Choosing the best website platform for small business is considered important as much as selecting the foundation when building your home. With so many website platforms to choose from, it can be confusing when it comes to choosing the right one for your business. So, in the article, we would like to share the Top criteria you should consider when choosing the best platform for your business and the best website platform for your small business in the marketplace.

What is a Website Platform?

A website platform is the foundation of your online presence. It’s a software or service that allows you to build, design, and manage a website without the need for extensive coding knowledge. Website platforms typically provide tools for creating pages, adding content, customizing layouts, and integrating additional features like eCommerce capabilities, blogs, or customer relationship management (CRM).

Common examples of website platforms include WordPress, Wix, Shopify, and BigCommerce. Each platform offers unique features designed to cater to various business needs, from simple portfolios to full-fledged eCommerce stores.

Why Choosing the Right Website Platform Is Important

Selecting the right website platform can significantly impact your business’s success. Here’s why:

1. Foundation for Your Online Presence

Your website acts as the digital storefront of your business. A reliable and versatile platform ensures that your website functions smoothly, reflects your brand’s identity, and creates a positive impression for visitors.

2. Scalability

A good website platform grows with your business. As your audience and needs evolve, the right platform will allow you to add features like more product listings, enhanced security, and faster performance without rebuilding your website from scratch.

3. User Experience

The platform you choose determines how easily customers can navigate your site, find information, and complete purchases. A user-friendly platform ensures a seamless experience, reducing bounce rates and improving conversions.

4. Cost Efficiency

The wrong platform can lead to hidden costs, such as expensive upgrades, limited customization options, or the need for additional tools. Choosing the right platform from the start saves money by providing all necessary features at a transparent cost.

5. Customization and Flexibility

A high-quality platform offers customization options to create a website that meets your business’s unique needs. Whether it’s integrating marketing tools, third-party apps, or designing a specific layout, the right platform makes it possible.

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Many platforms come with built-in SEO tools to help your website rank higher on search engines. A platform optimized for SEO ensures your business is discoverable by potential customers.

7. Security and Reliability

A secure website platform protects customer data and ensures compliance with legal requirements. It also minimizes the risk of downtime, ensuring your business remains accessible to users around the clock.

8. Support and Resources

The best platforms provide comprehensive customer support and learning resources, such as tutorials, forums, and documentation. These resources empower you to troubleshoot issues and make the most of the platform’s features.

Criteria you should consider when choosing the best platforms for your website

Ease of Use

When choosing a website platform for your business, make sure you are choosing a user-friendly and easy-to-use website builder. As each website platform requires a different level of technical expertise. A clear menu structure will let you create and navigate a website quickly. For your customers, it enables them to find the content they are looking for faster and easier. The best website platform for small business will have user-friendly features, therefore this criterion is the first one on this list of criteria you should consider.

Pricing

Pricing is always one of the indispensable parts when selecting a website platform. Depending on the use of the website, the price can be various. When it comes to this, you should consider the other costs involved in creating your website such as domain registration, hosting, SSL, business email, eCommerce feature, etc whether it offers for free or not. If not, how much would you have to pay for hidden costs?

Your technical expertise

One of the criteria you should consider when choosing the best platform for your small business is your knowledge of the platform. Different website platforms require different levels of technical knowledge. So, if you are planning to create your website on your own, make sure you are ready to spend time learning a platform. When you get the most out of your website, it can have a significant impact on the success of your business.

If you hire freelancers or agencies to help you build and take care of your website, then your technical expertise won’t be a major problem. However, if you have a lot of technical knowledge, then you can leverage the tracking and insights combined with marketing strategies, which will help you improve the bounce rate of your website, reduce cart abandonment and drive more sales.

Design & Features

What’s more? A good website platform for small business will offer thousands of elegant website templates for you to choose from along with flexibility and easy to add additional tools and third-party like Google Analytics, CRM, Marketing tools, etc.

Resource and Support

Before choosing the best website platform for your small website, make sure the website platform you are considering has resources that help you learn and implement your website smoothly and effectively. The tutorial and documentation should be provided by video or text so users can learn easily. For customer support, make sure that is available when needed.

Nowadays, most well-known platforms like Shopify, WordPress, Wix, and BigCommerce have a wealth of resources to guide you, including blog and video content provided by them and users.

