Not every business is the same and that’s why it’s essential that you get the right website for your business. Don’t make the same mistake that I made on my first business. I chose the wrong website platform. I couldn’t customize the website the way I required, I had to pay for expensive add-ons to provide the core functionality that I needed but changing to another website provider was too prohibitive. Once you have started on a website platform, it’s a big job to transition onto another platform.
Not all businesses are the same and neither is website software
Before you choose a website platform or invest too much time in the wrong platform, read this guide to make sure you have the right website for your business. If you’ve chosen the wrong platform then make the change now, before you’ve invested too much in the wrong technology.
PS: Some business owners think they a website for their business, when what they really need is a developer to setup and maintain their online presence. If you want to delegate your technology workload but don’t have employees with the necessary skillset then use an agency such as Toptal to find you the expertise you need.
PS: Watch out for websites sold by your domain name registrar, because that’s like buying your car from the DMV! (apologies - this will not be the first time I use a motor vehicle analogy). If you want your business to run smoothly then choose the right tool for the job.
Notice: Some of the links in this guide may include affiliate codes
TLDR summary:
Simplest: Want to get going quick? Want the simplest solution? The best match for most people is a full service website provider such as Wix,
e-Commerce: Is your primary focus to sell products online? Use Shopify as your online store and website,
Plug & Play: Need a platform you can add features to and control your design? Use Wordpress with plug-ins and themes,
Course / Education provider: Is your plan to sell online courses / coaching? Use a dedicated eLearning platform such as Teachable,
Custom: Got a new business idea that requires a custom solution? You’re going to need a great developer to code your vision. Use Toptal to find world class developers, Web Designers & User Experience experts.
The awesome thing about websites is that there are a huge amount of platforms that you can build your website on. Virtually anything that you want to do online has already been done in some way by thousands of people. And that means that there’s probably already a platform that does exactly what you want to do with little or no customisation. But this is also the problem, it’s the paradox of choice, the more choice you have, the more difficult it is to choose the right option. My objective with this guide is to help you identify what sort of website is right for you and match you to the right provider.
Choosing the right website is an important decision and that’s why this is a long article, so feel free to skip straight to any appropriate sections.
MBA - The Mini Business Accelerator
My name is Keith and this is part of my MBA program, the Mini Business Accelerator program that shows you what they don’t teach you in business school. I provide step by step guides on how to start and grow your business. If you are not signed up to the MBA program, then you can sign up here
What Makes a Good Website Platform?
When considering solutions, these are some of the criteria I have used whether these are mentioned or not:
Budget.
As a highly competitive marketplace, the prices of the mainstream solutions are mostly at parity. Don’t fall for “free” packages as you’ll have to upgrade anyway for any meaningful functionality.
Price wise: it’s not just about the monthly costs but also the time and effort for setup and maintaining your site.
Budget wise developing custom code is a lot more expensive to build and maintain but if you don’t have the expertise then you will save money in the long run by starting with good developer talent.
Ease of Use / Simplicity of Maintenance:
Sometimes setting up your website is the easy part. Tech is constantly changing and keeping it up to date and keeping it compatible with, say the latest iPhone, is just one of the maintenance costs. The less time you spend on your website, the more time you can spend on your business.
Functionality:
As a mature marketplace, all platforms have rich feature sets. The question is more about quality, because having an equivalent feature list doesn’t tell the true story of which product is better. All choices have been validated as providing the essential functionality you will need.
Having said all that, the biggest functionality differences are in e-Commerce and Online Education.
Speed:
Ever give up on a website because it was taking too long to load? This is called a bounce. The speed of your website directly affects how successful it is. A slow website costs you sales.
Design / UX:
It’s simple, your customers will use your website more when it looks good and is easy to use. It’s also essential to have a website that works beautifully on both mobile and desktop.
Security:
You wouldn’t leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition. Your website is an attractive target for malware hosting, website hijacking and data theft. Any quality solution includes website protection, backup and recovery.
Size & Age:
Don’t go with some new or niche platform because you can’t be certain that they will last. The last thing you want is to invest in a platform that’s unsupported. It’s easier to find support, employees, developers and designers for the large, established platforms. I’d love to take a sports car for a spin, but it’s easier to get service for a Toyota than a Koenigsegg. But you also don’t want to use an old, outdated framework either. That 1965 Mustang convertible, might be a dream car, but it’s a PITA to find parts for.
