Best Website Builder (Top 10 June 2024) – Forbes Advisor Australia
Here are a few important tips to help you create a successful site:
Design for Desktop and Mobile Devices
A mobile-responsive site automatically adjusts images, text and design elements to show up quickly and appropriately for a mobile phone. According to Google Analytics stats, more than 60% of traffic is mobile, so it’s important that your site is mobile-responsive.
Most modern site builders are mobile-responsive, but even those that are may not be 100% perfect. Be sure to always preview your designs on both desktop and mobile screens of different sizes. If you notice any errors, you can adjust your designs by changing up element sizing or even removing certain elements on specific screen sizes.
Consider Pre-Built Templates and Themes
The terms theme and template are usually interchangeable. They are pre-built page designs that usually include menu navigation with the most common pages (home, about, contact, blog), a header and a footer. Most themes will include sample imagery and text, which you can replace with your own content. You can often customise the global template to best meet your needs as well.
Most site builders will have a variety of free and premium themes to choose from. Using these can help you get a well-designed site up and running much faster than if you were to build the site from scratch yourself. That said, not all themes are created equal. Be sure to preview all your pages to make sure there are no inconsistencies or errors as you add your content.
Add An SSL Certificate
A secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate is a file that encrypts data transfers to and from a website. So, when someone visits your secure website or enters information in any fields on your site (forms, username, password, credit card details), the SSL certificate keeps that data private. It’s important to have that security on your site for the end user, and having an SSL certificate can also help to improve your ranking in search engines.
Do I Need a Website Builder?
If you want to create a website and don’t have experience coding, a website builder is the easiest way to do it. The other option is to build your website yourself, but this requires knowledge of coding or hiring a professional. The benefit of hiring someone is that you have complete control of how the website looks.
When you are working with a website builder, you will likely come across design challenges that the website builder does not support. For example, let’s say you want a drop-down menu, but the theme you’re using doesn’t offer that feature. Or, you may love a particular template but find you’re not able to change the color theme.
Each website builder and each theme within it has different limitations, and you often only learn what they are as you go. If you don’t need complete creative control, you’ll find that the best website builders offer more than enough features to build a professional website.
