What Features to Look for in Website Builder Software 5 Must-Haves Every Small Business Owner Will Need
When the time comes to build or upgrade your small business website, you'll be faced with a variety of website building software options. It's easy to grow confused when researching the different builders that exist. Each vendor offers an assortment of features, which can be overwhelming for small business owners who lack a background in technology.
To help you sift through the options, we've highlighted five must-have features every website builder should offer.
1) Professionally Designed, Mobile-Optimized Showcase
Most potential clients or customers will find your business by searching online. This means that your website will offer them their first impression of your business. To make sure you're putting your best online foot forward, so to speak, you'll want a website builder with a professionally designed site template -- this helps your business appear trustworthy. Your site should be SEO-friendly so that it can be easily found and highly ranked by search engines.
Finally, the site should be optimized for error-free display across a variety of browsers and mobile devices. Today, a majority of people search the internet while using mobile phones, iPads, and other mobile devices.
2) CRM and Contact Management
Savvy business owners will want to stay in touch with consumers, and track and monitor their customers' behavior patterns while they visit your site. A quality website builder will offer a contact management system that allows you to collect and store your customers' names, email addresses, and other relevant contact information.
Additionally, the builder should offer customer relationship management (CRM) software, which tracks and analyzes their behavior. CRM allows you to devise marketing campaigns and special offers directed at your best customers, and designed to meet the interests.
3) Integrated E-Commerce Tools
A truly robust website builder will incorporate integrated e-commerce tools. This includes the ability to accept a variety of payment methods, create product showcases, offer discount codes, and schedule appointments.
An alarming number of website building tools rely on third-party apps to achieve these goals. These apps can be troubling for small business owners, because they will be responsible for downloading them, integrating them onto their websites, updating and maintaining them, and troubleshooting when issues arise.
4) Advertising Optimization
Smart business owners typically invest in online advertising campaigns. Your website builder should have the ability to track and analyze these campaigns so you can identify their successes and failures, and make changes as desired.
5) B2B Co-Marketing
B2B co-marketing allows businesses to link their websites to partner sites, enabling valuable referrals and building their online reputation -- a valuable consideration for search engine rankings.
Small business owners will find all of these featured in a website building platform, like Ocoos. A platform's underlying technology (design, hosting, e-commerce tools) are integrated, updated, and supported behind the scenes. Small business owners can even use Ocoos's full-service concierge.
The concierge works with owners to build and maintain their website, and integrate features that meet their goals and user needs. The site is professionally designed and optimized across browsers and mobile devices. US-based, 24-hour phone and online support is also available should future questions or issues arise.