Matching Websites to your Business Requirements:
In the section above I described the minimum table stakes criteria for evaluating your website platform. The thing is that we have a mature market where many website providers have great products. The real question isn’t what is the best website provider, the real question is which website platform is the best match for your business.
Comparing it to choosing the right car for you. These days, most cars do the basics well. Most cars are reliable, efficient and will get you from A to B. While some customers might be loyal to a brand like Ford or Mercedes, which model you choose comes down to what you’re going to use your car for. Going offroad, get a 4x4, doing the school run, look at an SUV/ Passenger Van, want handling and style, choose a sports car and if city living is your thing then choose a compact.
When it comes to choosing a website it’s also important to match what you want to do with the website to the right website provider. And that is what I will discuss in the next section. I split the choice into these basic headings: 1. Simplest & Easiest, 2. e-Commerce, 3. Plug & Play, 4. Online Education & 5. Custom and I cover my best choices for each of these.
1. Simplest: Integrated Software & Hosting.
Let’s start with the quickest and easiest. This is where you use a SAAS (Software As A Service) platform, with integrated hosting on the cloud. Stepping away from the car analogies for a bit: If your website is your home on the web then think of this solution as like renting a furnished apartment. You don’t need to buy furniture or property because the provider supplies the website software (the furniture) and runs it for you in the cloud (provides a home for your furniture). Back to the cars: this is more like calling an Uber than buying a car.
The obvious benefits are low upfront costs, simplicity, reliability and low maintenance because they handle things like basic functionality, software upgrades, website security and integrated backup. Integrated solutions come with a selection of design templates so it’s easy to implement a professional looking design. They come with an inbuilt feature set like e-Commerce, bookings, blogging, media players, analytics etc. And most also allow you to sell digital products such as images, music, eBooks etc.
The negatives are a lack of quality, choice and a lack of customizability. Think of it like this: When you rent a furnished apartment, you are stuck with the furniture that is provided. You have limited ability to choose your interior design and can’t knock down walls or do additions. As far as your website is concerned, if you want to run code to provide custom functionality, it’s not that easy. Sometimes it feels a little like living in an IKEA showroom. Sure, there’s a catalogue of perfectly adequate furniture but sometimes you just want a bit more variety or something less basic. Don’t get me wrong, you can achieve a great looking website. But if you want the ability to exactly customize a design, it can be frustrating.
Suits these types of businesses: Bloggers, simple online retail, restaurants, artists showcasing or selling digital products, small businesses taking online bookings (such as exercise studios).
Choose if:
You have many skills/interests, but tech. just isn’t one of them. You prefer a solution that “just works” (not quite as well as an iPhone though!) and can live without the ability to fiddle for customization and optimization,
Your business is relatively generic and a standard functionality set is likely to meet your needs,
You prefer to spend your time on your business, instead of on your website.
Budget:
While you may see offers for “Free websites”, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Free plans are only free for the most basic, limited functionality. Business plans with the ability to take payments (and you do want to make some money don’t you?) start at around the $30 per month level. The good news is that integrated solutions include most of the functionality you need and you won’t have to buy additional external functionality.
Setup costs are minimal because there are limited options to choose. If design isn’t your forte, you can easily source a designer to create an appealing, custom look. And while some providers allow you to run custom code on their platforms, this is strictly for small customisations and features.
Recommended option:
2. e-Commerce
It’s simple. If your primary focus is to build an online sales empire, then go with the solution that is exclusively focussed on e-commerce. Sure, almost every website platform does e-commerce, but a focussed e-commerce tool is going to give you the best integrated solution to market & sell your wares. And it’s not just about selling, managing your online store such as inventory and fulfilment will simplify your business life.
With a dedicated e-Commerce Platform, you get a bunch of e-Commerce focused tools that make it easy for you to grow and manage your sales. Including features such as:
Simple, built in payments processing for easy and efficient e-commerce,
Sales optimizing tools such as abandoned checkout cart recovery,
Customer accounts to track order status and streamline follow up sales,
Fulfilment/drop shipping integration and
Inventory/store management
The undoubted e-commerce gorilla is Shopify.com. They are focused on helping you grow your sales because the more money you make, the more money they make. Their size also means they have a thriving app store where you can source helpful tools that are going to help you to manage and grow your business.
