Many new business owners make their website platform decision based primarily on cost and how quickly they can get online. We get it. Unfortunately, this means you’ll likely be rebuilding your website from scratch a year and a half later, once your business outgrows what your first platform can do for you.
Instead of asking, “What’s easiest right now?” ask yourself, “What can I grow into? What will a good investment look like that I won’t have to replace in two years?” Your website platform determines your search engine optimization (SEO), how you’ll be able to execute your content plan, and your commerce solutions. It also plays a role in how much freelance or agency help you can outsource down the line. Get it wrong and you won’t be the only one paying for it, but you will be paying twice.
The ease-vs-flexibility trade-off is real
Drag-and-drop builders seem like the right choice for beginners. They are easy. You can get something halfway decent online in a few hours. The trade-off comes when you need to add a booking system, a members-only section, or a product catalog with filtered search. Drag-and-drop builders either don’t have the capability, or you’ll be required to pay much more for an app subscription to unlock those features.
Open-source systems like WordPress require more setup in the beginning but have no real ceiling. You are not limited by what one company wants to build and sell you. The code is yours, and you can host it wherever you’d like.
WordPress runs more than 43% of the entire Internet (W3Techs). This is important because it determines how large the ecosystem of developers is, how many plugins are available, how much documentation you can find, and how many support forums the product has.
Reducing the learning curve without reducing the ceiling
For companies that choose a flexible CMS, the setup phase can feel daunting. The learning curve is real, but it has been well-traveled by other humans who have gone through precisely what you’re about to experience.
Following structured, high-quality video walkthroughs – like those available at https://www.youtube.com/@createwpsite – can cut hours off the setup process and help you avoid configuration mistakes that cause problems later. This approach also means you’re not paying a developer for tasks you can handle yourself once you understand the logic behind them.
The most easy mistakes can cause hours of slowdown, stress, and annoyance later, so it’s worth investing time to get the foundation right. It’s better to take an hour learning about how to set up your database correctly, for example, than to lose hours later rebuilding an entire website because content isn’t able to migrate.
Platform lock-in is a bigger risk than it sounds
An important consideration that is often overlooked is content portability. While some platforms allow you to easily export your content and move it to another platform, some other platforms purposely restrict this.
For example, if you spend years creating blog content, product pages, and customer databases on a closed platform and then decide to switch to another platform, you might lose all your content in the process. You might lose your search engine rankings, your content’s formatting, and sometimes even the content itself.
To avoid this, check if it’s possible to export your data in common file formats before using the platform, and ensure that you own your domain name distinct from the platform. To ensure that you own your domain name, register it through an independent domain name registrar. Keep your web hosting separate from your site builder as much as possible. Simply taking these two precautions will help you avoid a trap.
SEO and site speed aren’t add-ons
Certain platforms regard SEO as an add-on. Others have it baked in. The technical fundamentals – clean URLs, editable meta tags, schema mark-up, fast load times – determine whether or not your site will be found in Google or on a smartphone.
Page speed should be treated as a core web design feature, not an afterthought. Good hosts, image optimization, the way the website builds code, and more, all play into this. A good-looking site that’s not fast to load is still going to underperform and frustrate mobile users.
Responsive design is no longer an option. With over half of all traffic coming from a mobile device, if your potential solution does not output mobile-friendly code by default, brush it off.
Calculate what it actually costs over three years
The initial price you agree to isn’t what you’ll end up paying. You might need themes, plugins, and apps that come at an additional cost. If you plan to sell items online, you’ll be paying e-commerce transaction fees. After 12 months when it’s time to renew your plan, you’ll notice the annual rates are higher. In the beginning, some platforms seem like they’re not even costing you money. Just a few dollars on your credit card come the end of the month. But the reality is that you’re paying a hefty price for it next year. Rebuilding a site is time-consuming and not difficult to run into the thousands