How To Choose A Small Business Website Platform

As a new small business, it can be incredibly difficult to decide on which website platform is right for you.

You can do a search online and get bombarded with tons of differing opinions from Squarespace to Wordpress and everything in between. Although it’s true that many of these platforms have certain limitations that others don’t, most can function beautifully with your needs.

So how do you decide which website platform you should use for your small business startup?

Here’s a list of questions that can start you off in the right direction. By the way, if you’re looking to start building your site, make sure to snag the website starter checklist. Go through it while building out your website and ensure that you’ve got everything you need set up to build your empire.

1. What type of website does your small business need?

I know this can be an odd question but stay with me here: your website should be only 1 type of site at its core. This makes it easy to choose a platform that is best suited for your business needs. How do you know what type of website you need?

Ask yourself: “How will this website make me money?”

If you answered that the website will help you sell your mugs with funny quotes on them, you have an e-commerce website. If you said that it would showcase your services, it’s a service-based website.

Now comes your next question: “But how do I also add my [insert your other business offerings here]?”

Your other services or offerings are like the side dish during dinner. They’re there and available but not the main course.

For example, you might have a blog to go along with your e-commerce website selling mugs, but it’s not the main portion of the website. This means that your blog will be a small percentage of the site.

On the other hand, if you’re main business is blogging and you are now adding some products, you’re core website is still a blogging site, not e-commerce and the strategy shifts (as well as the platform).

Here’s another small business example:

Let’s say you’re a health coach building your own website. You’re starting by offering one-on-one services and hope to add in a book for sale in the near future. This means you can likely choose a website like Squarespace. 

The platform is user-friendly and you have the option of selling on it when you’re ready. It’s a great platform for service-based businesses and blogging as well. 

If you’re a bit more tech-savvy (or are willing to spend a bit on a maintenance package), perhaps a WordPress website would be great. It can also be a service-based site with an added e-commerce portion for your book. 

If you look at this model of business, you’ll likely be making more money on your one-on-one services and you book will be a side income that possibly funnels people to you.

2. What goals do you have for your website?

This touches a little bit on the above health coach example. You need to understand where you want your small business to be in 6 months, 1 year, and maybe even 3 years.

If you know that, for example, although you’re starting out with one-on-one services but want to move fully into courses within the year, you’ll want to ensure the platform can shift with you. Further out and you can likely just rebrand and shift to a new platform as needed - no biggie.

Then, think about what your goals are for the person visiting your website. What is the #1 thing you want them to achieve? Is it booking you for a call to chat about your services? Will the platform support with that? How will it support? Does it integrate with a booking system?

If the user doesn’t want to book just yet, what’s your second goal for them? Is it for them to get on your email marketing list? Can you easily add a pop up or on-page email sign up form to the website? If you’ve chosen an email marketing system (such as FloDesk) already, does it easily integrate with the website platform?

3. What goals does your user have on your website?

Yes, your website visitor also has their own goals when they land on your site. Think about how they’re getting to your website.

Did they find you organically on Google via one of your blog posts?

Did they find you on social media and decide to click on the link?

Did they already meet you at a small business networking event?

Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what the next step would be. Are they ready to purchase or do they want to browse?

For example, if you’re a blogger and most of your traffic will be coming from posts, the user might not know enough about you to purchase your funny merchandise but they may be more likely to sign up for an email newsletter in exchange for your free PDF with tips on the subject you blog about.

4. What type of team does your small business have?

This might seem like an odd question to ask yourself when deciding on what website platform to choose but follow me for a second.

If you’re a solopreneur without any support (be it contractors or employees), you want to take the time it’ll take to build AND maintain the website.

Ensuring that the site is backed up, updating plugins, themes, PHP, core code, etc can start feeling like a drag and you’ll start to procrastinate on those. Trust me, you DON’T want to put these off if your website requires them.

Not keeping the site updated means you’re user’s experience will slowly deteriorate or worse, you’re leaving holes for hackers. If this goes on long enough, the cost to fix all of these will likely be more than a simple maintenance plan would have cost.

Let’s say your small business has a team - whether it’s just a VA or more robust. Does that team know how to keep the website up to date? Is it in their job description? Are they willing to learn?

If you don’t foresee having a person that will keep the tech part of the website updated, you might want to consider a platform like Squarespace so that you (and your team) can focus on things like content and business growth without wondering, “What the heck is PHP again?”

5. What functions or features do you want your small business website to have?

Finally, ask yourself what cool things you want your website to do or have when you launch. For example, if a quiz is something that’s important to you, can a platform help with that or can you simply use something like Typeform (the latter is honestly more common for my clients). What about a chatbox? Is it easy to add a snippet of code to the platform to add it in?

Back to what your goals are for the website, ask yourself if your list of features are must-haves for right now or are they nice to have items but ultimately won’t make or break your business. I have had tons of clients get stuck on tiny features that don’t actually move the business forward, such as a booking system that can charge for a strategy session versus whether the website can have images that slide. One is important to make money, the other is just a nice feature.

Finally, what platform is our website built on?

Our website is currently on Squarespace. In the before times, we used WordPress hosted by GoDaddy (there are better hosting companies out there than them FYI) and I absolutely loved it. I could “check under the hood” and customize the heck out of the website. I had a quiz, all sorts of features, and simply loved it. 

Until I got too busy.

I found myself going months without updating my own website because I was working on client work. I got hacked. I redid my website (again on WordPress) and vowed to keep it updated. I got a VA to help me out but her jam was more along the lines of keeping projects organized and scheduling social media - not website upkeep.

There came a point when I again realized that I hadn’t been keeping the website updated and decided to move to Squarespace.

I was wary at first because everyone said it was such a horrible platform but the people who said that were exclusive WordPress developers and designers (um, biased much?).

For me, Squarespace has been great because not only can I customize it, I can have my team make updates to content, haven’t had to update tons of plugins/themes/core, and can grow my business.

Clients who have switched find the admin area less scary and simple to use - a plus when they’re solopreneurs trying to add blog posts, products, and pages.

Choosing a website platform can feel like a daunting task but when you know the goals, functions, team bandwidth, and your overall comfort level with tech, the decision can be a lot clearer.

Want more support? Download the website checklist and get started on your small business website today!