How to choose the perfect website platform that works for your business
Rach and Simon reposing together - this should be the feeling you get when you’ve chosen the right website platform!
Choose right website platform for you & your business: a buyer’s guide
As a website design studio in South Devon, delivering stunning websites to creatively-inclined businesses, we did an Instagram Live recently with Amy from Anorak Cat. We talked about the main things to bear in mind if you want to commission a new website or redo an existing one.
If it’s something down the line or your simply curious, we’ve split it down into key questions that you should be asking yourself - this is a little buyer’s guide on how to choose the right website platform that works for you.
We're going to unpack some of the key things that you need to know about what goes into choosing the right platform, whether you're redoing your website or revamping it. We predominantly focus on Squarespace and Wordpress, but the principles are relevant regardless of which platform you choose.
Read on and we’ll cover the critical questions to ask when choosing the right website platform that will work for you and your business:
1. What’s the difference between WordPress and Squarespace?
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an open source platform. It's very flexible and the kind of platform that you would choose if you want a high degree of customisation and functionality.
What is Squarespace?
Squarespace is a website builder platform, which means you're not dealing with some of the code and the technical stuff. It uses a drag and drop editor, so is very user-friendly and intuitive.
2. What are the key things to consider when upgrading or redoing a website?
There's lots to think about when it comes to a new or redesigned website - here are our top three categories to consider when approaching it.
Branding
The first thing to consider is branding. Are you going for a rebrand or developing your brand from scratch? Think about this first because everything stems from branding, as it sets the direction for your business and contains the key elements.
Practically, when we talk about branding, we're thinking about questions like:
Are you clear who you are, as a business brand?
Do you know where you're going, who you work with?
How do you help your ideal clients?
If you don't have those questions clear and undertake a website, things can often start to go wrong a couple of months down the line. You might have a niggling feeling that it’s just not working, or that you’re not clear or don't actually know how to express yourself.
Copywriting
Next think about your copy. Are you going to revise your current content? Are you going to do that yourself? Ideally, are you going to get a professional copywriter to help you with that?
Copywriting helps convey all the critical things that people want to know. In particular it shows that you can solve their pain points (the most important things to them), plus focuses on the benefits, so the things that are meaningful to them if they were to work with you.
Photography
Following on from copy is your photography. Have you considered booking a professional photo shoot for a top notch aesthetic? What sort of shots are you going to have? Or are you going to rely on free stock photography for the moment?
Photography helps increase your brand impact and trust hugely. As they say, a picture says 1,000 words. Branded photography helps build a connection with your potential clients as well as build trust when they can see who they are potentially working with.
Equally, royalty-free images can be a stop-gap and get you set up if you are not ready or able to invest yet in brand photography.
Other
Take some to review your Google Analytics account and see what pages are popular, what's being viewed and what's not - this will help inform your sitemap, which is the plan of your website, so what pages sit where and which pages stem from which
Consider having a look at your competitors to see what they're up to and whether you need any special functionality
Think about who's going take care of your website, which can depend on which platform you choose
Be realistic about timescales - there're a lot of moving parts in websites. It is possible to do them quickly, but typically, they tend to take longer
Top tip: If you can answer your customers are, what your services are, and your unique benefits, you're probably ready to go.
3. How does functionality affect my choice of website platform?
Before you choose a platform to build your website on you need to think about what you need. What does your website need to do for you? How is it going to help your business? Are there specific functions that you require it to do for you? Gather that information first before moving forwards.
WordPress functionality pros and cons
WordPress has limitless functionality and extensibility which is why it's very appealing for businesses that anticipate a lot of growth, whether that's with e-commerce or membership sites, or running courses.
It gives your web developer the complete freedom design and flexibility to customise every element. This extremely high level of flexibility may not matter to every business, and is not to say that other platforms like Squarespace aren't flexible. The key point is to allow your needs to guide you to a particular part of the website spectrum in terms of design and functionality.
On the other hand, WordPress is not necessarily easy to build or manage. It's quite difficult for a non-technical person to set up and to build themselves. You really need to get a professional web developer to build a WordPress website for you.
Once built, and if it's built well, it's easy to update and make edits and things yourself, as long as it includes a good visual editor, such as Elementor or otherwise.
