Top Features of Small Business Website Builders in 2024: A Comprehensive Guide

Today's small-business owners must be equally savvy in digital marketing as they are in dealing with the old-fashioned brick-and-mortar world. An investment in a basic website or a series of web pages is no longer a revenue-busting luxury and instead is a practical necessity. But with so many website builders available today, how does a business owner select the right one? This guide will explore the basic must-have features the website builder of your choice should have!

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What we’ll cover:

• User-Friendly Interface and Ease of Use
• E-commerce Capabilities
• SEO and Marketing Tools
• Security Features
• Customer Support and Resources
• Scalability
• Third-Party Integrations and Add-Ons

User-Friendly Interface and Ease of Use

Selecting a small business website builder demands some thought, and among the several considerations—aesthetics, features, and price, for instance—user-friendliness is key. You may not possess an expansive technical skill set, and I suspect you have better things to do with your time than learn a complex system. That's why the best small business website builders are largely intuitive and offer a drag-and-drop interface that even the most cordially challenged among us can master.

Key Aspects to Look For:

Intuitive Drag-and-Drop No-Code Functionality:

Add, remove, and rearrange elements on your site? Easy. Using a drag-and-drop interface, you can visually construct your site by simply moving elements around. No coding necessary. This function is fantastic for all you DIYers without a drip of tech skill.

Pre-Designed Templates:

A great feature of contemporary website builders is their supply of available templates, which are professionally designed and tailored to various industries. These templates not only give you a head start but also ensure that your site is polished and professional—right from the get-go. Whether you’re a local restaurateur, or a boutique shop owner, there are templates designed for your very specific needs. And when you pick one of these, it saves you time and effort. You don’t have to start from scratch. And odds are, when you use one of these templates, your user is going to have a better experience, especially since the templates are often optimized for something we speechwriters and server-side implementers like to call SEO.

Customization Options:

Even though templates give you a sturdy starting point, you don't want to be trapped in a box. Your website should fit your brand as well as, say, a tailored suit fits its wearer. Some of the best small business website builders provide an array of customization options—colors, fonts, and layouts, not to mention the all-important choice of whether to go with a traditional vertical menu or a more contemporary horizontal one—that let you create a site as unique as your business.

Mobile Responsiveness:

In our contemporary world, which is primarily focused on mobile devices, it is of utmost necessity for a website to not only look attractive, but also operate efficiently on any and all devices. We live in an era where website access via mobile devices is unparalleled, and the figures continue to soar (more than 50% search the web using their phone!). This demand for mobile accessibility is no different for e-commerce websites. A mobile-friendly site can improve user experience, reduce bounce rates, and increase the likelihood of conversions.

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If you lack technical skills, you can still design a professional website where your customers will have a great user experience. Even with no programming knowledge, you can be a website author. You can use website builders, which are basically tools for dragging and dropping, to put web pages together. This is how your non-technical self can still create a good-looking website.

E-commerce Capabilities

Having an online store can be a life-altering opportunity for many small businesses, allowing them to reach customers far beyond their immediate locale. But when it comes to picking a small business website builder, not just any old option will do. If you plan to even contemplate the possibility of selling goods or services online, the website builder you choose must have strong e-commerce capabilities—that is, the features and functionalities that together allow a business to manage an online store and provide its customers with a secure and smooth shopping experience.

Key Aspects to Look For:

Integrated Shopping Carts and Payment Gateways: 

One of the most vital e-commerce functionalities is a built-in shopping cart that lets customers add items swiftly and keep moving toward the all-important checkout step. Also crucial is a secured checkout that has the look and feel of a legitimate business operation. And of course, you want the shopping cart and checkout to function seamlessly on all devices, from desktop to tablet to smartphone.

Inventory Management Tools:

For a small business owner like you, inventory management is vital. That's why it's essential to find a website builder that can take care of it for you. Some website builders offer something called built-in inventory management tools. These are part of what the website builder calls e-commerce functionalities. They allow you to keep track of your inventory through your website and pretty much do all the work for you. You can even set these tools up to do inventory management notifications for you so you are always on top of things!

Product Showcasing Options:

Your products must shine online. The finest small business website builders offer various ways to present your products, with the essentials being gorgeous images and flawless descriptions. Some make it possible to zoom in on images, which is important for certain kinds of products (think really nice jewelry). Others let you add customer reviews and ratings, which are really good for sales and for building trust with your customers.

Handling Taxes, Shipping, and Discount Codes:

E-commerce means more than just a selling platform; it's a logistics challenge, too. The best website builders for online commerce offer tools to help you get the tactical stuff right, like calculating taxes based on where your customers are located, managing shipping options, and providing discount codes or other kinds of promotional offers.

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These e-commerce functionalities guarantee that your small business can sell products online, manage operations, and provide customers a smooth and secure shopping experience. Whether you deal in tangible items, digital products, or services, these features are must-haves if you want to be successful.

SEO and Marketing Tools

The website you build for your small business has one primary goal: to rank highly in search engine results pages. The higher your site appears in the rankings, the more likely it is that potential customers will find you. Of course, you can’t just will your website to rank in order, and you can’t even really force it to rank. Rather, you’re going to have to optimize your website, with a lot of help from its builder, so that it works with search engine algorithms and appears in front of the right eyes at the right time.

Built-In SEO Optimization Features:

For any small business website, it is of the utmost importance to be easily found on search engines like Google. The website builders that are best for small businesses come with SEO tools that make optimizing your site for search engines fairly simple. A website builder that works well for small businesses has SEO features that are user-friendly and either simple or guided in the way they should be done. All of these small business site builders let you do things like edit meta tags and alt text, both of which can and should be used for small business SEO.

