Website Builder Software Features
There is a wealth of different website builder software features. Website builder software often includes, but is not limited to, the following features.
Social Sharing – Most website builders contain built-in social sharing tools so that you can provide your website visitors the opportunity to share your content on their favorite social media outlets. As your website’s social shares increase, your traffic will follow suit, your site will have more value to advertisers, and other avenues of monetization will open up.
E-Commerce Hosting – If your business revolves around selling a product, then an e-commerce feature set is key for your website builder. Some website builders allow you to build an online store directly into your site, complete with a payment gateway so that your website is truly a one-stop shop. E-commerce features will often require the payment of an additional monthly fee.
Email Hosting – Website builder software may include an email hosting option, which you can use to send all official website-related correspondence. An email address with your hosted domain name is an asset to your company and lends an air of professionalism to any and all business mail you send and receive.
Web Hosting – The majority of website builders contain hosting options to enable you to build and host your website through a single tool. If you outsource the build of a custom site, you have to deal with finding a proper web hosting service on which to house your site. A good web host may be difficult to find and adds another layer of complexity in terms of site maintenance, as web hosting services contain a separate basket of challenges.
Built-In Blog – Many website builders offer a blogging tool so you can write a blog directly within the application. Blogs are a vital traffic-driving tool for many websites who do not constantly churn out new content or product offerings. Built-in blogging tools facilitate the process of creating and maintaining your blog, which can be a major catalyst for boosting traffic numbers by providing a well of SEO-driven content.
Image Editing – Website builders often contain built-in image editing tools so that you can alter and enhance images you put up on the site. Image editing can make a huge difference between presenting a polished product and representing your business poorly online. The ubiquitous grainy image quality of ‘90s-era websites is not acceptable in the age of widely available photo editors and image editing tools. That tools of that ilk are built into these website builders means that there is even more opportunity to make your site look the best it possibly can.
Forms Builder – Website builder software enables you to build forms directly within the application instead of going to a third-party application. These forms can be valuable for signing up new members if your site is membership-driven or for soliciting and gathering information from your site visitors.
Preformatted Layouts – One of the best features of website builders is the variety of prebuilt site layouts that are available for you to select during your site build. These layouts are designed for different types of websites—some may be more design focused, while others draw attention to the products on the page. Building an e-commerce website requires different design and features than that of another business website, and a website creator may need different layouts for each.
Additional Website Builder Features
Customization Options – Another fantastic feature of website builder software is the vast array of customization options that most offer. From different layouts featuring responsive design to multimedia content, there are a ton of options for you to choose from. While the options may not be as diverse as the number of options available to you with a web design company, which are limited only by the imagination and skill of the designers and programmers tasked with bringing your vision to life, there are solutions that offer a solid set of customization options. As customization becomes a key desire for businesses looking at website builders to create their sites, more website builders are allowing those with coding skills to create their own alterations to the templates and layouts provided by the software. One of the options available to those with coding knowledge is the ability to create a members area. This is valuable for membership sites, which require members to have a separate area walled off by a payment gateway.
Mobile Optimized – As an increasing percentage of all website visits are made on a mobile device, website builder software allows for the creation of a responsive, mobile-friendly site. The majority of the most popular website builders are HTML5-based, which means that it is easy to create a mobile-optimized site using the applications. Other sites that are not HTML5 based may offer a feature in which you can create a mobile-ready site.
Potential Issues with Website Builder Software
While website builder software is a fantastic tool that opens the door for companies and individuals looking to build a legitimate online presence, it is not without issues. Some of the most glaring issues, issues which are addressed to varying degrees by different solutions, include the isolated nature of most builders, the lack of freedom associated with the free offerings, a tendency towards the generic, and the potential loss of SEO-driven content.
Isolated Solution – Website builder software tends to lack the ease of integration with analytics and third-party applications designed to enhance the capabilities of your website that custom-built sites may offer. More website builders are starting to offer integration with Google Analytics at the very least, but there are many other third-party analytics applications that you could use with a custom-built website to enable you to squeeze as much information and value out of your site as possible.
Lack of Domain Ownership – There are many website builders which offer a free domain site builder. A free website and free domain name sound fantastic, but the catch comes in the lack of ownership of your site. Should you want to switch over to a new domain, you’ll likely lose all of the SEO you’ve built into your content and have to start from scratch.
Lack of Originality – There are hundreds of millions of sites on the internet that have been designed and published using website builder software. While there are a variety of templates and customization options built into the quality website builders, the fact that so many sites are built using the same application means that your website will have the same feel as thousands of others. This is being addressed somewhat by newer website builders, which are allowing users to customize by uploading their own HTML code or by opening up the existing templates to extreme alterations, widening the breadth of arrangement possibilities.
Absence of SEO – Some website builders do not contain blogging tools or an option for users to build a blog within the site. This is a major drawback for SEO opportunities, as content is currently king when it comes to search engine results page (SERP) rankings. The more high-quality, relevant content that you can push out to your site’s visitors on a diverse range of high traffic keywords, the higher your site will appear in Google’s rankings and the larger share of traffic you will receive.
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