Best Website Platforms of 2024
With so many website builders out there, it can be daunting to choose the right platform to create your organization’s website. The platform you select can greatly impact the site’s customization and flexibility, SEO capabilities, scalability, and more.
With everything becoming more digital-focused, it’s critical to ensure your website provides a great user experience for both your front-end users and your content editors. Your site should also empower everyone to instantly find the relevant information and resources on your website at their convenience.
Platforms like Squarespace, WordPress, CoreResources, Shopify, HubSpot, and Webflow have risen to the top, distinguishing themselves through user-friendly interfaces, powerful functionalities, and flexibility to cater to various needs and skill levels. Read on to discover the advantages of each platform to help guide you on your journey to building a customizable, user-friendly website.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a popular website-building platform that has garnered praise for its sleek design capabilities and user-friendly interface. Ideal for both novices and seasoned web designers alike, Squarespace offers a seamless blend of simplicity and sophistication that can help bring any website vision to life.
With an extensive selection of modern and fully responsive templates, Squarespace has designs that will meet your needs while making your content stand out whether you’re setting up a blog, an online store, a resource center, or a portfolio.
Utilizing a drag-and-drop interface, building and customizing your website can be done without knowing a single line of code. And if you do have technical knowledge, they offer the flexibility to tweak HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, giving you the best of both worlds. In addition to adding your own custom code, there is a large library of third-party extensions available to add even more custom functionality.
Looking to build a resource center? There are filtering plugins available to help you categorize your resources and present them to your users in an easily searchable front-end. Squarespace can also integrate e-commerce capabilities, allowing you to sell your resources or other products online.
Overall, Squarespace provides a solid foundation to build an impressive online presence, with capabilities for e-commerce, blogs, resource centers, and more.
WordPress with CoreResources
WordPress is an incredibly versatile and widely used website-building platform that powers 40% of the top 10 million websites in the world. Renowned for its flexibility and scalability, WordPress caters to a vast range of users, from bloggers and small businesses to large corporations and news outlets.
Its open-source nature has fostered a vast community of users and developers, making it one of the most dynamic and customizable platforms available today, offering unparalleled opportunities for customization through themes and plugins, allowing for nearly limitless functionality and design options.
There is a built-in drag-and-drop interface for in-page editing as well as full-site editing. Users looking for more flexibility within the drag-and-drop interface can choose from a vast library of available page builder plugins, such as Beaver Builder, WPBakery, and Elementor.
For those using Elementor, creating an online resource center becomes even easier with BNP Engage’s custom-built plugin, CoreResources. CoreResources is the ultimate Elementor plugin for creating an engaging, user-friendly digital resource center on your WordPress website.
CoreResources is loaded with pre-built resource types and custom fields, custom templates, and widgets. So, you can drag, drop, and build your content library with ease. Aside from Elementor, it integrates seamlessly with FacetWP, a filtering plugin you can integrate onto the front-end of your resource library through the built-in filters and widgets. Check out our case study to see how we added CoreResources to a client’s website!
Outside of resource centers, WordPress can be used to build any other type of website content. It has blog capabilities out of the box, it offers e-Commerce through its WooCommerce platform (as well as available plugins for other e-commerce system integrations) and so much more. Its combination of ease of use, extensive customization options, strong SEO capabilities, and a supportive community make it a top choice for anyone looking to create a website.
Shopify
Shopify has become the go-to solution for entrepreneurs looking to venture into online retail or expand their online presence. With its laser focus on e-commerce, it provides a streamlined and intuitive process for building an online store. Their no-code website builder helps businesses of all sizes create not just an online store, but a whole online experience for their brand with fully customizable designs and content.
Like Squarespace and WordPress, Shopify utilizes a drag-and-drop functionality to customize your website and has a selection of pre-built professional website themes and templates. Plus, for those who want to customize their store further, Shopify provides access to the theme’s code, allowing for deeper customizations.
Through its app store which features thousands of apps and integrations, the functionality of your online store can be extended even further. Whether you need advanced marketing tools, SEO enhancements, or customer service integrations, the Shopify App Store likely has a solution to meet your needs.
Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or an established business looking to grow your online footprint, Shopify provides a solid foundation to build and expand your online store.
HubSpot
HubSpot is a comprehensive inbound marketing, sales, and service software. It’s widely recognized for its powerful CRM and marketing automation capabilities. HubSpot also offers a robust website builder within its wider suite of tools designed to create a seamless, integrated digital marketing experience.
The beauty of HubSpot’s website builder lies in its integration with the rest of HubSpot’s ecosystem. This means you can easily create a website that’s beautiful, user-friendly, and optimized for lead generation right out of the box. The platform is designed with non-technical users in mind, allowing you to drag and drop elements to design your pages. These features make the process of website creation intuitive and enjoyable.
It also offers impressive flexibility for those who want to dive deeper into custom web development. And for businesses looking to provide a tailored experience to their visitors, HubSpot offers powerful personalization features. You can tailor content, offers, and calls to action based on visitor data, ensuring that your messaging hits the mark every time. This level of personalization can significantly enhance the user experience and improve conversion rates.
HubSpot’s website builder is a powerful choice for businesses that are serious about inbound marketing and looking for a platform that can do more than just create beautiful websites. Not sure how to get started? Find out how our team at BNP Engage can help you maximize the power of this all-in-one platform!
Webflow
Webflow stands out for its visual development interface that combines the simplicity of drag-and-drop builders with the power of custom coding. It’s a fantastic choice for designers, freelancers, and businesses looking for a high degree of customization without the need for extensive programming knowledge.
Webflow bridges the gap between traditional website-building tools and professional web development. It’s a unique and versatile option for creating websites.
Webflow’s content management system is visually integrated into the design process, allowing you to design custom layouts for blog posts, product pages, portfolio projects, or resource centers directly in the editor. This approach not only streamlines the content creation process but also ensures that your website maintains a consistent, custom design across all pages.
As you visually design your website, it simultaneously generates clean, semantic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code for you. It’s like having a developer and a designer in one tool, giving you complete control over the look and functionality of your site without the complexity that typically comes with custom coding.
Whether you’re building a portfolio, a business site, or an e-commerce platform, Webflow offers the tools and flexibility to bring your vision to life with efficiency and style.
Choosing your platform
The key to choosing which of these (or other) platforms is right for your business is to consider your specific needs, skill level, and long-term goals. As these tools continue to evolve, having a comprehensive website with rich features such as blogs, e-commerce, or resource centers will help make your website a go-to destination for information and insights in your industry.
Squarespace, WordPress, CoreResources, Shopify, HubSpot, and Webflow each provide a unique set of tools and features that cater to different aspects of website creation and management. No matter your requirements, there’s a platform out there that’s just right for you!
Still not sure how to choose the right platform for you? Let our experts at BNP Engage help you navigate your online strategy and presence.