With so many website platforms available on the market, it can be quite overwhelming for businesses and organisations of all sizes to work out which solution is best for them!
Sonja and I wanted to put together a short guide to explain what’s available and what’s popular for different types of websites; in the hope that it will help you understand your options.
What is a website platform/content management system?
A content management system (also known as CMS) is the software that you use to access your website and update your content. This is generally accessed through a ‘back-end’ and will have a vastly different user experience depending on which platform you’re using (see below).
Should I hire a designer, a developer, or both for my website build?
A professional website will need both design and development to bring it to life.
Many designers claim they can develop, and many developers claim they can design! In many cases this is completely true, and skills will vary depending on areas of specialisation. Professionals with a design background might only feel comfortable working with some platforms that require less back-end coding and those with a development background might not be able to produce overly creative or high-end design (which might be fine for your needs). It’s completely up to you if you want to hire a professional who can do both, or hire separate professionals to handle each of the two aspects of creating a website.
A graphic design, web design or digital agency will generally provide both, along with a project manager and content writing professionals if you need them. While most small websites will only require one or two professionals, with a creative/design agency you will also have access to multiple designers and developers with various skills if your project requires it. For example, you might need a brand designer for your logo and visual identity, a designer who is highly skilled in illustration to handle some of your brand illustrations, a web designer to create your website mockups, a web developer to bring your designs into a CMS, and a programmer to set up your database.
The 3 tiers of website platform:
The rest of this article will explore the below 3 categories in more detail.
- Platforms for everyone (DIY)
- Platforms for professionals (designers and front-end developers)
- Platforms for programmers (full stack developers)
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1. Platforms for everyone (DIY)
Popular DIY platforms
Wix
Wix is a classic website builder with an intuitive drop-and-drag interface that is beginner-friendly. Wix provides over 500 industry-specific website templates that are modern and customisable. It’s main pro is that it is a quick and cost effective option for novelists and small business owners who want to keep the initial costs down for launch.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a website builder and hosting platform with a drop-and-drag user interface. It comes with 113 website templates to choose from.
Squarespace is built for creatives who want to build their own portfolio websites but don’t have much technical experience e.g. artists, photographers, musicians and other creative types that want to showcase their work.
Squarespace is not quite as easy to use for beginners and it’s templates are less flexible in terms of customisation compared to Wix, but it gains points for its better blogging feature (although Squarespace has nothing on WordPress if we’re talking superior blog functionality).
Shopify
Shopify is an extremely popular platform designed specifically for ecommerce websites. Many small businesses choose to hire a professional designer to create their Shopify site. For this reason, Shopify could also fit in the next bracket (No. 2). However, I think it fits better here as you don’t actually need to have any coding knowledge to use it, which technically makes it a DIY platform. It has basic templates and plenty of resources and information available to help business owners make their own online store and do some very basic customisation.
WordPress.com, Blogger etc.
Many people get confused about the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.com (as well as Blogger) are used predominantly for personal blogs. You sign up for a paid membership and then create simple blog sites using available templates. There isn’t a lot of customisation ability within your chosen template, and WordPress.com websites are hosted by WordPress, unlike WordPress.org websites which can be hosted anywhere (and are highly customisable – see below).
Other less popular options:
- Website builders offered by your hosting company
When is it appropriate to use one of these platforms?
If you’re starting a business and need an online presence – but don’t yet have the funds available to hire a designer – these platforms are for you. We understand it can be a bit risky to invest money into a professionally designed and developed website if you don’t have a lot of capital to work with at the beginning.
Who should I hire for this and what does it cost?
Well… you generally don’t need to hire anyone, hence why these are called DIY platforms! The cost of your website will depend on the hosting and package subscription options provided by the platform developers.
The DIY plans start out cheap on the ‘basic’ level but when you start adding functionality to your website (blogs, eCommerce etc.), you’ll likely have to upgrade your plan and it could end up more costly than hiring a professional designer/developer to create a fully customisable site for you from the outset! If you do start with a DIY site and then end up needing to hire a developer to work on it, the templates are often challenging for a developer to customise which can add unnecessary stress and costs to your project.
Our honest opinion…
No offence to Wix and Squarespace (which are decent pieces of software), but the truth is that at some point as your business grows (or preferably before!) you’ll likely need to put some resources into the development of your branding. With this comes the need for a CUSTOM designed and BRANDED website (as per No. 2 or No. 3 below).
