How To Select A Website Builder

If you’re a direct seller and don’t have a website or online store, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to capture a portion of the ever-growing eCommerce marketplace and its more than 227 million shoppers.

Websites serve as a marketing tool for your brand, but some are only used as an eCommerce site. Many direct sellers and online retailers take advantage of both, complete with a blog, about info, news and updates, and links to social media accounts, along with a heavily-populated online store.

So, where do you start?

Some popular direct sales companies such as Juice Plus, Herbal Nutrition, and Avon provide their distributors with websites and marketing tools to promote their businesses. However, if you work for a company that doesn’t, you can create your own using any one of the many website builders available online.

Three of the most popular website builders are Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress. While building your website may seem intimidating, these and other website-building products can make the process simple, with pre-designed templates and built-in marketing tools.

Let’s take a look at which ones might be right for your business.

Wix

Wix started as a simple drag-and-drop website builder but has evolved into one of the most popular eCommerce builders on the market. Its basic features are affordable with a range of subscription packages for website and eCommerce functionalities. Depending on how elaborate you want to get with your site, it can get expensive quickly. Wix offers hundreds of pre-designed templates, enabling anyone to build a beautiful website or online store quickly and easily. While customization is available, it is limited. Wix offers the ability to easily add product pages, categorization, and inventory tracking. Keep in mind, though, that you can only sell products on Wix, not services. And there is no abandoned shopping cart recovery. Marketing features include limited SEO optimization, email marketing campaigns, and a pretty solid logo design option that makes creating your business logo fast and straightforward. Wix claims to be responsive to any size screen, but in truth, it’s not, unless you adjust it manually. Wix is an excellent option for those who want a basic yet beautifully- and efficiently-designed eCommerce site.

Pros

Simple drag-and-drop website design great for beginners
Email marketing campaigns
Robust logo design

Cons

SEO and Google visibility available but limited
Ecommerce options are limited
You can’t switch templates once your site is published

If you’re curious about what an eCommerce website can look like on Wix, take a look at this example.

Squarespace

Like Wix, Squarespace is a drag-and-drop website builder. But when it comes to eCommerce functionality, Squarespace is much more powerful. Also, like Wix, it can get expensive the more functionality you add. It comes with everything you need to build an online store, including inventory management, and abandoned checkout recovery tools. Squarespace even offers eCommerce analytics that reports on page views and sales. It has built-in social media and SEO, email campaigns, banners, and other promotional tools, though these are limited due to the nature of drag-and-drop website builders. There are hundreds of design templates available, though the drag-and-drop features aren’t quite as robust as Wix. However, if you’re familiar with coding, you can use CSS to customize your design further. Squarespace also automatically adjusts your website to fit any size screen. If you’re looking for a simple yet robust website builder, Squarespace is a good option with basic eCommerce features offering powerful potential if you’re willing to pay just a bit more or increase your coding knowledge.

Pros

Great customer support

Blog features including post scheduling and category organization

eCommerce analytics

Cons

Customization is limited unless you know CSS

Price increases the more you customize

Limited SEO and marketing functionality

WordPress

WordPress is used by more than 35% of all websites on the internet, which speaks to its popularity. However, unlike Wix and Squarespace, it’s not a drag-and-drop website builder. WordPress is free at its most basic level and allows you to create a website with premade design themes and other functions. WordPress offers four different packages for your needs.

WordPress is known for its thousands of plugins. Many of these are free, though there are plenty you’ll have to purchase. Plugins are simply extensions you add to your website to add whatever functionalities you want for your website. For example, if you’re going to build an eCommerce store, plugins such as Shopify and WooCommerce could be used. SEO isn’t a problem for WordPress, either, with its popular Yoast SEO plugin to help simplify the process. Though WordPress offers seemingly unlimited possibilities for your business, it isn’t perfect, as it is known for its security vulnerabilities. All in all, though, the sky’s the limit when it comes to using WordPress for your business.

Pros

Ease of use

Will fit any budget depending on customization

Plugins with tons of potential

Cons

Can be intimidating with so many plugin and customization options

Potentially expensive depending on customization and plugins

Security risks are high

Astra is a favorite WordPress theme used with eCommerce sites. Here’s how it can look when applied to a cosmetics website.

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