In short, what is the most valuable website platform? An ideal website platform for small business:

• Is affordable
• Is extremely easy to use
• Provides e-commerce options
• Supports different content formats
• Has essential features
• Comes with plenty of helpful tutorials and resources

Best Website Platforms to build a website

WordPress - best website platform for small business

WordPress is considered the world’s leading eCommerce platform as 40% of websites in the world are powered by WordPress. There are plenty of reasons why many users choose to use WordPress. WordPress is widely known for its ease of use as you can add pages, images, blog posts, and so on without needing much coding skills. With more than 55,000 plugins from the WordPress plugin directory, it works to help you add functionality to your website. However, this doesn’t mean that WordPress is just only for a simple website. Those are why WordPress is considered the best website platform for your small business. It is still a great option if you want to create directories (e.g. classified ads), social network, marketplace, etc.

Pros:

• User-friendly interface
• A vast number of plugins
• Great for SEO
• Freedom to design website
• Limitless functionality
• Frequent Updates

Cons:

• Keeping up with updates is a major concern
• Security vulnerabilities
• Optimizing site speed can be challenging

Prices:

WordPress is a free website platform on the list for any type of business. However, you still need to pay for a domain name and web hosting to get your site live. Normally, you can be charging $14.99/year and $7.99 per month respectively. However, you can totally get started with only $2.75 per month with Bluehost, which is one of the best WordPress recommended hosting providers.

WIX - Best website platform for small business

Are you looking for another website platform for your business? Wix is another choice for you. With Wix’s drag and drop builder, it makes the processing of building a webiste a breeze.

Wix is a fully hosted platform that comes with tons of templates for you to choose from. With these fully-editable, you are free to design a great-looking website. Besides, it also has a plenty of free and paid apps that let you install on your website in order to increase the functionality of the website.

What’s more? With WIX, you are no longer have to worry about being hacked or your website breaking because it’ll take care of it. 

Wix is not quite a great ideal for every types of businesses like eCommerce or big brand, however, it’s still the best website platform for small business who have a shoestring budget and want a website that doesn’t require much coding skills.

Pros:

• Good site speed
• Massive template collection
• Intuitive drag and drop interface
• Easy to use
• Great Seo
• Extend your site features with Wix app market
• It takes care of your site security 

Cons:

• There are no unlimited plans
• The starter plan doesn’t remove ads from your site.
• If you want to switch to a new template, you have to start from scratch

Prices:

• Free plan
• Connect Domain: $5 a month (not available in the US, unfortunately)
• Combo: $16 a month
• Unlimited: $22 a month
• Business Basic: $27 a month
• VIP: $45 a month

BigCommerce - best platform for ecommerce website

BigCommerce is one of the popular eCommerce website platforms for small business that allows you to create your online store to the next level. It comes with all the tools and features you need to expand and operate your online business seamlessly in one place. It also offers more than 180 free and paid themes so you build and customize your online store to suit your needs without any coding knowledge. If you are planning to run an eCommerce website, BigCommerce provides more than 65 payment gateway integrations such as Square, Stripe, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, and more while doesn’t charge transaction fees. You only need to pay credit card processing fees to your chosen provider.

By taking care of the technical side, Bigcommerce allows you to focus on your core business functions, selling, and marketing.

Pros:

• Easily scalable
• Outstanding features
• No transaction fees
• 24/7 customer support
• Integrate with all popular payment gateways
• Solid SEO features

Cons:

• Only 12 free theme options.

Prices:

• Standard plan: $29.95 per month.
• Plus plan: $79.95 per month.
• Pro plan: Starting at $299.95 per month.
• Enterprise plan: Quote-based pricing.

See more  Top 10 Most Popular Ecommerce Platforms 2021

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How Cmsmart Can Help

At Cmsmart, we offer solutions tailored to small businesses to simplify website creation and management. Whether you’re a startup or looking to scale, our services are designed to meet your needs.

Our Key Services:

1. Website Development: From WordPress to BigCommerce, we provide end-to-end solutions to build your site from scratch or optimize your existing platform.
2. E-commerce Solutions: Integrate powerful eCommerce features such as product catalogs, payment gateways, and abandoned cart recovery tools.
3. Custom Themes and Plugins: Enhance your site’s functionality with our range of plugins and beautifully designed templates.
4. Ongoing Support: Access our 24/7 support team to ensure your website runs smoothly and efficiently.
5. Training and Tutorials: We provide comprehensive resources to empower you to manage your site confidently.

Start Building Your Business Website Today

Choosing the right website platform is the foundation of your business’s online success. By understanding your needs and leveraging the tools available, you can create a professional and functional site that drives results. 

We hope this article has helped you understand the factors you need to consider when choosing the best website platform for small business for your business and you can choose the best suitable for you. Kindly let us know if you have any questions in the comment section below or via our support system. We are here to guide you every step of the way. Contact us today to explore how we can help bring your vision to life!

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