Once upon a time if you needed a website you either had to learn how to do code or pay someone huge amounts of money to do it for you. This meant that you had very little control over your own site whether it be your own limitations or your developer holding you to ransom over minor changes.
Of course it didn't take long for companies to try and plug the gap with web builder solutions but these often were very limited and resulted in very generic and basic looking sites which were often very poor from an SEO point of view.
Happily in recent years all that has changed and we are now blessed with incredible platforms which are easy to use, have unlimited design possibilities and are better than ever in terms of pleasing the search engine god that is Google. We have noticed that web design has really now started to centralise around a handful of platforms which are all either free or have an incredibly cheap monthly subscription. Now, for the price of your favourite lunch at Pret a manger you can easily create and all singing, all dancing website which looks incredible professional and is very easy to edit and add content.
For a long time the biggest platform has always been Wordpress but it was originally started as just blogging software and has merely been adapted and added to over time. This means that it does have limitations and is not the most intuitive platform to use. Whilst there are many plugins for just about anything created by third party developers, these can sometimes interfere with each other and slow the site down.
If you're looking for an all in one shopping site then Shopify's solution is very good as it is specifically set up for ecommerce and is very easy to use from scratch. However, it is not so good if you do not have hundreds of products to sell and the site templates can be a little limited.
The most improved solution would definitely be Wix. For a long time Wix was very basic and the code behind it was really messy. We really struggled to get Wix sites to rank and would often suggest a new site on a different platform. These days it couldn't be more different. They have re-invented themselves to not only be one of the easiest web builders to use but also offer fantastic looking sites with solutions for everything that work right out of the box. They are also pre-set up to be great for SEO as well meaning that a Wix site can be the only site you will ever need.
Not to be outdone by this revolution, a lot of web designers now market themselves as Wordpress or Wix developers and now build sites exclusively on their chosen platform. This way you can start it your self and get help when you get stuck or get someone to do the site for you and hand it over for you just to manage. A major limitation we are still seeing with this new breed of developer is the lack of off site SEO knowledge. It is still very important to build relevant links to your site and make sure your social media is up to scratch. One company who is blazing a trail to cover this is our sister service boostsite.biz. They have adopted the Wix platform and are offering new websites with a domain if needed and full, on and off site SEO for a very reasonable monthly fee.
I hope you enjoyed this article. There is more to come!