Budget:
As you can expect, a site focused on making money costs a little more. Having said that, the basic plan is competent enough and only costs around $30 per month. Be aware that the app store plug-ins could increase your monthly cost.
As an integrated solution, setup times and costs are low. And maintaining a Shopify site is relatively easy, although you still have to work on your store to keep your offer fresh, and inventory up to date.
3. Plug & Play, Customisable Website Solution:
Here’s a remarkable stat for you: Around 35% of all websites are Wordpress sites. When such a large proportion of websites are on a platform, you have to take notice. It’s not the newest or sexiest tech. But rather a well developed, flexible framework for you to build almost any sort of website that you could imagine.
The beauty of Wordpress is a huge “app store” (known as plugins). This means that you can find a plugin for almost any functionality that you might need for your business. From managing a yoga studio to capturing email leads. Where Wix only has one e-Commerce solution, Wordpress has got more than you could shake a stick at.
In addition to Wordpress plugins, there is a huge marketplace of themes for you to choose beautiful designs and layouts.
And on top of the themes and plugins there are thousands of Wordpress developers and designers. Wordpress is highly customizable and you can hire someone to get a Wordpress site to do almost anything imaginable (at a price). This means it’s a good choice to start with something a little more basic and then develop more sophisticated functionality as you progress.
What you need to know about Wordpress:
Wordpress refers to the website software which is free. You still need hardware to run the software but the standard is to use a “hosted” Wordpress solution. This means your provider supplies the software, the hardware and also looks after a lot of the boring but essential operational aspects such as data bandwidth, backup, upgrade & security. These hosted solutions have made Wordpress sites almost as easy to operate as the fully integrated solutions.
Comparing this to a car is going to be difficult but I won’t let that stop me. Imagine your uncle gives you his Golf for free. You still have to drive, buy fuel, insure and maintain the car. A hosted Wordpress solution is like paying a company to do this for you.
The bad stuff about Wordpress:
The huge diversity of plugins can be overwhelming,
Plugins are not made by the same developers. Running a Wordpress site sometimes feels like sticky taping a business together. There are occasional incompatibilities or speed penalties,
Speed: Not all hosting platforms are equal which can end up costing you a lot of customers. Too many plugins can kill your speed,
Let’s face it, the backend interface is a little old fashioned
Budget:
The Wordpress software itself is free but what you typically pay for is the website hosting, data, management, security & backup. Wordpress is a budget solution with decent hosting packages accessible as low as around $15 per month. But the basic platform is lacking many features and you will end up paying more for plug-ins and themes to get the functionality and design you want.
As a highly customizable solution, upfront set-up costs in terms of your time or designer/ developer services are higher.
Who is Wordpress for:
As a highly customizable solution, Wordpress is used for many different types & sizes of businesses. As such, the buying decision is more about what type of person you are. In my opinion, Wordpress suits the following type of entrepreneurs:
Entrepreneurs who are happy to go with the flow and use the most popular website platform,
Entrepreneurs who have a little more time/technical savvy and like to “fiddle” with their technology (Or have someone on their team who will do this for them),
Entrepreneurs who want a solid platform which they can develop and customise as their business progresses.
WordPress Resources:
Website: Start by getting an affordable but speedy website hosting, security, bandwidth and back-up
Wordpress Developer: Want help setting up & maintaining your Wordpress site? Or do you want to customise your website functionality to your business requirements? Hire a Wordpress Developer
Themes: Need design help? What all sophisticated Wordpress users do is use a theme to easily create a great looking website,
Website Designer: Do you struggle to tell the difference between a Monet and a Manet? :-) Hire a professional Wordpress designer here
Plugins: The basic Wordpress platform is like an empty shell that you can add almost any functionality to. Some useful plugins include online booking, lead capturing, e-commerce
4. Online Educators & Online Courses:
Are you a niche expert who wants to make money from sharing your knowledge? There are great online business models such as: coaching, selling online courses, providing online lectures or some combination of online and live education.
Online education is one of the use cases where it makes sense to go with a dedicated online education website provider. Sure, you can add elearning to almost any website. But a dedicated elearning site will offer you features better suited to the business of creating, selling & delivering online courses.
What about Udemy?