The biggest reason you should avoid using Wix or other DIY platforms to create your website is that you run the risk of your website looking ‘generic’. There are millions of customers using the same design templates and they tend to all look alike… it’s a bit like how every sandwich at Subway tastes the same.
We recommend skipping the DIY stage and just using a Facebook page or a simple landing page site (directing people to Facebook so they can contact you easily) until you have the money available to do the above. This will save you valuable time and resources that could be spent elsewhere. It also means the first full ‘launch’ of your business (with your professional site) will impress and wow potential customers.
Ethical Design Co. offers monthly payment plans for our small business websites packages (coming soon), which is also a great solution as you can get your website up sooner but without a huge up-front cost.
A website is an investment and the value you will get out of it is in line with how much you value your design and content along with how much energy you put into making it great. At the very least, be careful with DIY builders and the way they can make your brand appear a little bit cheap or ‘not serious’ – which can stick in people’s minds long after you update.
First impressions are everything, which makes branding extremely important!
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2. Platforms for professionals (designers and front-end developers)
What’s a front-end developer?
A front-end developer is a web developer who is skilled in using programming languages that help build the look and feel of a website, i.e. HTML, CSS and Javascript. As mentioned above, many front-end developers are also designers as their main job is to focus on the client-facing part of the website that you see in the browser rather than the background code that builds the system itself.
The below platforms are built primarily for creating professionally designed websites that can be fully custom coded using front-end development. While they come with available themes and templates, generally these are completely overhauled, overwritten or built from scratch to suit your custom design.
Popular professional platforms
WordPress
WordPress deserves a whole article for itself, but there are hundreds of good articles on the internet about this platform so I will spare you the long-winded details. It is the most widely-used CMS in the world and has been for a very long time.
WordPress is what’s known as a ‘developer platform’ because the code is open-source and available for third-party developers to create their own plugins and sell them online to other WordPress users. This is what has allowed WP to become as successful as it has, as many talented developers have allowed it to have pretty much any functionality you can think of.
While many web designers and developers who create WordPress sites don’t have the technical skills to create plugins themselves, a good WordPress developer will have at least a basic understanding of PHP (a database programming language) so that they can edit template files and have more control over how customised the site will be. It’s possible to get around some of this by working with special page builders and frameworks that sit on top of WordPress to make it easier for the developer and the client to make changes down the track. Some popular page builders (and templates that come with these built-in) include:
- Divi (page builder)
- Elementor (page builder)
- Beaver Builder (page builder)
- Visual Composer (page builder)
- Genesis (framework)
We don’t tend to use page builders at EDCo. unless specifically requested by a client. Page builders add extra code to a WordPress site which can make it a little clunky or slow if not optimised well. We prefer to build flexible content blocks with hard code and a custom field plugin. However, many designers and developers swear by page builders and would absolutely never consider anything else. So it really does come down to preference!
Webflow
Webflow is a visual builder just like Wix and Squarespace, but it’s not really a DIY platform as you will need design skills and basic coding skills to use it (i.e. HTML and CSS).
Unlike WordPress, you don’t need to work heavily with the website’s database in order to create your site. The main difference between Webflow and other platforms is that it was built for designers. This allows Webflow users to focus on easily integrating beautiful design elements and stunning animations without being locked into a strict flow or template type (as with DIY builders).
It has a lot of functionality and this makes it a strong rival to WordPress in that it can also do complex resource filtering, blog archiving, and other functions that larger businesses might need on their website.
Other less popular options:
- Raw HTML/CSS (not a platform): this is an old school way for developers to create websites. Back in the day before content management systems came along, this is how websites were made. Many contemporary developers still like to work this way as they have more control over the back-end code and the resulting code is clean and fast for the browser to read. It can be a great solution for a one page landing page. However, this is not a CMS! So clients will not easily be able to make edits to the site as there is no back-end system to access for this purpose.
When is it appropriate to use one of these platforms?
These platforms are the most appropriate option for MOST websites. Even eCommerce websites can be done in both Webflow or WordPress (via WooCommerce) so we don’t see the need to use Shopify or other solutions.
At EDCo we use only these two platforms as we feel they can deliver the most value to the types of clients we work with, and allow us to build websites from 1 page up to 100+ pages with blogs, booking systems, online shop fronts and other complex functionality.
We choose our clients’ website platform based on a few things:
- Client preference: e.g. many people have worked with WordPress but are less familiar in Webflow (as it’s newer) so simply prefer something they know
- Functionality: WordPress can still do A TINY BIT more than Webflow in terms of available functions and add-ons. But this is changing quite rapidly.
