Here are five things to consider when choosing a website platform for your business:
1. The projected usage of your website
What do you need your website to do? Do you want an impressive corporate site that highlights your products, services and company information? Are you looking for something more functional as your wish to sell directly online? Or do you want to transform all your operations and be able to monitor all company’s performance on a single dashboard? There are solutions for all preferences.
2. Your team’s technical expertise
Different website platforms require different levels of technical expertise. If your company’s website is crucial to your business, you have to be willing to spend the time to learn a platform. In order to leverage your website’s full potential, you have to consider it as a tool you have to use efficiently. However not all platforms are custom and easy to use.
There are some platforms such as Expresia that enable companies including team members who do not know much about how to handle the backend of a website, to easily manage logistics, content and users. Expresia brings efficient workflows that make happier teams but this is not the case for all solutions.
3. Your budget
You can set-up an open-source website from a few Euros per month and it can be a perfectly functional solution. Then, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, is a fully customized build, with custom databases, functionalities and other features that could cost a few hundreds of thousands of Euros. Both of them are totally fine as they are fit for different purposes.
4. Customization options
How customizable do you need your website to be? If you aren’t needing anything too elaborate, there are endless options for open-source platforms as far as it concerns design and applications. If you are looking for custom and unique builds though, you will need to hire a skillful team to build it from the ground up. This level of customization won’t be cheap but it should certainly add value to your business.
5. Available resources & updates
Platforms such as Shopify, WordPress, BigCommerce, Wix and Squarespace all provide you with endless resources in order to help you manage your website. If we’re talking about custom builds then you should make sure that the company you have selected to develop your robust website also includes maintenance in its offer, so that your website is always up-to-date.