Udemy is one of the biggest names in online education so I have to share my experience of Udemy. Udemy is an attractive platform because they have a well developed website and an existing audience to market your courses to. Having an existing customer base sounds like an incredibly attractive benefit because selling an online course is not easy! And that’s why building an email list is so important to your business success! The problem with the Udemy audience is that there is already so much established competition that it’s hard to get noticed.
Udemy seems attractive because they don’t charge monthly fees. But the way Udemy makes money is by taking a, not insignificant, cut of your revenue. This means that as soon as you start to make any meaningful money, Udemy goes from the cheapest to the most expensive solution.
Using the Udemy platform means you are subject to their control, even on your private courses sales. Many content creators have been dismayed to see their courses marked down to nominal amounts in promotional campaigns.
If you are going online to build an independent business, then don’t get tied down to a platform that you don’t control. At best, use Udemy as a test platform to see if you can develop an online course with market appeal, before investing in your own platform. In fact, Teachable, which is the platform I recommend (and work with myself) was specifically built because online educators were upset with Udemy and wanted to keep more of their own revenue. That’s why it kicks Udemy’s butt.
Learning Management Systems:
Learning Management Systems (LMS) have many features to enhance online teaching and learning. This makes it easier for educators to create rich learning content and improve the learning experience. As an example here are some of the top education features:
Student progress tracking. You can see which modules your students complete and which ones they don’t, helping you create better material. The LMS tracks what modules students have completed so they can manage their own progress through the syllabus,
Tools such as online quizzes and automatic certification,
Payment gateways: Automatically add students to courses when they pay, remove access when they don’t. Unlock revenue generating features such as subscription plans, payment plans, bundling & coupons
Multiple authoring: Collaborate with a team to create learning content to sell. Even sell someone else’s content on your platform (with their permission of course) and automatically split revenues by a formula
Coaching platform with payments & scheduling
The online learning platform I use and recommend is Teachable.
5. Custom Built Website aka Hire a Developer
If you are early in your new business journey, then I recommend that you avoid doing a custom website development unless you meet the following criteria:
You are sure that what you want to do hasn’t been done before and can’t be done on existing platforms. This usually means that your website isn’t just an online presence, but rather it’s the product in itself. For example your business is something like Spotfiy, AirBnb or Uber. (And many of these businesses were initially started as a simpler solution built on an existing platform),
You have already validated “product-market” fit so you have proof about exactly what your customers want. (Or you are working under a lean methodology to develop product-market fit),
You have previously successfully managed IT development projects (Or you are ready to hire the right talent),
You have plenty of time & money!
When is the right time to Hire a Developer?
Having said that, don’t make the mistake of trying to do things yourself that you don’t have the time or expertise to do. Website developers aren’t just for coding websites from scratch. Website developers can be an invaluable resource to help implement one of the above website solutions. I’ve made the mistake before of trying to do web development myself and in the end this meant I wasted money because my time was more effective somewhere else. Being a successful entrepreneur doesn’t mean doing everything yourself. Learning how to find the right expertise and letting go is an important business skill. Investing money in a developer could save you more money in the long term if this means you’re going to speed up your business delivery. Only you can make the decision of what’s right for you.
How to Hire a Developer:
Finding a good developer is an art in itself because the best developers are always in demand. And all developers are not the same because there are multiple disciplines. Choosing the wrong developer is like visiting a proctologist to remove a sore tooth. Embarrassing, painful, expensive and entirely ineffective :-) If you don’t know the difference between Drupal and Python, then start by getting a consultation to determine your needs. This service isn’t just a place to find the top talent but they will take you through a process to determine your needs TOPTAL
Software As A Service:
Back in the day, running a website would cost you millions. You had to develop all of your code, run your own servers AND source internet bandwidth. And if you wanted to run an online store and take payments, then you also had to build your own payments processing too. Now we have the opposite problem: there are far too many website platforms to choose from.
Software As A Service (SAAS) solutions mean you don’t have to pay huge upfront costs, your only commitment is to an affordable monthly fee. The “No-Code” movement is further simplifying website development and it’s possible to do more and more without writing a single line of code. I’ll be sharing some more help on how this works in a later article.
Summing up:
Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking that they need a custom website. But this is like trying to build your own car. The fastest, most effective and most affordable solution is to use a website platform that is already built for businesses with similar business needs to you. I hope that this guide has provided the information you need to choose the right website for your business. Let me know if you have any further questions and which provider you chose and why.