You’ve heard time and time again that you need to hang your virtual shingle by launching a website for your small business. It’s true. These days, at the first mention of your company, most interested customers, clients, potential employees, and investors will take to their keyboards to look up your business. Don’t disappoint them with an under-construction website, outdated content, and poor-quality pics—or worse, no web presence at all. Instead, here are some of the best website builders for small businesses you can try.
Creating a Website for Your Small Business
The good news is, getting a small business website up and running doesn’t require hiring a high-priced web design firm. There are a plethora of DIY website building services out there that make the process (fairly) painless and, most importantly, professional-looking.
As with so many other things, you should begin with the ending in mind. Consider the following questions before you build a website:
- What do you want visitors to leave knowing or having done through your website?
- Do you want them to purchase your products from an online store or book services?
- Would you like to also be able to engage with email social media marketing tools?
- Do you want to showcase high-quality images? Or, simply introduce your business to the world with some content written in your brand’s style, tone, and voice?
For more detailed considerations on how to build a website, Hello Alice has a collection of free guides for small business owners. But first, let’s talk about the different website builders you can choose from to create a small business website.
Best Website Builders for Small Businesses
Without further ado, here are our recommendations for some of the best website builders for small businesses:
1. Wix
Looking for a sleek, clean, artistic and sophisticated website presence for your small business? Look no further. Wix is a leading site that has 500+ of beautiful templates that are already designed for online retail, photography, design, music and business – all with plug and play simplicity that works well on mobile and other devices. There are also 1,000s of tools as well as deep analytics for your website and social media and marketing campaigns.
2. Squarespace
Squarespace is a great choice for free unlimited web hosting and for running your email marketing campaigns. They also have award-winning web templates, but much fewer than Wix, with about 75 templates. However, they are solid, cost effective and ensure that all of your needs are met – from claiming your domain name, to creating your brand’s online presence, keeping event calendars and product galleries that can be updated on the fly. They also offer a one-hour email response should you need assistance, which can give you some peace of mind so you can focus on your business.
3. Square Online
Not to be confused with Squarespace, Square Online is the site that is related to the Square payment transactions that your business may already be using. The free online store with easy site-building and no-coding templates allows for seamless integration that takes all forms of payment, which works great for restaurants and retail. You can easily sell online and ship orders to customers, offer curbside pickup, or local delivery for your retail business. You can also sell on Instagram, Facebook, and more. The company touts the ability to launch an eCommerce site for no start up costs and no monthly fees. Pay only when you make a sale—2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. The addition of the QR codes is also good for easy sales or quick marketing.
4. Weebly
Speaking of Square Online, popular website hosting service Weebly has now joined Square online. The easy site-building process, email/call/chat support is a great foundation for an ecommerce site, powered by Square Online, that office an exquisite retail e-commerce xperience for your pop-up-shop or major business. Run coupons, instore pickups, Square gift cards, inventory management, instant tax calculations, shipping labels, abandoned online carts, PayPal payments and more.
5. Go Daddy
This could be called “Grand Daddy” instead of Go Daddy since this is really the OG of website building site services. There is a reason it has been in the space for so long. It is more of a one-stop-shop service with turnkey and easy-to-build templates that have helped millions of companies acquire domains and host and operate website businesses. They are still a solid go-to to help you develop and get a no-nonsense website set up quickly.
We hope these suggestions for the best website builders for small businesses helps! For more small business tips and inspiration create a free account on Hello Alice or subscribe to our weekly newsletter.