Things to Note before Choosing a Website Builder for Your Business Website

Posted by Nandan Goda on December 9th, 2022

Website building tools will go down as pieces of pivotal innovation in modern day web technology. We are still very early in the era of website builders but years from now, we will be talking about websites and web technologies by dissecting them into pre and post website builders. 

Selecting a website builder for your business is not as easy as it sounds. While the process of actually making a website on these tools may have become a lot more convenient, the prior analysis and suitability of these tools defines how your website will eventually be. Selecting the right tool depends on what your needs are and what your website is about. With the right selection, you can get a website that redefines your business. On the flip side, a wrong selection might make you question the whole point.

What Are Website Builders?

Website builders, as the name suggests, are tools that are used to build websites through the easiest possible way. Most modern day website builders have default themes to choose from. These themes consist of design blocks like headers, footers, navigation bars, etc. All these design blocks can be completely customized. Other than the default themes, there are thousands of themes available on each website building tool’s official libraries.

Developers can also design a website from scratch without any default themes. The beauty of these tools is that all you have to do is drag and drop design elements and select the transitions or actions that are supposed to follow that particular block. 

How Is This Done?

Every time developers drag and drop design elements and apply animations, transitions or subsequent call to action tasks, there is a pre-coded program attached to it that works in the backend. Developers on the frontend assemble design blocks and apply actions to them and subsequently programs are aligned automatically in the background. 

Benefits of Website Building Tools

Website building tools have many direct as well as indirect benefits. Here are some of them.

• Low or no coding required

• Thousands of interactive website themes to choose from

• Smart plugins for additional functionalities

• Reduces website building time

• Reduces costs of website building

Things to Look For Before Choosing a Website Builder 

There are many website-building tools available in the market today. It started from WordPress and their ability to produce blogging websites. Inspired from that journey, many more website-building tools have evolved in the last few years.

The default programming language for most of these tools is PHP. Apart from aligning your design elements in an interactive way, these tools also churn out programs that power those functionalities. You have to be specific when you acquire custom PHP web development services. If your business is an online store then there are dedicated website builders like Wix and WooCommerce to launch an eCommerce store. If blogging is your thing then WordPress is ideal for you. If your website is informative and heavy on data exchanges then you might want to consider Elementor. 

If the names and their features sound confusing to you, let us simplify the whole process by expanding upon factors to consider before selecting a website builder.

Purpose

You must first be clear about the purpose of your website. If your website is just a decorated bulletin of information then you might consider a lighter tool. If your website is also a store then you should go for an ecommerce website building platform. Purpose defines your needs and your needs define what features you are going to need. For a website that is just informative, you might not need a scalable website and hosting. For a website that is going to have a large number of visitors, a scalable and capable platform is more suitable.

Transactions 

It’s a little known fact that these tools charge a certain percentage on transactions made on your website. If ecommerce is your main priority then you must select globally popular ecommerce website builders like WIx or WooCommerce. The price you pay to have a perfect online store is a royalty percentage. The industry standard for vendor processing fees is 3%. Your website host might charge an additional 1% as well. These percentages are on the total transaction value from your online store. 

Platforms like Shopify charge more than 3% if you are not using their Shopify Payments services. Similarly there are platforms like BigCommerce that offer discounts on PayPal payments. That takes the overall cut below 3%. When the volumes go high, these percentages make a huge difference. 

Scale

Scale of a website is not just about how many users are expected to visit the website when it is live. Even while developing the website, it can get tricky if you have a large number of pages. Editors of some of these website building tools are not equipped to handle more than 40 pages at a time. The subsequent navigation can also become tricky if the editors cannot preview the whole website at once. It is essential to consider the scale of a website before selecting the tool.

Security

Security is the single most sensitive factor affecting the selection of the tool for your business website. The syntax it uses to program the website has to be hack proof. The platform should also offer regular updates that make your website securer with every update. Platforms like WordPress have a built-in auto-update feature that updates the platform itself along with the programming language PHP in case it also has an available update.

Plans

Finally, the cost of the website will have a significant impact by the platform you choose. Subscription plans for developers are different with each tool. Some platforms also offer additional services like free templates, themes, plugins and even hosting services along with their standard plans. The storage plans are also available separately in case you need them. A report from CNET lays out a fair comparison of all the popular plans from the leading website building tools.

Conclusion

Cost is the most important factor for most people while selecting a suitable tool for building their business website. Subscription fees and the additional costs of the premium templates, plugins and third-party APIs account for a sizable part in the overall costing of a website. The second most considered aspect is a platform’s ability to produce interactive and innovative frontends. There are a few aspects like integrated hosting, transaction fees and security that modern-day developers and business owners must consider before making the selection. The process of building a website may have gotten easier but the process to choose the right platform is getting tougher with every passing year.