unconventional website builders

The Benefits Of Using Unconventional Website Builders For Small Businesses

For small businesses, websites are essential to attracting new customers and converting prospective leads into loyal clients. Depending on the business model, websites can also integrate e-commerce services, live-chat features and forms of interactive marketing such as minigames. 

While all this may sound incredibly complex, creating and managing a solid website can actually be much easier than it seems. Website builders such as WordPress offer an extensive array of features ranging from built-in design templates to third-party plugins. Plus, a WordPress site needs to have WordPress-optimized hosting that may come at a higher price. 

However, because of this, conventional website builders can seem expensive to use. In this article, we focus on four unconventional alternatives to WordPress and outline their benefits. 

Why Choose an Unconventional Website Builder?

For all their benefits, well-established website builders have a lot of limitations. 

WordPress, perhaps the most popular builder across the globe, relies on third-party plugins to deliver many of its best features. As a result, managing ten or more plugins can become an absolute nightmare. Plugins can also conflict with new WordPress updates, temporarily limiting the functionality of your website. 

Established website builders can also be very limiting in terms of user experience. As a result of including so many features, WordPress websites are typically slow to load which may be off-putting to prospective clients. In a world where our attention span is at an all-time low, quick website loading speeds are of particular importance to users accessing your web page on their tablets or smartphones. 

Cyber security is also a big issue for website builders. Whilst established builders do offer extensive security protocols, the popularity of conventional builders also means that they are much more likely to be targeted by malicious third parties. 

In summary, there is nothing wrong with the conventional route of website building. However, we would argue that lesser-known alternatives to WordPress can still provide incredible value to small enterprises. 

1. Unconventional Website Builders Offer Good Value for Money

Presently, the e-commerce package offered by WordPress costs £36 per month. While this is not a huge figure, paying more than £400 per year for a website may be a bit too much if you are just starting out on your business journey. Combine this with other marketing expenditures, and your profit margins may take an unwanted hit. 

Informi, a great provider of support services to small businesses, emphasise the common issue that “cash flow can be tricky in year one”. Nearly every saving you can make at the early stages of your businesses could be essential in sustaining initial growth. Greatly contributing to budgeting, more unconventional builders do not charge more than £8-10 per month even for the most feature-rich of service plans. 

Lesser-known builders are also much more likely to offer at least some form of price promotion including discounts and free trials for new users. As a result, you will be able to save costs without cutting corners. 

Despite the price differences, unconventional website builders can absolutely match the package offered by WordPress or Wix. Small-scale builders can still offer high-quality design templates, customer support services, e-commerce packages and cyber-security solutions. Paying a price premium for a website does not always translate into any meaningful improvements to the actual quality of the resulting web page. 

2. Unconventional Website Builders Are Easy-to-Use

Although the number of features offered by WordPress is staggering, it can also be overwhelming for entrepreneurs. Despite the availability of tutorials and online courses, sometimes there is simply not enough time to properly learn about the particulars of using WordPress or any of its well-known substitutes. 

For small businesses, speed of the essence and attaining first-mover advantage could mean the difference between success and failure. By focusing on a particular niche, unconventional website builders avoid being too information heavy and offer targeted, easy-to-use services. 

Certain builders also emphasise the speed and responsiveness of their design templates, allowing entrepreneurs to create visually appealing websites all on their own. Other platforms focus on user privacy and provide built-in solutions for managing ‘cookies and sensitive data.

3. Unconventional Website Builders Are Safe and Reliable

Previously, we have mentioned the fact that WordPress is a frequent target for hackers and other malicious third parties. If you have not familiarised yourself with advanced security and data backup solutions, cyber-attacks may present a very significant threat to your business success. 

WordPress also lacks any built-in hosting solutions. Instead, the platform encourages users to choose between its hosting partners each of which has its own benefits and limitations. 

Trying to properly navigate such a complex environment could take weeks or even months of valuable time. Luckily, several unconventional builders offer embedded solutions that address both of the above areas.

4. Unconventional Builders Provide Built-In Compliance Solutions

As a small business, ensuring compliance with the latest regulations can be a major pain. This is particularly true for complying with the policies managing the security of consumer data such as the General Data Protection Act (GDPR) or the Data Protection Act of 2018. 

Although both of these provisions have been around for a decent amount of time, it is still pretty easy to get confused by what exactly has to be done to reliably avoid fees and legal action. In such cases, built-in compliance solutions are essential for alleviating unnecessary stress and allowing you to focus on business growth. 

Some builders offer legal text generators which automatically create legal texts in full compliance with the GDPR. What’s more, such platforms can also immediately inform you of the latest regulatory changes, ensuring that you will stay on top of the compliance game. 

While turning to unconventional website builders may seem a bit scary, the reality is that these platforms often offer far greater value-for-money compared to their well-known competitors. By including focused easy-to-use services and providing built-in compliance solutions, unorthodox builders are of high value to any entrepreneur. 

Until next time.

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