Building a website for your company is a critical step in increasing brand awareness. Since it’s common for consumers to search your brand online, it’s important to consider which website building platform to use since each one yields different results. While SquareSpace and Wix are recommended for website building beginners, WordPress is usually a preferable option for increasing a company’s chances of being found online.
Decide on your ultimate goal
Before you consider building a website or hiring someone to do it for you, think about your ultimate goal. What do you hope to gain from the website? Do you just want to have an online presence for your business where you showcase your portfolio and events? Or, are you hoping this website will lead to new customers, more purchases, and a greater reach? If it’s the latter, then WordPress would be your go-to platform because of its ability to grant users fully customizable, high-ranking websites. However, if you want your website to be a platform you’d direct your clients to in order for them to view your work then platforms such as SquareSpace and Wix would better align with your interests. SquareSpace and Wix provide users with eye-catching, unique themes that are easily customizable.
The downfalls of being too simple
Squarespace and Wix are both capable of providing users with beautiful interfaces and easy-to-use themes that anyone could learn how to work with. However, the overlying reason why many organizations have websites is so that they can rank high in the search engines like Google or Bing. This is where tools like search engine optimization (SEO) come in. SEO is used by website builders that rely on implementing keywords in their site in order to gain more traffic. When a consumer searches a keyword such as “cheap bedding”, the first site to pop up on Google is Bed, Bath, and Beyond. The company most likely used keywords similar to “cheap bedding” in its SEO tactics that allowed the site to appear first on the search engine page.
While SquareSpace and Wix are easy-to-use platforms, they lack in providing users with the ability to fully customize their sites or implement SEO tactics. So if you’re unhappy with one asset attached to the theme you’ve downloaded or you want to add an Instagram feed feature, you most likely couldn’t. SquareSpace and Wix’s main design flaw is actually helps them attracts their customers. Their platforms are too simple. In their mission to avoid complexity, these website platforms limit the user experience.
Once users become familiar with their website platform and they want to venture out and add more to their site, they’ll be limited in their ability to do so. Also, trying to import a SquareSpace/Wix into WordPress is an extremely time-consuming process because only some elements will transfer over.
When SquareSpace/Wix Work
While WordPress is a preferable website building platform, we still are pleasantly surprised when other platforms manage to work for our clients. The Institute of Contemporary Dance was able to create a beautiful SquareSpace site that vividly portrays that brand. However, if you were to simply search “Institute of contemporary dance houston”, the website doesn’t appear on the first search engine result page. But, this doesn’t detract from the fact that the website is a well-thought out representation of the company and is extremely user-friendly.
WordPress isn’t as difficult as you think
WordPress is the holy grail for website building. The platform gives users free range in creating fully customizable websites. While there is a learning curve, the payoff with using WordPress will provide higher results in conversions whether that’s for page views, being found in searches, or actual online transactions.
It’s understandable why people might be afraid to dive right into WordPress. However through time, WordPress has become more and more user friendly with new drag and drop plugins like Elementor that make building websites easier than ever before. Beginning your website with WordPress will save you time and energy in the long run and will yield greater results than other platforms.