There are dozens of reasons why your small business needs a website. Not only does it provide 24/7 marketing, expanded reach (beyond your local area), and access to new customers, it can also help you establish your brand’s identity and allow for valuable two-way communication between you and your intended audience.
If you’re worried that starting a website for your small business will be too costly or complex, relax! There are several options for services that will help you to easily and quickly create eye-catching sites; all without coding or spending a small fortune on a technical freelancer. Here are six of the best website builders for small business you can work with today.
1- Wix
If you’re looking for the best overall package in terms of quality, ease of use, and price, then Wix is the service you’ll want to go with. It’s no wonder they were voted “Best of the Year 2019” by PC Magazine.
Wix offers over 500 designer made templates that look just as slick and modern as any Fortune 500 company’s website. You can then make your site even more unique by picking from any number of the hundreds of integrated apps.
Not exactly sure how you want your site to look? Just let the Wix ADI (artificial design intelligence) design it for you. Answer a few basic questions and the Wix ADI will automatically tailor a design that’s sure to represent your brand well.
All website packages also come with:
- Website hosting
- Payment integration
- Built-in SEO
- Mobile optimized for every screen size
- The ability to schedule appointments and bookings
Price: Wix’s Business Basic plan starts at $23 per month. This allows you to accept online payments, have unlimited bandwidth, 20 GB of storage, free domain for one year, and many other freebies.
2- Squarespace
If you’re looking to start a professional blog, portfolio, or online store, Squarespace is the website builder for you. They offer over one hundred flexible, mobile-responsive templates that look just as cool and fresh as a site that was created custom just for you.
Squarespace comes pre-integrated with payment support for PayPal land Apple Pay. All sites are secure and come with a free SSL certification (very important for e-commerce).
As your site grows and you capture more emails from your traffic, you can use the Mailchimp integration to send them updates and offers for your business. You can also take advantage of their built-in SEO tools for higher search ranking and visibility in Google.
Price: Squarespace’s Business package starts at $18 per month. This includes a free domain, unlimited bandwidth and storage, and fully integrated e-commerce. However, if you want to sell products on your own site or have a point of sale, then you’ll need to upgrade to the Basic Commerce package for $26 per month.
3- Weebly
From the commerce platform Square, Weebly is a service that helps you to build a website to support your business.
Like many of the other options, Weebly offers hundreds of highly customizable and stylish templates for you to choose from. Each one is ready to launch as is or can be easily adjusted using their drag and drop builder.
Don’t worry about adding additional code to track your site’s performance. Weebly comes with built-in analytics so you’ll always know everything about your visitors.
As part of the Square product suite, Weebly also is shopping cart ready. You can easily set up your online store and start taking payments within minutes. They also have integrations for inventory tracking and shipping management too.
Price: Professional website packages start at $12 per month (when billed annually). All sites come with a free domain, website hosting, unlimited storage, SSL certificate, and lots of e-commerce features.
4- GoDaddy
If there’s one player in the website business that’s definitely made a name for itself, its GoDaddy. GoDaddy has been a go-to for domain registration and personal website hosting for years. But if you’re a small business that’s looking for an attractive and polished site, then they’ve got something for you too.
GoDaddy offers dozens of beautifully crafted templates and that can be instantly filtered to change the layout, font, and color scheme to your liking. Add or change sections, promo banners, and menus. All designs are responsive, so they’ll look great from both desktop and mobile devices.
In addition to your domain and hosting, GoDaddy also boasts a suite of marketing tools to help you get noticed and stand out among your competitors. Their InSight feature provides the latest stats for your site and will make continuous recommendations for improvements. You can also integrate directly with Google and social media from one convenient dashboard.
If you need to accept payments, they can be processed using PayPal, Apple Pay, and more. Your customers can shop, receive discounts, make digital downloads, and book appointments as needed.
Price: Ecommerce plans start at $25 per month (when billed annually). All sites come with a domain, hosting, SSL certificate, and flexible e-commerce features.
5- BigCommerce
If you’re looking to make a small business website that can compete with the big leagues, then BigCommerce is a service you’re going to want to check out. They’re a leading e-commerce builder with a focus on scalability for online stores and built-in sales tools.
BigCommerce’s clients include big brand names like Toyota, Kodak, and Ben & Jerry’s. They offer 12 free themes and over 100 paid themes; each designed to fit specific industries and your taste.
Whether you’re looking to sell physical, digital, service-based products, BigCommerce is the only platform that allows you to do all three without having to install third-party apps. All come pre-built right into the editor.
On top of that, BigCommerce doesn’t lock you into its own payment gateway. You have the freedom to choose any payment gateway you wish to work with.
Price: BigCommerce offers several tiers of plans. Their most popular one is the Plus package which starts at $80 per month (when billed annually). All sites come with unlimited places for products, file storage, and bandwidth. They also integrate with a wide variety of sales channels such as Amazon, eBay, and Google Shopping.
6- Instapage
If you’re looking to create a more customized shopping experience for your customers, then Instapage is the service you’ll want to use. With clients like eBay, ADP, and Hello Fresh, they can help you to build personalized, mobile-responsive, and conversion-optimized post-click landing pages in minutes.
Business owners can choose from 100+ customizable website layouts and scale with ease using Instapage’s Instablocks + Global Blocks system. Their built-in AMP + Thor Render Engine technology promises to deliver the fastest page speed (important for visitor retention).
Price: Instapage’s Business plan starts at $149 per month (when billed annually). All sites come with an SSL certificate and Salesforce integration.
