How to Choose the Best Website Platform

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Over the past few weeks, I've been talking a lot about building your website and the things that you are going to need before you actually start building your website.

But, today, I want to address one of the biggest questions that you probably have, and that is how do you actually go about choosing the best platform for your website. After all, with so many different platforms out there, it can be hard to know where to start, what to look for, and how to know if a platform has everything you want or need for your website.

What to Consider Before You Start Looking for a Website Platform

When it comes to choosing your website platform, there are several things to consider. Let’s go over them below.

1: Think About the Type of Website You Want to Build

One of the first things that I would do, if I was a complete new business owner looking to build my website, is think about the type of website that I want to build. So, what are you going to use this website for? Are you going to showcase your services? Are you going to sell digital products? Are you going to sell physical products? Do you plan on selling info products, such as eBooks, courses, memberships, masterclasses? Do you plan on starting with services and transitioning into courses later on?

While many website platforms are quite versatile, not all of them are suited for all the different things. For example, Shopify is hands-down the best platform if you want to start an online store selling physical products. Squarespace is perfect for service providers, coaches, and photographers.

2: Consider The Features

Next, consider the features you’ll need or want for your website. For example, think about the following:

• Will you be blogging?

• Will you start a podcast?

• Can you embed a video easily if you plan on starting a YouTube channel or video from other places?

Similarly, let’s say you want to sell products on your site. You are going to need a way to actually collect payment and handle the shipping and delivery notifications.

If you’re selling courses, you’ll need a way to collect payments as well as a way to actually store the contents of that course and allow your students to create an account, log in and access the course material.

On the other hand, if you sell services, you will need a way for people to reach out to you and book a discovery call with you.

If you are a photographer, you will need a way to showcase your portfolio of work. And that applies to writers, artists, and a number of other creative professions. So those are just some of the features that you might need depending on the type of business that you have.

3: How Tech Savvy Are You?

The next thing that you want to consider is how tech savvy are you and how much time do you actually have to dedicate to your website. Because, if I'm being honest with you, a website is never really done. I mean, it's done once you design it and once you get it up there and running.

But there are always a little things that you need to tweak, add, or change. For example, if you start with services and then six months down the line, your people are asking you for a course, you will find that you need to add a sales page for that course.

So again, there's always some work that's going to be involved with your website. For that reason, you want to consider how tech savvy are you.

Let’s say you need a platform that is robust and requires a lot of custom coding. If that's the case, then that is a deciding factor that's going to sway you very strongly in favor of certain platforms like WordPress that are super customizable.

But keep in mind that if you're not very tech savvy, you will probably end up having to hire someone to do the website for you or bring someone on board to help you manage your website while you focus on working in your zone of genius.

Or alternatively, you may want to steer clear of the platforms that require a lot of custom coding in favor of an easy DIY platform, at least for now. In a nutshell, many popular website builders, like Squarespace, are very easy to use and mostly based on drag and drop features.

4: Website Maintenance

Another thing to consider, while we're talking about site management is, website maintenance and updates. Does the platform you’re considering require updates and maintenance by you? Or is this done automatically by the platform itself?

For example, some platforms, like WordPress, require you to regularly back up and update your website. Whether that's updating plugins, whether that's wordPress themes, or WordPress itself. And then there are also backups because in the event of something happening to the server that your website is on, you can lose your entire website. In some cases, a simple plugin that is misbehaving can cause your website to go down. This is why you will want to have a backup ready to go.

On the other hand, platforms that are more geared towards DIYers, typically have that built into the platform so there's no tech or backup maintenance work required on your part.

5: Are You a Solopreneur Or Do You Have a Team?

Finally, are you doing this solo or do you have a team? If you're a solopreneur, then you'll probably want a platform that is easier for you to manage and that gets out of your way, so to speak. You’ll want to opt for a platform that you don't really have a lot of problems in updating and maintaining. If you have a team, then it’s easy enough to delegate these types of tasks to your team members.

How to Choose Your Website Platform

So once you've considered all of the things above, here’s what I would do or rather the process that I would follow to choose my website platform.

