable and integrates with other popular Google software solutions many businesses already have in place. Google Sites also makes it easy to collaborate within the platform in real time. Once you have your gmail account, it's as simple as going into your google drive and clicking on add website. Give your site a name and hit publish and you are in business. Additional pages are added into a menu structure, which is displayed in a panel on the right of the page you are editing.
Drop in photos, youtube videos, maps, calendars, spreadsheets, carousels and more. Use the selection of templates, or simply drag and drop as you like. It's also really easy to share content from other sources. Everything snaps onto a grid, so it's responsive and looks great on any device.
It's a case of less is more, with all the essential tools within easy reach. When you do need to do something more fancyful, then that's possible too. The embed feature let's you develop yourself using languages like javascript, html, css.
It's no surprise that you get your own private google search tool, indexing all the site's pages, automatically in the background.
Something for Google to improve are the SEO functions. One would have thought that Search Engine Optimisation would of been there.
You can setup everything for free and when you want to add your custom domain, you pay 5$ a month which includes online and telephone support.
3. Wix
Wix is one of the most versatile website builders on the market. The website builder offers the ability to build a website specifically for stores, musicians, events, and restaurants.
If your business doesn’t operate under one of the previously mentioned categories, don’t worry, Wix is still a viable option. Their code-free editor is robust and intuitive, providing over 500 website templates, over 100 fonts, scroll effects, an app market, and a drag-and-drop functionality, letting you build a website for nearly any type of organization.
If you’d rather have full control over your website’s functionality, you can build custom web applications on your website with Wix’s Code APIs and JavaScript. Wix also offers Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI), which uses a questionnaire you fill out and artificial intelligence to design a personalized professional website for you.
4. Squarespace
With award-winning, fully customizable website templates designed by their own team of web designers, Squarespace gives you the ability to craft some of the most visually aesthetic websites that a website builder can possibly develop.
Squarespace also offers some robust marketing tools, like email campaigns, SEO features, blogging, social integration, analytics, lead capture features, a map of your store location, calendars, and an online store builder.
Additionally, Squarespace offers dozens of integrations to amplify your design and marketing efforts, like Getty Images, Unsplash, Eventbrite, Disqus, PayPal, OpenTable, Google Maps, Google AMP, and more.
5. Weebly
Weebly is an intuitive website builder that offers over 50 website themes and a drag-and-drop editor. With custom fonts, an image editor, video backgrounds, and animation effects like parallax and reveal, you can truly build a visually pleasing website. If you’d rather customize your entire website, Weebly gives you the option to employ your own custom HTML/CSS & JavaScript.
Weebly also lets you store your contacts in a contact database, write blog posts, create and send emails, share content on your social profiles, analyze your SEO, and examine your website analytics. If you have an online store, you can even create Facebook ads inside of their platform.
Additionally, Weebly will host your website on their servers for free, transfer your domain from another website builder, keep your website safe by offering SSL security and DDoS protection, and provides 24/7 email & chat support.
6. Shopify
Powering over 500,000 businesses that have generated more than $40 billion in sales, Shopify is the leading online store builder for retailers. And for good reason, too. Shopify’s eCommerce functionality is second-to-none, offering advanced inventory management, store management, and selling and shipping solutions.
Shopify also provides over 70 website themes, customizable templates, a blogging platform, and access to your website’s HTML and CSS, which allows you to intuitively build a robust website for your online store. Additionally, Shopify enables you to build your brand by offering SEO tools, social media integration, the ability to sell your products on Facebook, analytics reports, and an integration with Google Analytics.
If you need help building your store, Shopify can connect you with a retail expert to photograph your inventory, market your store, set up your website, and even help you create 3D models of your products.