Are you planning about building a website or a blog?
Do you have any ideas on what to use and how will it conveniently help your business?
Allow me to introduce you to three of the most popular web design platforms that will eventually help you in creating your website, whether you’re a pro or a beginner.
We will learn the web design platforms chunk by chunk to evaluate which of these can best help you.
Let me present to you, Weebly, Wix, and WordPress.
Is anyone familiar with the tools? I bet you already heard about it and how it helps a lot in designing a website.
Comparing the three (3) Different Web Design Platforms
Let us begin with Weebly
Weebly was founded by students at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) in 2006. The main purpose of conceptualizing it is for the students to build a student’s portfolio.
Features of Weebly- A Closer Look
Using Weebly does not require your expertise because it has over one- hundred professionally designed templates to choose from. Plus, Weebly has an advanced editor module were HTML, CSS, and Javascript can be added or customized for your website.
Also, Weebly is Mobile-Ready, why? It is because of its built-in themes that are already ready for mobile viewing. So, if you want to make your website available in mobile viewing then, it offers a mobile editor where you can easily drag and drop elements depending on your perspective.
Another thing is that it has six Slideshows template makers where you can use to display your images with captions. Also, it has lots of options available in terms of types of transition, transition speed, and auto-plays the slideshow.
A further offer of Weebly is that it has high- quality images (Royalty-Free) with free and paid photos available in designing your website.
You can also input your recordings from video facilitating sites like YouTube or Vimeo with Weebly’s video implant device or host your own recordings in your account.
You can add your blog module to add a blog to your site. It permits you to control the classes, labels, and sidebar and incorporates an RSS channel, online life devices, and remark controls.
Another one is an integrated shopping cart, secure checkout, and inventory tracking. In your Ecommerce website, you can sell physical or digital items, as well as, services. And, as easily as your viewers can purchase your items from their mobile phone; you can also manage your store.
Let me share with you the benefits of Weebly
- User-friendly- Creating your website is very easy, intuitive, and fast. The whole process can take less than 30 minutes, or if you are in a huge hurry you could do in less than 10 minutes. Weebly is made for the person that needs a website right away.
- All-Inclusive- All Weebly accounts include the drag and drop website builder, website hosting, unlimited pages, and online storage space. It has built-in website statistics, which includes website views, page views, search terms used, and information on the websites that referred the viewer to your website. Weebly websites are designed with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.
- Cloud-based Hosting- When users of your website found errors, it means that your website reaches its allotted resources thus, Cloud-based hosting guarantees performance. Also, it was created for fast website load times. In terms of security, it has protection against spam and hackers. And most importantly, Weebly includes additional SSL security and a secure sockets layer that establishes an encrypted connection between the website host and the website viewer.
- Website Address- When you create your website, a subdomain is assigned to you.
Next is Wix
The same with Weebly, Wix was founded in 2006. It was created as an Adobe Flash-based website builder promoting itself as a “free website builder” for one-page websites.
One advantage of Wix is that you can hire a professional who will design your website from scratch.
Features of Wix- A Closer Look
The moment you sign up on Wix.com immediately, it asks you the type of website you are building and later on will offer different templates for businesses, designers, restaurants, hotels available to choose from.
The same with Weebly, it does not need technical knowledge to work with Wix. It has over 500 templates for different types of business which will help you in designing your website.
Wix has made mobile-friendly a part of its website builder since moving to HTML5 in 2012. Why? It is because you can upload your own photos and retouch them before adding them to one of the 40 pre-installed templates by Wix. Another thing is you will enjoy it because it has millions of free stock (royalty-free photos) available for use. Then, you can add a video where you can make it as the background of your website.
Moreover, it has Parallax 3D Effects where it can scroll text as a static background image. Furthermore, it moves layers of a website at different speeds creating a 3D appearance.
In Wix, you can make a customizable blog, add apps, and promote your product and services through the Wix eCommerce store.
Let me share with you the benefits Of Wix
- User-friendly- When you build your website at Wix it allows you to grow and develop the innate skills that you have. Upon signing in, a video tutorial is given. All of its templates come with temporary content that you need to replace. Wix is built for the business owners that prefer to manage their own website without much outside help.