Blogging Tools to Drive Traffic:

When it comes to SEO, content is sovereign, and one of the most potent means of expressing that content is through blogging. Having a website that incorporates this "built-in" blogging feature engages visitors in a way that can only be improved through the strategy of content cascading—essentially, repurposing that content in a way that creates multiple new expressions across several channels. Additionally, look for tools that will help you weave that content together in a way that will engage your audience in a narrative.

Email Marketing Integrations:

Reaching your customers and ensuring they come back for another buy is most effectively done through email marketing, even in this noisy world of social media. You need a basic list of your best customers and prospects, then mail them with good content and offers that convert to sales. The best website builders let you do all of this right on your website, with some even offering top-notch autoresponders.

Social Media Integration:

In the current online environment, a robust social media presence is necessary. The best website builders offer straightforward social media integration, enabling you to link your website to platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). This seems particularly important for the e-commerce website builder you choose, because "the better you share and promote your products, the better your audience engagement will be."

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Security Features

Today, online security is a major concern—not just for large corporations but also for small businesses that manage sensitive customer information. You want to ensure that your site is as fortified as possible, not just to protect your bottom line but to secure the trust of your customers. So when you choose a small business website builder, opt for one that offers a boatload of security features.

SSL Certificates for Secure Transactions:

The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is one of the most basic security features. It encrypts data sent between your website and your visitors. It is absolutely essential for protecting sensitive information—even for the kinds of websites that don't handle e-commerce transactions but do collect personal data or ask for logins. Plus, SSL can help your search ranking, since search engines like Google prioritize secure sites.

Regular Updates and Maintenance:

Cybersecurity risks are rapidly changing, and your website has to keep pace. The finest small business website builders not only give you the tools to create a site but also offer something very necessary: regular updates and maintenance. They ensure that your site is defended against the latest vulnerabilities, and not just those that auditors might find during a periodic check.

Data Backup Options:

For a small business, losing data can be a disaster, whether it stems from a cyber attack, system breakdown, or the fallibility of humans. The best website builders will help safeguard your data by offering backup functionality. In the worst case, you can restore your site in a short amount of time. If your data and systems are backed up, you can recover from a setback and carry on with business as usual almost as if nothing happened.

User Authentication and Secure Login Portals:

Ensuring that your website is not subject to unauthorized access is of utmost importance. Hence, you must choose a website builder that provides good user authentication. Ideally, the website builder should allow for two-factor authentication (2FA) and should have a secure "login portal" for users. These features (and/or others offered by the website builder) can help make sure that only those granted access can get into sensitive parts of your website, such as the admin dashboard or to customer account pages.

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Customer Support and Resources

If you’re overseeing a small business website and lack technological expertise, it’s especially important to have dependable customer support. The leading website builders offer a variety of support options, which may include around-the-clock service via live chat, phone, or email. They also have comprehensive knowledge bases and offer video tutorials to help you get the most out of their products. When something goes wrong—say, the “this site can’t be trusted” error prevents users from reaching your site—immediate access to reliable support can be a real lifesaver.

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Alongside providing direct customer support, the best website builders offer many different resources to help you troubleshoot problems independently. These can include in-depth tutorials, easy-to-follow guides, FAQs, and busy community forums where you can converse with other users. Trouble as you might, it's hard to see how you could fail to fully realize the potential of your website builder if you made frequent use of these resources.

Scalability

When you consider the essential characteristics of good website-building tools, scalability probably isn't the first thing to come to mind. But if you expect your business to grow, you should think about how well your website builder will serve you in the likely event that your web traffic scales up. This means you need to look closely at the upgrade options that your platform offers and assess how seamlessly (or not) you can bolt on new features, storage, or traffic allowances, and what that will cost you, when the need arises. If you can find a platform that doesn't just serve those needs but also serves them affordably, you're in good shape.

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Third-Party Integrations and Add-Ons

Any website builder for small businesses must have the capability of integrating with third-party tools and add-ons. Why? Because those integrations extend the website's basic functionality by linking it with the other software and services that a business relies on. Integrations with CRM systems (like Salesforce or HubSpot), email marketing platforms (like Mailchimp or Constant Contact), and myriad other web apps are where the real power of a small business website lies. Hence, a website builder that supports a wide range of third-party integrations ensures that a small business can connect its site without seams to the tools that help it manage customer relationships, track visitor behavior, and optimize its marketing.

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Your website's capabilities can be seen as something that comes out of the box. You could think of websites as having a kind of baseline functionality. These would be the things that could be done without needing to pay extra. Your website's capabilities can be significantly enhanced using add-ons and plugins. If someone wanted to, they could make a website with robust capabilities that could match some of the most powerful applications we interact with online purely using a website builder. They could make a site that could function as a powerful CMS without needing to use something like WordPress, for example.

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Conclusion

Choosing the right website builder is a critical step in establishing your small business's online presence. By focusing on key features like ease of use, e-commerce capabilities, SEO tools, security, and scalability, you can find a platform that not only meets your current needs but also supports your growth over time. Whether you're looking to create a simple informational site or a fully-fledged online store, the right website builder can make all the difference in your success.

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Ready to take the next step? Explore our in-depth guide on the best website builders for small businesses to find the perfect platform for your needs. With the right tools at your disposal, you can build a professional, functional, and secure website that helps your business thrive. Don’t miss out—start building your future today!