Squarespace functionality pros and cons
With platforms like Squarespace it's easier to get a more aesthetically-pleasing website. However, in other ways, it’s harder to be more bespoke. This may not matter to a lot of people; the key thing is to think about where you sit and work that out:
What do you need your website to do for you?
How much flexibility do you really need?
If you’re struggling with this, the key thing is to have a chat with a designer or developer to help you scope that out.
A rule of thumb is that the more functionality you want, the more you're going to have to invest. This because it requires developer time, designer time, which can quickly add up.
As a platform builder, Squarespace helps keeps things simple. When you keep things simple, you tend to be more focused and effective.
Equally, there might be instances where you need something really customised, or drill down into how something looks or very specifically how you want it to function. In that case, it makes sense to consider something like WordPress or similar.
Still, Squarespace allows you to do most things quite happily, whether yourself or with a small team without necessarily needing technical expertise.
One caveat is that a simple website (to the eye) isn't necessarily going to be cheap - functionality vs. cost doesn't work both ways. For an effective website you still need expert consultation and input. If you want a good website, whether that's on Squarespace or WordPress, don't fall into the trap of underinvesting and not kind of taking advantage of expertise.
Top tip: At the start of the process, ask what's the top thing you want your ideal visitor to do on your website. Let that lead the process, thinking about what you want people to achieve.
4. Do all websites need ongoing maintenance?
What do you mean by website maintenance?
Every website needs regular care and attention. If you get a website done, and you walk away and think, ‘job done; it's just going to sort itself out by itself,’ that is a big problem.
There's two reasons for that. Firstly, content: you need to keep a website up to date with your info and details, as things go out of date. It's important to keep the content on the pages themselves fresh.
Secondly, hosting, which relates to all the data, the text, images, and perhaps people's information, that you've processed through the website. This all needs to be care of and squared away on servers behind the scenes.
If you neglect content, what we tend to find is that traffic to your website drops off, which then causes sales or inquiries to diminish.
If your hosting fails, basically your site goes offline or the hackers get hold of it and all that potentially sensitive data mentioned above! Overall, hosting is critical.
The big question then is, ‘who's going to do that maintenance?’, and Squarespace and Wordpress are very different tools in that respect.
Pros and cons of WordPress hosting
With WordPress, your website can be hosted anywhere, although someone needs to be in charge of that, whether:
You have managed hosting
Someone else is taking care of it
You're handling it yourself
The bottom line is that someone needs to be taking taking care of your hosting.
Bear in mind too your that your server space needs maintenance along side your Wordpress website. You need to keep your server software up to date with the latest version of PHP.
Problems with WordPress start when businesses don't have anyone looking after their maintenance. You may not have realised or perhaps weren't told by the person who built your WordPress website that it actually needs to be taken care of. When there’s no maintenance things can go badly wrong!
Equally, one of the perks of WordPress is that you get to choose who takes care of it for you. A decent hosting arrangement will generally include:
Regular backups (so you don’t lose any data or can revert the site to a previous version if something goes wrong)
Plugin updates (so no security loopholes open up)
Theme updates (so everything functions as it should do)
In this scenario, you can relax, as someone is on top of it. However, if you’ve got a WordPress website, and are thinking, ‘I'm not doing anything - I'm just paying my £ per month hosting; I thought that was it!’, now is a good point to go an investigate that!
Pros and cons of Squarespace hosting
With Squarespace you don't need to remember anything to do with hosting (apart from paying for it), as Squarespace does it for you. Squarespace websites are hosted by Squarespace which means Squarespace takes care of all the backend maintenance for you.
Squarespace hosting is what’s known as a fully managed service. Everything is done for you and you don't have to think about it.
That’s the beauty of Squarespace hosting, as it frees you up to do other things. You can do your marketing, social media, or get on with delivering your services, as you’re not worrying about or getting tied up with the techie side of things. It gives you peace of mind, which is valuable in itself.
One thing to bear in mind with Squarespace hosting is that there is no option to restore a previous version of the site. You don’t get a backup in the traditional sense. However, in all the years that we’ve been using it, we’ve never heard of anyone who’s lost their website other than through operator error.
As an aside, if you’re using Wix, Wix is similar to Squarespace in that it's a website builder platform. You get a similar fully managed hosting service to Squarespace where everything is taken care of you behind the scenes.