- All-Inclusive- It allows you to view statistics about your website visitors and the Site Booster app allows search engines to find your website. With regards to apps, Wix has over 250 free and premium apps that you can use on your website. Also, it has free third-party apps like PayPal, Google Maps, Open Table, and Soundcloud. When you create your website with Wix, it will give you a subdomain based on the email address that you are using. If you wish to add your own domain or website address, it will require you to pay.
The last but not the least is WordPress
What is WordPress? What comes to your mind when you hear it?
Are you excited to know?
Well, WordPress started as a blogging platform, so it is already built-in and ready to go. It has become one of the most flexible website builders due to being open-source. Because of that quality, most email marketing platforms offer a free plugin to automatically connect your email marketing to WordPress.
There are two WordPress websites:
- WordPress.com- hosts a free blogging and website builder site.
- WordPress.org- it offers a free download of the latest version of WordPress for your use on your own website hosting service.
Compared to the other web design platforms, WordPress has uniqueness, why? It is because you will have full access and you own your website and content.
Features of WordPress.org- A Closer Look
This includes basic themes and plugins making it ready for blogging. Unlike Weebly and Wix, it is not a drag and drop platform out of the box. There are a few different plugin options like Elementor, Divi Themes, Beaver Builder, Aqua Page Builder, Qards, Themify Flow, and Thrive Themes that can turn WordPress into a drag and drop type of platform.
Also, it offers free themes, which are evaluated before appearing in the market. The same with the two, WordPress themes are mobile-ready, however, you need to verify its responsiveness and how it is mobile-ready.
Another thing is that it has plug-ins where it added features to your website ranging from free to premium. It has 600 slideshow plugins available for free and, I think in here, you can find the slideshows that you desire.
How about the media library? It will help you with keeping your content organized. There, you can directly edit your images and add SEO data to the content directly.
The same with slideshows, plugin allows you to add self-hosted or 3rd party videos from other sources (YouTube and Vimeo). Some of these video plugins can also make your videos responsive for better viewing on mobile devices.
Another good offer about WordPress is that it has eCommerce platforms where WooCommerce and MarketPress are the best.
These free plugins also have paid add-ons further customize options like payment plans and payment gateways.
Let me share with you the benefits of WordPress
WordPress does what you design it to do and you can code it to do nearly anything. The biggest drawback is being overwhelmed and not knowing what you need to get started.
WordPress is:
- Use (Advanced)- WordPress is easy to use, once the platform is set up and you know your way around. It may consume time to learn it, but the access you have might outweigh the time to learn it.
- Full Ownership- You do not own the WordPress platform, but you do obtain a license to every plugin and theme you acquire. All the customizations you do can move with you wherever you go. If you decide to leave WordPress at any point there is most likely a way to move it because you own the database information and can export everything or save the files and folder individually.
- Backup- Use the WordPress Backup to Dropbox plugin to automatically save your database. You can adjust how often your website saves in the settings. Keeping your data separate is crucial to easily re-upload after a crash. Websites crash. It happens. Be ready for when (not if) it does.
- Security- The WordPress Security Team can identify, fix, and push out automated security enhancements for WordPress without the site owner needing to do anything on their end, and the security update will install automatically.
- SEO- WordPress has techniques in using SEO which does not require you to be a tech genius.
Final Words
A lot of interest opportunities need to considered when picking the right platform for your website. If you know nothing about web designing, you have to decide whether you will hire a professional who will do the work or, you will thrive to build it yourself.
Hopefully, this article will help you understand and decide which platform to use on your website.
Always remember that for you to build your website, you do not need to be too technical in the Information Architecture and Information Technology. You just need website builders available for your business to grow and be available in the digital market.
If you don’t know about Web Designing, don’t worry we can help you.
We Design Digital Strategies for your Business and Ministries. Helping Christian and Women Entrepreneurs design online presence and manage digital strategies for growth of business and ministries through Web Design and Digital Business solutions.
✅ Website, Landing page and Funnel Design
✅ Logo, Branding and Graphics Design
✅ Video/Podcast Editing and Marketing
✅ Social Media Management and Marketing
✅ Search Engine Optimization and Marketing
✅ Email Marketing and Copywriting
✅ Virtual Assistant and Digital Business Management
Reference: https://makeawebsitehub.com/compare/weebly-vs-wix-vs-squarespace-vs-wordpress/