Whether you are just starting your business or are within the first pivotal 5 years of your business you need a website. A website gives people a place to check you out when they hear about you or meet you and it shows them you are a legitimate business. Legitimate businesses want clients to trust them and a website is the first way to start building that trust.
Your website is also the landing place for all your outbound awareness to land. Whether you are using social media, newsletters, digital advertising, or networking you need a website to send people to. We always recommend that a new business uses WordPress for its website in combination with a website builder tool.
The best small business website builder for WordPress is Elementor Pro. Elementor is a website builder drag and drop tool. You don’t need to know how to code at all and you can simply drag and drop the elements on the left menu into your page and move them up, down, left, and right so the page looks the way you want to. Not just headers and text boxes, This includes, contact forms, social media feeds, and so much more.
In this article, we are going to walk you through some of the features that Elementor Pro provides so that anyone can build an amazing custom website that can grow and change with their business.
What is a website builder WordPress Tool
There are different ways to build a website. If you know how to code in HTML you can code a custom website. Many business owners don’t know how to code so they opt for closed platforms that allow you to use their website creator tools to build a website such as WIX, Squarespace or Go Daddy. the problem with these tools is they are built by those companies and are closed to any outside development or tools.
WordPress allows anyone to build templates and plugins for their platform. It’s truly open. Because of this openness, you have complete flexibility with what tools you use to build your website and there are so many plugins and widgets, and templates to choose from. This is good and bad. Getting templates from a 3rd party can be challenging, many are unsupported and don’t work right even when they are paid. Also, you are confined to the code for the template.
A website builder tool like Elementor Pro gives you the best of all worlds. You can use WordPress and host it where you like as well as use either Elementors templates that can be customized completely without code or you can build a custom site from scratch. Elementor Pro is fully supported with help and security upgrades. Provided as a website builder drag and drop tool. You can build, edit and view your page all in one place.
Website Builder Online Tool Advantages
WordPress started out as a simple blog builder website. It has always been a blog/website builder online tool. What this means is you don’t have to download an application to your computer in order to update or create your website. You can build your website from anywhere as long as you have a computer or even a tablet with enough power and an internet browser.
Over the years they have become more than just a blogging website. You can build a full website with as many pages as you need with WordPress. In 2023 WordPress will have been around and available for 10 years.
Since there isn’t a charge to build a website on WordPress you can start with a site you build yourself and when you are ready to higher a website designer it is very easy to find one that has a great depth of knowledge with the platform. All the plugins and widgets are available via the online portal as well so you never need to download an application to work on the site.
Best Small Business Website Builder For WordPress Features and Benefits
Elementor Pro is our website builder of choice. It provides the most features of all the website builder tools. It’s easy to use and maintain a website with it. It integrates well with the top plugins that you need for a website to help bring your business new customers.
Elementor Pro uses Block sections to build your website so each page is full of small component pieces that can be added, deleted moved, and changed whenever you need to. This makes it very easy to make changes during and after the building phase of your website.
Custom Website Templates
You can use an external prebuilt template in Elementor Pro but you are better off using one of the hundreds of templates that Elementor Provides so that you don’t run into problems with template designers not supporting their templates when something breaks.
You can go the route of building your own template from scratch. Just pick a site that you like and you can create a similar design for your site with the specific changes you want. With Elementor Pro you can create Header and Footer templates. These can be standard across all of your pages but flexible enough to have a page or two with different headers and footers.
Blocks and Widgets
Blocks and Widgets are the foundation of creating pages in Elementor Pro. These tools allow to drag and drop anything you need onto a page and put it anywhere you like. Blocks are sections you drag and drop onto a page. Some blocks you can use are:
- Title & Content
- Images, Videos, and Image Gallery
- Login Credentials (And designated what is accessed)
- Alternate Menus
- reviews
- Contact Forms
- Paypal and Stripe Buttons
Widgets allow you to customize how a block works. For Example, when you use a Contact Form Block you use the widget to set up the fields you want in the form, who the form is sent to and what the confirmation message should read. You can also modify the Style separately from the main style if you want to add an additional font or color for a specific block.
Custom Blog Pages
You can create standard templates for your main blog page and all of your blog posts. This allows you to keep people on your site by reading more articles or calling out other pages for services.
Having a template for your blog posts allows you to write your post inside of the Guttenberg editor and when you publish it it will follow the template you set up for how it should look which makes your blog look more professional.
Long-Term Benefits Of Elementor Pro
What makes Elementor Pro the best small business website builder is its flexibility for your business over time. It’s a great tool for when you first build your website but the real magic of using Elementor Pro is that you will never have to start from scratch with building your website again. You can do a redesign within the same system as long as you keep your WordPress software and plugins up to date.
This makes it easy for you to update, add and change different parts of your website as your company grows and changes without having to spend a lot of time redesigning your website. You can also add and remove new website features as they become available such as the ones we mention in our article 7 Design Elements Every Company Website Must Have or 5 Trends Changing Small Business Website Design.
Hosting A WordPress Site
It’s not enough to have the best small business website builder tool. Where you host your WordPress website matters. Often when a website is slow or not functioning properly it’s because of sitting on an older server, a server with too many websites on it, or the websites on the server are having software conflicts. The big host companies that charge very little for hosting your website are too good to be true. You need a stable, safe environment to host your website.
We recommend using FlyWheel to host your WordPress website. FlyWheel only hosts WordPress websites. Part of their fees includes keeping your WordPress and PHP programs at the current version. For an additional fee, they will also upgrade your plugins for you.
Included in your base pricing is a free SSL certificate, access to create a development environment, daily backups, and much more all at a price that is very affordable for all the features you get and the peace of mind knowing that your site is up to date, fast and secure.
I hope you found this article helpful in trying to build your website so that is will meet your needs and change with your needs for years to come. Feel free to reach out via chat if you have any questions. We are always happy to answer questions. If you want our content delivered to your inbox Sign up for our newsletter. You get great content and exclusive offers by being a member.
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