Post from Mashable , Authered by Kelli Shaver
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
There’s little doubt that a custom-designed and developed website is ideal for business. A trained professional can help you optimize your site for good search engine rankings, custom-tailor the look and feel to appeal to your target audience, reinforce your company’s image and ensure that your content is easily accessible and the user experience enjoyable. However, large web-development budgets often just aren’t possible, particularly for small businesses or entrepreneurs who are just getting started. In these cases, a number of web services exist to allow you to grow your company’s presence online, often in just minutes. We’ll take a look at five of them below.
1. Squarespace
One thing we really like about Squarespace is its visual designer. You can choose from available themes or create and customize your own, either via user-friendly point and click, or by directly editing the theme CSS files.
2. Weebly
The company has been around for five years and gets revenue from several paid subscription plans and is backed by one of the largest VC firms around, so it’s safe to say Weebly will be a player for a while.
3. Jigsy
Further, Jigsy allows you to customize the layout and look of your site via the website builder, and unlike some other services listed here, it also handles email hosting.
4. SnapPages
With the paid plans ($8 or $30), you’ll be able to host your own domain name, add your own custom HTML and JavaScript code, gain access to powerful analytics and control various SEO options. SnapPages’ top-tier plan is intended for developers and will allow you to do all of this, as well as manage multiple accounts, track projects and create invoices, so you can use SnapPages to build sites for your network or clients.
5. Yola
If you spring for Yola Premier (the $499 per year plan), Yola will also throw in one-on-one consultation with professional designers, and both paid plans include advertising credits on popular ad platforms like Facebook and Google AdWords.
What other website-building platforms have you tried? Let us know in the comments.
Related articles
- 5 Services For Building Websites on a Budget (mashable.com)
- Create and build a FREE professional website with Yola (tjantunen.com)
- Squarespace Gets $38 Million in Funding (nyconvergence.com)
- Make Money Online with Squarespace Affiliate Program (johnchow.com)
- If you’re going to opt for a paid blogging platform, Squarespace is top of mind (tjantunen.com)
- If you’re going to opt for a paid blogging platform, Squarespace is top of mind (performancing.com)
ABC4All is able, through the generosity of the TrUnity Platform, to offer FREE websites with the highest upgrades, including business sites, to ABC4All associates. ABC4All Participation Guidelines: http://www.trunity.net/abc4all/topics/view/24848/