In this digital age, it is more important than ever for a business’s success to have a properly managed online presence – their website being the paramount constituent of this identity. To illustrate this point, if the user experience of a business’s website is poor, almost 50 per cent of users will seek out competitors instead.

Despite seeming obvious, the decision to not only have a website, but to also make sure it is optimized, professional and ideal for customer use is a difficult one for businesses. Not because they struggle to decide whether they want such a website, but due to the fact that organizing the making of it can be extremely difficult, costly and time-consuming, causing businesses to question their decision in the first place.

This article first re-affirms the importance of a website for a business’s success before providing some solutions to help businesses choose a way to build their website that is best suited to them.

Importance of a website

Build a brand

One of the most important things a business can do to improve is to exhibit their brand to your potential clients. If customers can quickly and easily understand what a business does, their values, and the ideals they stand for, a company can multiply its prospects of finding and maintaining customers tenfold.

Additionally, a good website is another way in which a business can distinguish themselves from their competitors. No website, or a poor one, can be incredibly damaging to a businesses ability to compete with its industry counterparts. This is because people will just switch to competitors that they can easily find verifiable information about from their website.

Business growth

The primary way of driving business growth is marketing, it gets your name out there and accustoms people to it. In this day and age, digital marketing is the most superior option available. For those planning on using digital marketing to increase traffic and grow your business, you'll need a website or landing page to drive this towards.

To do this effectively, leverage historic traffic that has been going to your website so you can target the most qualified customers and get the best ROI on your ad spend. This is something that can’t be set up retroactively, so it is best to get your website running early even if you’re not planning on running ads at the moment.

Credibility

By far the most crucial reason to invest in your business’s website is to increase one’s credibility. In any industry there are a number of providers putting forward identical services to yours, what sets you apart is appearing more trustworthy. A clean, simple and professional website that is clear at communicating info to potential customers goes a long way.

The absence of a website (or the existence of a poor one) will cause questions surrounding the legitimacy of your business to thrive. Creating a respectable website makes a strong and reassuring first impression to people that your business is worth being trusted.

Photo: TRUiC

Website builders

GoDaddy

The GoDaddy website builder consistently ranks at the top of TRUiC’s recommendations for industrial website builders. It is identified as an excellent choice for businesses hoping to create a simple yet professional website for their company, that is effective in attracting and maintaining customers.

There are many advantages to choosing this as the means to build your business’s website. Not only is it capable of producing a website that is elegantly simple, it has been designed to be incredibly easy and simple to use too. Business owners would be able to maintain full creative control over their website and yet still have one up and running in fewer than five minutes.

Specifically, it’s an ideal instrument for those businesses that are more occupied with the basics surrounding their site, and less about having the option of limitless creativity. The options are not limited to the visual aspects of your site either though, as this website builder grants access to powerful search engine optimization (SEO) tools, email marketing.

Wix

Another great alternative to GoDaddy, Wix is more suited to creatives than professionals. The more creatively-minded individual can take advantage of its intuitive UI and plethora of customisation options to create a tailor-made site. This is an optimal option for businesses looking for access to deep customizability without the hassle of coding or hiring someone to do the job.

On top of the visual benefits from using Wix, this website builder provides tools for market analysis and tracking of your site’s metrics. For larger companies, Wix provides their Enterprise plan with metrics curated to your specific website and business needs.

Final thoughts

The need for businesses to own a website is clear, this is not in contention. What is difficult for businesses to decide is how to approach this problem of deciding which website builder to go with. Ultimately this will be down to each business’s specific needs, but put simply, GoDaddy is more aligned with small businesses not looking for too much customisability, while Wix is designed for the opposite.

That said, both are incredibly powerful and intuitive tools.