What's The Best Website Platform For Your Business Needs?

As a digital media agency, we're always looking for the best ways to get things done. Namely, finding the best website platform for a business.

Luckily for business owners, there are tons of easy-to-pick-up options that can add some spice to their tired, old business models.

Let's examine different platforms, website builders, and options business owners have to create a beautiful, functional website.

E-Commerce: Using Shopify

‍

Shopify is a fantastic website builder, offering an easy setup and excellent reporting on e-commerce activity for your small business.

Shopify is a great way to run a small business, allowing business owners to open and run an online store. But is Shopify a better alternative to something like WordPress and Wix?

Let's take a look at some critical Shopify pros and cons to help you build your website.

Shopify Pros

• Adding a buy button with Shopify Lite can help boost sales on your website. Shopify Lite only costs $9.00 a month, plus a 14-day free trial.
• With Shopify, you can use the chat option to speak directly with customers. Building trust with customers is always crucial, so having the opportunity to chat right on your website is invaluable.
• It's easy to use. If you're looking for an easy-to-use platform for your business, using Shopify is a solid option. Plus, there are plenty of great Shopify tutorials out there if you get stuck. But, with Shopify's user-friendly UX/UI, that will hardly be a problem.
• Plenty of plugins. For digital marketing, these plugins go a long way toward assisting your customers down the marketing funnel.

Shopify Cons

Like any website builder, there are some notable drawbacks to using Shopify.

• For example, pricing can be an issue. If you're a small business without a lot of capital to play around with, Shopify's more expensive options might be too costly to design a website at first. While Shopify Lite does a lot of heavy lifting for your business, it might not be enough to move the needle. There are three main payment plans: Basic Shopify ($29), Shopify ($79), and Advanced Spotify ($299).
• Shopify is spotty when it comes to UX/UI. Compared to our personal favorites, Webflow and WordPress, Shopify leaves much to be desired in user customization. It can seem outdated and rigid.

If these are deal breakers for you and your business in terms of good website builders, maybe check out some alternatives.

Should You Use Shopify?

If you're creating an e-commerce website, Shopify is an excellent website building option. However, if you're focused on great customization, you may want to look elsewhere.

Before you choose, let's look at some other website options to help your small business grow.

Common Customizations: Using Webflow

‍

Webflow is a popular cloud-based website builder and content management system that hosts countless customizable visual options.

Plus, there's no coding knowledge needed.

Webflow Pros

Let's see if Webflow is one of the best website platforms for your business by looking at some Webflow pros.

• There’s no need for more advanced coding. Webflow makes things easy for small business owners by not requiring in-depth coding. Webflow's features allow for some great, creative alternatives to coding.
• It's easier for front-end developers. Webflow aims to take the minutiae and complicated nature of creating websites and making them accessible.
• It's for website building pros. Although it may seem like Webflow is a lower-tier website builder, it's meant for professional developers. It can create nearly anything for an excellent small business website. But that doesn't mean that small business owners can't use it.
• Easy to publish content. If you're a small business owner looking to draft and post content to your site at a moment's notice, Webflow works great. You can create a comprehensive blog page and publish articles in minutes.

In short, Webflow can quickly bring an idea for a good e-commerce website to life with just some CSS and HTML.

Webflow Cons

While Webflow works well for specific customization options, there are some drawbacks depending on who you are and your preferences.

• If you're into micromanaging every aspect of your website through coding, Webflow may not be for you. There are limited coding options for Webflow when building a small business website.
• Webflow plans can become rather expensive.

Overall, Webflow is great for e-commerce and what your business has to sell to customers. If you want something to provide visual flair without all the noise, Webflow is an excellent website platform for your business.

Is WordPress Right For You?

If other website builders like Canva and Wix aren't your business's speed, you can use WordPress.

WordPress: is it good? Yes, absolutely. 

It's versatile and comes with plugins to tweak functionality, designs, product pages, and themes. You can easily make one of the best websites for your small business in less than a week.

The beauty of using WordPress is its great UX/UI and its flexible website-building capabilities.

In short, anyone can make a nice-looking website in no time with just a few helpful tips. It has impressive plugins and coding capabilities.

The Sprinkles Media team uses WordPress with a few of our clients, and it's perfect for them.

Whether launching a forum on a website or optimizing the written content, WordPress turns website building into success.

WordPress is your best bet if customization of features and website pages is a priority. The possibilities for a good website builder as a business owner are only a few clicks away with WordPress.

Plugin Example: Yoast SEO For Your WordPress Website

One of our favorite WordPress plugins, Yoast SEO, is fantastic.

Used on WordPress for SEO content purposes, Yoast SEO will help you better optimize your content in real-time. The plugin also guides you on what to include in your SEO content step by step. For example:

• The simplicity of the web copy; is it easy or difficult to read?
• You include all the necessary SEO terms in your images with alt-text
• Have you used the key phrase before in previous content?
• If you have both internal and external links in your website content, allowing you to build a comprehensive backlink strategy

If you write an SEO article on digital marketing tips, Yoast will give you two separate scores: one for readability and another for SEO.

The two scores fluctuate from red to green. It's based on how easy it is for your audience to read and how well you optimized it for search engines.

It's a simple yet highly effective method to hone your SEO skills and write good copy for a website.

After all, you want your customers to see your website; you have to ensure that it checks all their boxes. Plugins and an excellent website user interface are a winning combo.

WordPress Cons

We've sung the praises of WordPress as an easy website builder for your small business. Although at Sprinkles Media, we love using the features of WordPress, there are, of course, some possible downsides.

• If there are issues with your small business's WordPress website, having a background in coding will help a lot. No coding knowledge? It might become complicated.
• Likewise, WordPress is a self-hosting website builder. Self-hosting means you need to figure out your website hosting situation.
• If you're a business owner with zero experience tweaking website functionality, hosting your website may not appear in your lexicon.
• You'll likely need to have more advanced knowledge of website building, or at least the help of someone who knows all about website building.

But that's the beauty of discovering different platforms and website builders. Helping you find what works and sticking with it to help connect customers with your products and services.

There's ample help to ensure that your business, no matter how small, succeeds. It has never been easier with the vast array of website-building tools out there.

Whether a monthly subscription box, fashion production house in Los Angeles, or home restoration company in the Inland Empire, there's something for every business.

Choose The Best Website Platform For Your Business Needs

So, which is the best website platform for you? If you have a good idea of what works for your business model, it's time to get to work!

At Sprinkles Media, our team of digital marketing experts will personally meet with you to discover the best website platform for your business.

We recognize that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing, so every business (and customer) is different. We'll work hard alongside you to help create a fantastic website to reach your customers.

Any questions regarding the Sprinkles Media experience? Learn more by contacting our team. We'll help you set your business on the right course in no time!