We live in a day and age where websites are not as often built from scratch by hiring a web developer to build the site with HTML and CSS. Instead, it’s incredibly popular to use “No-Code” or “Low-Code” website builders that allow you to build the site visually, instead of needing to know code. But how do you decide which platform to build your site on? There is a lot that goes into choosing the right platform for your business and website.
I will almost always recommend hiring a web designer/developer, no matter which platform you think you want to go with. We can help you decide which platform is truly the right one for you, and help you take full advantage of it and what it offers.
Before you start looking into website platforms, you need to figure some things out about your brand and website first.
What do you want to do with your website? Not just now, but what do you want to do in the future? What do you see as a possibility for your business later down the road? Maybe you’re just blogging right now, but you want to sell digital products later. All of this matters and is a factor in deciding which platform is right for you.
Second, there are SO MANY website platforms out there. The ones that I’m going over are Webflow, Wordpress, Squarespace, Showit, and Shopify briefly.
Let’s break down the potential goals/plans that you have for your site/business, and go over which platforms support this and how well they may do so.
Blogging is a fantastic way to bring organic traffic to your site. Not only does this content have a much longer life span, but it also really helps establish your expertise in your industry, and connects with your audience.
Wordpress is MADE for blogging. Most of its native abilities and functions are to suit text heavy, content rich sites. It’s super easy to create templates so that all of your blogs have the same visual look and feel despite being different content or topics. There are also so many plug-ins that you can use to help you optimize your content for search engines and rank your content higher.
You can also customize your URLs/slugs, which is the text that comes after your domain name. You can set a mass default, or customize them if you have a really long title, or want to optimize the slug for search engines. This also makes it super easy to export your blogs, should you ever need to do so in the future.
Additionally, a lot of SEO experts specialize in Wordpress site optimization, which is really worth investing in if you’re looking to bring in a lot of site traffic through your blogs.
With all of this, Wordpress is usually the number one choice for blogging.
Webflow is a really powerful website builder, and similarly to Wordpress has a really amazing native ability to host your blog. I find that their content management system (or CMS) is super easy to navigate, use, and customize visually.
In Webflow, you can have various amounts of content types. They refer to them as “Collections”, which opens up a world of possibilities for your site content.
Webflow is still a newer platform and they’re still working on really refining their blogging platform. It’s not the number one blogging platform, especially if you’re posting mass amounts of content (I’m talking about multiple articles/blogs per day). But for the average business owner posting consistent blogs, it’s a great option to blog with considering all the other amazing features of the platform.
Squarespace is one of those that isn’t really a recommended blogging platform. Similarly to Webflow, blogging is not what it’s known for, unlike Wordpress.
One issue that I’ve run into with migrating a Squarespace blog into Wordpress was the permalinks/slugs. Squarespace doesn’t really allow you to customize this for blogs, and transporting it all into Wordpress wasn’t very straightforward. We had to set up redirects for just about every single blog, which is incredibly time consuming.
If you don’t ever plan on leaving squarespace and just want to play around with blogging and only publish something every now and again, I’d say go for it. But generally, it’s not what I’m going to recommend if someone is primarily looking to blog.
If you already have a blog but aren’t sure if you want to stick with that platform, feel free to DM me on instagram and I can help you think through and decide which platform you should go with or migrate to.
A lot of online service providers also sell some sort of digital product template, or offer an online course. But not all delivery and course platforms are created equal! Some sites offer the native ability to sell digital products, templates, or courses, while others require you to use a third-party integration. If you are selling physical products, I will generally recommend Shopify.
Squarespace has a really amazing native ability to sell a wide variety of paid content. You’re able to distinguish between a paid service/consultation, a paid download/digital product, paid content, or a course.
You can even create email campaigns for your products directly in Squarespace, which is a really cool feature in my opinion. The only downside to Squarespace is that you don’t have quite as much control over the Cart and Checkout pages unless you hire a developer to customize them more for you.
With a 0% transaction fee and starting at only $26/month it’s pretty hard to beat.
If someone’s PRIMARY goal on their website is to sell digital products or launch a course, 9/10 I’m going to encourage them to use Squarespace. The platform as a whole is really intuitive, and inherently responsive which is always a plus. I think that Squarespace definitely has the most robust ecommerce platform out there.
Just like Squarespace, Webflow has a native ability to sell products or courses in an ecommerce platform. Feature wise, it’s actually incredibly similar to Squarespace. So this is where knowing what your secondary goals are on your site come into play.
With Webflow, you can sell physical or digital products + services and create lots of different categories within these overarching themes.
Webflow eCommerce starts at $29/month with a 0-2% transaction fee, so pretty similar to Squarespace.
