Website Builders for Beginners – A Quickstart Guide

This page may contain links from our sponsors. Here’s how we make money.

Website Builders
Photo via Envato Elements

When it comes to building a website for the first time, it can be a daunting prospect. Just the thought of having to learn how to code or design a site could be enough to make you never actually get started.

If this is something you were worried about, you are not alone. The good news is, there is really no need to even discuss programming, HTML, coding, or even graphic design. This is all thanks to the power of today’s top website builders and the drag-and-drop platforms that many of them use. Now anyone can create a beautiful site design without ever needing to touch a line of code or even hiring a graphic designer.

With more than a billion active sites on the internet today, you can’t be expected to compete with big players, their mobile responsive sites, gorgeous slideshows, video backgrounds, and clean user interface, can you?

Well actually, yes. Yes, you can…

Things just got a whole lot more simple

Where website building used to be the preserve of the expert, you are no longer required to have a degree in coding to make a website look beautiful and functional. There are many website builders out there who have done all the hard work for you. Websites such as Wix, Web.com, and Squarespace employ ‘drag and drop’ functionality which enables users to pick the look and feel of their website by simply selecting an artifact, such as a gallery, and dropping it onto the webpage. Gone are the days of coding the look and feel of a site, and as such, you can kick back and spent time on the more important things, such as building the website you have always dreamed of.

You may worry that these sorts of sites can look a bit ‘samey’ if everyone out there is using the same services, but with hundreds of templates to choose from, sites such as Wix or Web.com allow you to customize the look of your site to the point where no two sites ever have to look alike. In fact, it has become increasingly hard to tell websites apart that are constructed with these sorts of builders, from those that are built from the ground up.

The future is mobile

Another feature of these services, is that they build websites that are mobile responsive. This basically means that the website will reformat itself to look good on all platforms and screen sizes.  So whether somebody is browsing your site on a phone, tablet, or PC, your site will always look perfectly formatted to that particular screen size.  In a world where more people shop using their smartphone than their PC, this is an extremely useful facet of the service.

For those of you with a little knowledge of coding, and who are eager to tweak a little here and there, fear not, as Squarespace allows you to tinker around and add code within their platform and Wix has just announced in the last few days that they too are now opening their Wix Code to users, allowing for even more customization than ever before. So where these ‘beginner’ website builders could have been accused of being limited in the past, that is not the case anymore.

Climb those rankings

SEO, another bane of many website builder’s existence, is also taken care of for you with most of these services. SEO (or search engine optimization) is critical for getting your website indexed on search engines, and while doing this manually can be time-consuming and require some knowledge on the subject, most of these website builders aimed at the novice will do this all for you. Without SEO very few people will find your site, which by any stretch of the imagination is not a good thing at all, especially if you site is a portal to your business. SEO is important, so having it taken care of for you should be a weight off your shoulders.

Each of these services does differ in functionality, look, and ease of use, so it can pay to shop around when looking for a website builder for beginners.  Weighing up the pros and cons, you should be able to find a service that pushes all your buttons, and allows you to get on with actually building the website. It is also worth noting that some services provide 24/7 support, so if you do find yourself in a situation where you want to achieve a certain aesthetic or function, someone is there to give you a helping hand.

Building a site and brand of your own

Whichever website builder you end up going with, the fact remains that in this day and age, there is no longer any excuse for not having an attractive and functional website. And with such ease of use, these sorts of website builders will bear the heavy load, while you design the perfect website in no time at all.

If you’ve ever had an excuse for not building a personal website or blog of your own, or still waiting to get your offline business online, there are no excuses left. All it takes it some time, work, and dedication to create something amazing. Outside of that, the concept of paying thousands of dollars for a unique site design, or having to be a programmer or designer, is quickly tossed out the window.