- Type of site: e.g. a beautifully animated and high-impact brochure-style site will be developed much faster in Webflow than in WordPress due to the strong design focus of Webflow
Who should I hire for this and what does it cost?
For small 5-10 page websites (for a small or medium business) you can hire a freelance designer/developer or two freelance professionals (a digital designer AND a web developer). Small-medium sized design or digital agencies (like EDCo.) also tend to take on small business websites as they have clean processes available for knocking these out quickly.
The cost will be cheapest when working with designers and developers who are less experienced. It’s totally up to you if you want to work with someone who is still learning, but just be prepared for more time for edits and unexpected issues that may arise. If you have the time, it can be great to give a low-end freelancer a go. You can learn from each other as you work. Pay attention to their professionality, response time and ethos and work with someone who feels right to you from the start and takes the time to understand your unique brief.
Senior freelancers, while more expensive, are a great option for a small website that doesn’t require a team to put together. Seniors with 10+ years of experience are generally highly specialised and if they’ve managed to be successful in a freelance career then that’s a good sign, as it’s a highly competitive industry. Sonja (our Senior Designer) built many small websites while she was freelancing (design and development) and loved the challenge of handling the whole process alone. This works particularly well for businesses who have just one or two staff who might prefer the process to be a bit more personal.
Agencies will charge a bit more depending on the size of the agency as the service offering is more comprehensive. Agencies work hard on curating skilled professionals that suit their brand and have lots of experience dealing with projects of various types. They can usually appoint a project manager for you who is available all the time to manage the project. With an agency you will rarely have to worry about a designer being unavailable (as they can easily appoint the job to another person), and as more people have input on a project it means the end result is of a very high standard.
Custom designed/developed small business websites usually cost between AUD$2K-$20K. The huge cost variance depends on the size of the site, functionality needed, and what kind of professional you are using (as above).
At EDCo., we have some small business website packages (coming soon) available as a starting point. For anything more customised we recommend filling in our website design brief and then we can scope and quote your project in detail.
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3. Platforms for programmers (full-stack professionals)
What is a full stack developer?
A full-stack developer is skilled in all aspects of web engineering. They can develop both the front end visual side of the website as well as the back-end code of the CMS or platform itself. A full stack developer can also build more complex plugins and custom applications that work within your website.
Popular full-stack platforms
Drupal
Drupal is often used by larger digital agencies who have more access to full-stack engineers. This platform requires a steeper learning curve than WordPress. The Drupal website advertises Drupal as being a great choice for creating integrated digital frameworks. Drupal is probably the most customisable website software available, and is best used for completely custom building websites with complex functionality from the ground up.
Magento
Magento was originally designed for growing ecommerce businesses or existing ones with global reach. You could consider it a much more advanced version of Shopify. It’s recently been acquired by Adobe (makers of the most popular design software) so my guess is that they’re probably working on making it more usable by designers and developers who don’t know a lot of code. It comes with a drag and drop page builder which already makes it appealing to this market, however you will still need a pretty sound understanding of how ecommerce stores operate and a good understanding of web analytics before you can take on this software.
Joomla!
Joomla is a Drupal alternative that’s ideal for creating membership sites, social networking sites, portals, and other web projects and applications with lots of users. Joomla is one of the original website platforms and it still has an enthusiastic community of users for its highly customisable open-source PHP framework. Joomla is a more beginner-friendly option for skilled developers than Drupal.
When is it appropriate to use one of these platforms?
If you need a large premium website that has custom developed components, or a website integrated with an online app or other custom built software, then this is the solution for you.
Who should I hire for this and what does it cost?
A larger digital agency is the best place to go to start a web project like this. Drupal, Magento and Joomla projects take quite a bit longer with more planning involved. You will generally have to go through a full user experience (UX) exercise to work out the architecture of the site and the user flow of any custom designed elements or products. These types of websites typically cost $30K – $100K+ depending on what is needed.
Conclusion
Try and avoid DIY platforms and wait until you have the capital to hire a designer to design a custom site that can be created in Webflow or WordPress.
In addition to our thoughts above, another key reason to avoid DIY platforms is because the code used to develop these sites is not really favoured by Google, which makes it much harder for you to rank high in search. SEO (search engine optimisation) these days is as much about user experience as it is about other things, so the more unique your design and content, and the cleaner the development of your site, the better for your ranking.
Hopefully this has cleared up some of your questions around website platforms and CMS’ and which option might be most suitable for you and your business. Feel free to get in touch with us for any questions!
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