With Webflow, you’re able to customize literally everything about the checkout process, as well as the transactional emails that customers will get (receipts and notifications).
Webflow is constantly making improvements and adding additional features to their eCommerce platform, and I definitely see this becoming more robust than Squarespace in the near future.
With Wordpress, you cannot natively sell or offer digital products on your site. You can, however, use WooCommerce with Wordpress to create an online storefront. WooCommerce was designed for Wordpress, which means that you shouldn’t run into any weird compatibility issues.
You can sell a wide variety of products on WooCommerce. From physical products, downloads, to affiliate products, subscriptions, or membership products. The list is honestly quite extensive. The only problem is - you often have to pay extra for the features you need to sell these products.
The initial installation and use of WooCommerce is free, however, like I said, a lot of the features that make things so seamless do cost money. Such as editing your checkout process, selling consultations/bookings, and other features you might be looking for.
WooCommerce can also be a little bit more techy than you’re looking for if you’re setting this up yourself.
I don’t generally recommend Wordpress with WooCommerce if someone is looking to sell digital products specifically, if that’s their PRIMARY goal. If you are specifically an eCommerce shop, it definitely has its place and can be a viable option. But otherwise, you might be better off with something else, like Squarespace or Webflow.
First, I want to note that a lot of this takes place OUTSIDE of your website and in the backend of your business. What happens to inquiries once you collect them? How can they work with you? How can they book a call (paid or free) with you?
But, there are easy ways that you can integrate your client process and experience into your website. And yes, the platform you choose matters!
If you DON’T have any sort of Client Management System or software in place to collect leads, like HoneyBook or Dubsado, Webflow is a great platform for collecting information and setting up automations.
A contact form is one of the most important features of your website, because without it, people wouldn’t be able to ask you questions and begin working with you. In Webflow, you can really easily build contact forms that actually function, look great, and keep your inquiries organized.
You can also set up contact form notifications so that you get an email every time someone submits a contact form. You can also really easily view all of your submissions and export them if you’d like.
If you already have a contact form from whatever software you use to collect leads, you can easily embed your form into the site.
Squarespace can do all of the same things that Webflow can do when it comes to collecting information and contact forms.
You can create a contact form within your Squarespace site and customize the fields to what you need. You can also create multiple contact forms if you have different client journeys for various offers/services.
Similar to Webflow, you can set up email notifications so that you receive an email with every contact form submission.
I don’t love creating contact forms in Wordpress. You generally have to use a third-party plug-in (like Ninja Form or WPForms) to create a contact form. Which isn’t terrible, but it’s not ideal.
When using these third-party plug-ins, you usually have to upgrade to a paid plan for them to be able to really customize everything you need it to do. Additionally, they often require additional domain connections (or DNS Record modifying) to be able to actually send out the emails you’re asking it to.
I HIGHLY recommend that if your site is being built on Wordpress, that you use an embedded contact form from your Client Management System to help prevent spam, ensure submissions and email delivery, and create an overall more attractive contact form.
As I’ve said, not all platforms are created equal. Most that are out there are pretty decent. Some write better code than others (which yes, does matter) and some are just overall not that great for a lot of reasons. I want to break these down a bit for you and quickly go over the platforms that I recommend you avoid and why.
Being a “No-code” visual builder has its place. I feel that it’s a little overdone, but I get it. But I really am just not a fan of the way that Showit goes about this no-code aspect. To me, it feels too much like I’m in Illustrator or Canva or something. There is no actual structure to the pages and content, you just place everything wherever you want. Which is not ideal for truly responsive websites.
Yes, there is a “mobile site” that you design in Showit as well, but it’s really not ideal. A) You have to remember to go into mobile to rearrange the content, otherwise it’s all just stacked on top of each other and B) It doesn't inherit any styling from the desktop site, meaning you have to select the colors and change fonts and sizing of things all over again. You’re basically building 2 sites at one time.
Additionally, if you change text in Showit, and it’s longer than the previous text you had there, you have to rearrange everything to resize the text box. I just don’t love Showit, and don’t advise people to use it. It creates really ugly code that makes web accessibility challenging, and it can be pretty overwhelming.
To save your time - I don’t like Wix for all of the same reasons that I don’t like Showit. They’re basically the same thing just in different packaging.
If you don’t have a website yet, I always recommend starting with what you want your site to do for you, how do you want to make money with it, what’s the GOAL of your site, etc… to determine which platform is best for your business. You want to first look at the PRIMARY goal of your site, and then see if the best platform for your PRIMARY goal also supports your secondary goal.
And remember, you can always switch platforms later, it may just take hiring someone to do that for you.
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