Step 1: Research

I would go to Google or whatever search engine you're using, and I would type in best platform for, and then your type of business. For example:

best website platform for a copywriter

Usually this will come up with a list of articles and blog posts talking about website platforms that are recommended for certain industries like... coaches, service providers, photographers, what have you. Now, usually they have a ton of them listed so it’s easy to get overwhelmed. To avoid that, first set a timer for an hour. Then, look at the top three results (in this case blog posts) and see which three platforms are listed as the top three.

And then go to the platform’s website and start comparing features, pricing, and the complexity of the platform based on what you see on the platform’s website.

Step 2: Sign Up for a Trial

Then, I would sign up for the trial, if they offer a trial, and usually they do. The only platforms that really don't have a trial are self-hosted platforms like WordPress or Joomla or something like that. They don't really have a free trial because you download them and install them onto your hosting web server.

But if your platform has a free trial, sign up for it and start playing around with it. That's one of the best ways to actually get familiar with the platform and get a feel for how it works. Try adding text, try adding images, move those elements around, add a button see if you can easily add a gallery of some sorts.

Does it have a built-in contact form? Does it have a built in newsletter form? How easy it is to embed third-party code? Remember when we talked about the type of website that you're going to need and the features that you're going to need? I’ve mentioned an email list — that is something that you will typically need to embed from a third party platform.

All of those things are things that you're going to want to explore during your trial. Now, by trial, I don't mean sign up for a trial and then just walk away and think you’ll be able to take care of it on the last day. Trust me, you won't have enough time like that. Instead, plan on spending a couple of hours every day, digging deep into the platform, exploring the features.

Set some time aside for it. Add blocks, explore what they do. See what options you have available.

For example, does it have templates? Does it have a starting point that you can use or do you literally have to put everything together by yourself?

Step 3: Reach Out to Support

Here’s a very important step you shouldn’t miss. Does it have support? How good is the support?

Reach out to support with a problem. Ask them questions. See how fast they respond. Those are the things that I would do if I was looking to actually choose a website platform for my business. After all, you don’t want to be stuck using a platform with no support or support that takes forever and a day to get back to you.

Step 4: Which Platform Did You Enjoy Using?

Then once you have a good idea of what each platform offers. Consider which one did you have the most fun using. Which one was the most enjoyable for you to use? And based on that, consider if that particular platform has all the features that you need. If the answer is yes, that is the platform that you go for. If the answer is no, then I'm afraid you're going to have to repeat this process until you land on a yes.

If none of the three website platforms that you chose on the first go satisfy your criteria, then it's time to go back to the original articles and go back through the list and choose the next three. And then the next three, until you land on a website platform that actually works for you.

Now, do not spend too long on this process. Ultimately, the website platform that you choose has to be easy and enjoyable for you to use. If you're DIYing, that is a very empowering feeling because that means that you won’t have to go and call a website designer or developer to come and make the smallest change for you. And when you're just starting, growing your business, that is precious because that means you're saving a lot of money.

But you don't want to be caught up in this process for months on end. That is actually preventing you from starting your business because you do not have a website ready to go. What I recommend you do is you set aside two weeks. This is typically how long the trial of most website platforms is. And that's it, you have two weeks to find your perfect website platform.

Block out two hours every day in your calendar, go around, play with the features, explore, dig deep and see what you enjoyed.

The easiest way to go about it is to pick one that is enjoyable for you to use, that is easy for you to use, and that has the features that you need.

Which Website Platform Do You Recommend?

With that said, you're probably wondering what is my recommendation for a website platform. As I've said before, my platform of choice for my website and for my client websites is Squarespace. It has a lot of features geared for service based businesses and coaches. On top of that, it’s easy to use and I have a tutorial that walks you through the process of getting started with Squarespace that you can read.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it. As you can see, there’s a number of things to consider before you choose your website platform and the process can be involved. I hope that the steps outlined here, make the process easier for you. And if you need help with the actual process of building out your website, I have a free, step-by-step training that walks you through the process that you can sign up for below.

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