5. Does Google favour one platform or another when it comes to SEO?
Websites built on any platform can rank highly on Google, so your chosen platform is not important for SEO; it's what you do with it.
As long as it's optimised for your chosen keywords; it runs fast; it gives your visitor a great user experience and it has the best content in Google's eyes; you can rank at the top of Google whether you're with WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or any other platform.
Google is impartial to the platform - Google doesn't favour platforms, it favours the content that you put on the website.
One thing that Google itself talks about in terms of SEO is EAT: E-A-T. In terms of content, this is about publishing website content shows Expertise, Authority and Trust.
Read more on SEO & EAT: ‘What Exactly Is E-A-T & Why Does It Matter to Google?’ from Search Engine Journal
Regardless of the platform, if you're producing content that hits these indicators for Google, it's likely that you're going to do quite well in terms of SEO.
Think about the content:
Is it relevant to people?
Is the information correct?
Are you supplying information that's going to be helpful to your visitors?
If you can kind of do all of these things and do them on a regular, consistent basis, then you’re less likely to have SEO problems.
Squarespace SEO pros and cons
You can go a long way with SEO on Squarespace and rank in Google searches using a Squarespace website.
Squarespace makes it really easy to write and publish the kind of content that your audience will love, getting you up search rankings and attracting new customers in a positive cycle.
When you want to get really serious about SEO, getting competitive, and going head-to-head with other brands, this is where WordPress starts to come into play.
Wordpress SEO pros and cons
WordPress is often a favourite platform for businesses who place a lot of importance on SEO. That's because organising and displaying large numbers of blog posts is a lot easier with WordPress.
You can also get more granular with how you tweak the SEO elements on your website with WordPress, both on page and off page.
Wordpress gives you an extra level of leverage in terms of what you do with it - it’s not that Google thinks, ‘hey, I love WordPress!’.
Bear in mind that serious SEO is a specialist topic and requires a campaign approach. It's competitive and tit for tat: you get ahead of another business in a ranking; they respond and leapfrog you, and so the process carries on. Plus you need to give SEO efforts at least three months in order to assess the results.
If you’re in the South West and want to talk to an SEO specialist, we recommend Chris from BrisTechTonic (Bristol) or Alice from MilkItDigital (Totnes, South Devon)
Top tip: Realign your thinking with SEO: focus on your content and stop obsessing about the dark art of SEO. It's all about content, but if you do want to invest in SEO, talk to an SEO expert alongside your website developer.
6. How important is it to add new content on your website?
Google loves content. From an SEO perspective, if you can answer the questions that people are asking, give them the answers that help them, Google is going to love you. Equally your ideal clients are more likely to want to engage with you on consuming it.
For any website, if SEO is important to you, then adding new content to your website regularly should be a priority. Make sure that all the content across your website is up to date, accurate, relevant, removing anything that is out of date or no longer available; and frequently add new longer form content such as blogs.
Be careful not to add it just for the sake of ticking a box - make sure that it's relevant to what you do and to what you're selling. Make sure it's interesting and helpful. Think about your keywords and your keyword phrases, and considerately add those into your blog posts.
Keywords or keyword phrases are the words that your ideal client is typing into Google to find what you offer. If you think about your business, and what people would be typing in Google to find you, those are your keywords and keyword phrases.
The big question with content in terms of choosing a platform is, ‘how are you going to add it? Who's going to do it?’.
If you're a busy business owner, are you really going to write all those blogs and keep your pages up to date? If not, who's going to do it?
With Squarespace, if you are a solo operator, it does make it easier to do that yourself. You don't need to deal with code, or you can have an assistant who's not a techie person do that for you.
Using Squarespace makes it really easy to blog and produce content. When something is easy, it tends to get done more regularly. Equally, as content is quick to do on Squarespace, it means you have time to focus on other things as well.
Top tip: Make a habit of working on your website content each monthly. If you get set up on Google Search Console (free via Google), you can get a monthly report. This is really helpful to see what what's doing well, and gives you a pointer of what to work on or tweak that particular month.
Hopefully you’re a bit more confident in how to approach choosing a new website for your business after reviewing these six important areas. If you’d like to learn more from us on website design or get visual inspiration, follow @wildings.studio on Instagram. You can read more of our blogs on website design too.
