The day of the website builder has finally come because they’ve reached enough maturity to offer real value to businesses. The early builder application was mostly provided by web hosts like GoDaddy and HostGator as a way to let customers who’ve never built a website before and don’t know a single line of XHTML or CSS computer code put up their first website.
The problem with this situation was the website builder software was often proprietary to the web host; change the web host, lose your website builder too. This situation trapped early customers in sometimes unhappy business relationships because they knew paying for a site design was expensive and using a site builder was economical by comparison.
Latest Website Builders Are Independent
The more successful website builders run independently of web hosting accounts. They have their own platform like Yola, WiX, WordPress, Jekyll, Medium, Tumblr (owned by Yahoo) and Blogger (owned by Google). Operating from their own websites, most builders offer free plans that host a site on a sub-domain, i.e. myblog.wix.com. For paying customers, they have the option to register (or use) a private domain (their own .com, .net., .org) and have the website builder host it for them. The premium accounts then use the domain name that their customer owns, and email, and a host of other possible services along with it.
With the independence, business customers are once again free to choose which provider offers the best collection of features that they would like. The features could include a graphics library, the ability to embed videos on a page, choosing between many templates to change how the site looks, and other useful things.
Tap into Like-minded Groups of SMEs Adopting the Same Site Builder
For businesses that wish to use separate website builders for different brands, they can tap into a suitable audience more easily. Different site builders tend to attract groups of similar people who see business associates using the site and wish to try it out themselves. The sense of networking and a more flexible approach to helping each other is refreshing for businesses used to operating alone and seeing all other businesses as potential competition. Simply adopting a different building platform can open doors that were previously closed.
Use Features That Were Too Expensive to Implement Before
Figuring out how to create a mailing list so that visitors could give their email address and receive an email newsletter periodically is still something that eludes many SMEs. They cannot figure out the technology and fear implementing the feature by paying someone will cost far too much. Website builders are designed to make that kind of thing much easier because such features are already wired into the system and available either for free or via a subscription model.
With busy smaller business owners who don’t feel technically savvy enough to use a robust blogging platform like WordPress but who lack the resources to have a full-time IT team on-hand, a website builder is a good alternative. The range of features varies from builder to builder, and also depends on what premium plan they’re paying for, but the value-added by a suite of sophisticated extras clearly expands on what a non-technical business owner with a limited budget can create on their own.
Build Confidence in E-Commerce
When using a site builder with an understandable interface, business owners see the possibilities as never before. Adding products to an online store to increase their sales while not giving away commissions to a sales team is one incentive to push towards greater online sales.
Another benefit to using a site builder is the ability to make rapid updates to product or service availability without needing to seek the services of a web developer just to make some small updates. Business owners feel like they’re back in control of their online presence and this creates the confidence to try new things and expand.
Business owners can only push towards more advanced business strategies when they’re in full control of their online presence. When that’s not the case, they just feel hamstrung and are unlikely to either run too fast or go too far. Fueled by the added confidence of getting a grip on previously unavailable features that now helps their business, taking a further leap of faith with larger strategies to grow it doesn’t seem as risky as it once did. For business owners, using a site builder opens doors that were previously closed due to their lack of technical knowledge. The future looks bright once again.
