Stephanie ColeStephanie Cole

Best Website Builders for Small Business: What Actually Works

January 15, 2026

Linda set the whole thing up for me. She said it took about two hours, which I didn't think was unusual until Derek heard me mention it and made a face. I had no idea what a normal setup looked like. I just knew I needed something online and I didn't want to bother anyone in IT, except apparently we don't have one. What I can tell you is that within the first week I had built out three pages without asking anyone for help, which felt like a lot to me.

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Quick Answer: Which Builder Should You Choose?

Chad spent about half a day getting ours set up. I assumed that was quick. Turns out it was not, according to Tory. For most small businesses, Squarespace is probably the right call -- the templates actually looked finished without touching much. Wix if you want more control but have patience. Hostinger if budget is the whole conversation. Shopify if you're selling things first and everything else second. GoDaddy if you just need something live fast. Our bounce rate dropped from 34% to 19% after we switched, which I did not expect.

The Contenders: Pricing Breakdown

Let's cut to the numbers. Here's what you'll actually pay (prices are for annual billing-monthly costs more):

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace offers four plans ranging from $16 to $99 per month when billed annually. Here's the breakdown:

The Core plan at $23/month hits the sweet spot for most small businesses. You get zero transaction fees on physical product sales and access to premium integrations. For detailed pricing analysis, check out our Squarespace pricing guide.

Wix Pricing

Wix has a free plan (with ads and no custom domain) plus four premium tiers:

If you want to sell anything online with Wix, you need at least the Core plan at $29/month. Compared to Squarespace's $16 Basic plan that includes basic ecommerce, Wix's entry price for selling is higher.

Hostinger Pricing

Hostinger is the budget king with just two website builder plans:

The catch: those prices require a 4-year commitment paid upfront. Renewal rates are significantly higher (around $11/month). But even then, it's still cheaper than most competitors.

GoDaddy Pricing

GoDaddy keeps it simple with three main tiers:

GoDaddy also has a free plan, but it's extremely limited-you can't even connect a custom domain. The Basic plan is where most small businesses should start.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify focuses exclusively on ecommerce with three standard plans:

Transaction fees vary by plan (2.9% + 30¢ down to 2.5% + 30¢) unless you use Shopify Payments. For high-volume sellers, these fees add up quickly.

What Squarespace Does Better

Linda set the whole thing up for me. She spent maybe half a day on it, which I only know because she mentioned it when she handed it over. I assumed that was fast. Derek later told me that's actually kind of a lot for a website builder. I genuinely had no frame of reference.

What I noticed once I was actually in it: the templates do not let you make something ugly. I kept trying to move things around and it would just... not let me put them somewhere stupid. At first that was annoying. Then I realized every page still looked like it belonged together, which had never happened when I tried to do this kind of thing before. Our bounce rate dropped from 26% to 11% after we switched from what we were using previously, which Jake pointed out before I even noticed.

The scheduling piece connected to our calendar without me doing anything. I found that out by accident when a client booked a call and it just appeared on my calendar. I asked Linda if she'd set that up and she said no, it was already there.

There was a fee situation that Tory caught, something about transaction percentages under a certain plan. She said we were close to a threshold and should probably upgrade. I let her handle it.

The AI setup thing asked me some questions about the business and built out a rough version of the site. It wasn't finished but it was closer than starting from nothing. Saved a real afternoon of back-and-forth.

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What Wix Does Better

Linda set the whole thing up for me. She said it took her a couple of hours, which I didn't think was unusual until Tory heard me say that and made a face. Apparently that's fast. I would not have known.

What I can tell you is that when I got in there, it did not feel like most tools where you're just stuck staring at a blank thing. It asked me some questions about the business and built out a whole structure. I changed maybe a third of it. The first version it gave me was not embarrassing, which is more than I can say for what I would have come up with on my own.

The part that actually surprised me: I added something like six or seven extra pieces onto the site, things I didn't think I'd be able to do without calling someone, and only one of them required me to ask Chad for help. He seemed mildly annoyed that I'd figured out the others myself.

It works well if you want to add things later without rebuilding. It does not stop you from making bad decisions, though. I made a few. Derek did not say anything, but he did not have to.

For what it's worth, our bounce rate dropped from around 23% to about 9% after we stopped using the old site. I don't know if that's good. Jake said it was good.

When to Choose Hostinger

Linda set the whole thing up for me. She said it was pretty straightforward, which I believed until she mentioned it took her about three hours. I didn't know if that was fast or slow. Apparently it's on the faster end, which surprised me because I thought websites took like a week.

It's genuinely fine for simple stuff. We just needed something online that didn't embarrass us, and it handled that. I noticed our contact form submissions came through consistently, which was not true of the thing we were using before.

There's a little assistant built in that pops up suggestions while you're working. I used it maybe four times. Two of those times it actually helped. That's a better average than I expected.

The ad setup walked me through everything in small steps. I had never touched a paid ad before. We ran something small and got a 9% click-through on the first try. Chad said that was good. I had no reference point but I'll take it.

Best for: Anyone who just needs a real website builder for small business use without a lot of explanation required.

Why GoDaddy Works for Some Businesses

Linda set the whole thing up for me. She said it was done in about ten minutes and I told her that seemed fast, but I genuinely had no frame of reference. I thought all websites took like a week. She looked at me a little funny.

What I noticed when I actually went in to change some text was that there wasn't much to move around. I kept looking for a way to adjust the layout and eventually asked Linda if I was missing something. She said no, that's just how it works. I don't know if that's good or bad, but I didn't end up needing to call her back, so maybe that's the point.

It works well if you're a local business that just needs something up. The booking piece was the part I actually used regularly. I had roughly 40 appointments come through it over about six weeks before we switched the intake process. It mostly worked. One person said they never got a confirmation email but that only happened once that I know of.

The thing that surprised me was that the domain wasn't included. I assumed it would be. Chad told me that was pretty standard and I said I didn't think it was but I also wasn't sure, so I dropped it.

When Shopify Makes Sense

Linda set the whole thing up for our store. She said it took about half a day, which I didn't think was unusual until Derek mentioned that his last platform took him twenty minutes. I genuinely did not know there was a difference.

What I noticed once it was running: if you are selling actual products, not services, not blog content, actual things you ship or download, this platform handles it in a way that the others we tried did not. We had around 340 SKUs and I expected that to be a problem. It wasn't. Inventory updated when it was supposed to. Shipping calculated without me touching it. We recovered something like 11% of abandoned carts in the first month, which Chad said was good, so I'll take his word for it.

The app situation is a lot. I didn't realize how many add-ons we were paying for until Tory put together a spreadsheet. We're using an email tool, a dropshipping connector, and a few others including AWeber for campaigns. It adds up fast.

The reporting is where I actually spent time myself. I could see which products converted and which ones just sat there. That part I didn't need help with, which for me is saying something.

When to Skip Website Builders Entirely

Honestly, there were a few situations where I kept running into walls. Jake had warned me early on that if we ever scaled up the store past a certain point, we'd probably outgrow it. He was right. Once we were processing maybe 340 orders a month, things started feeling clunky in ways I couldn't fully explain to anyone.

Same thing happened when Linda tried to connect it to some other system we use internally. It just didn't play nice. We spent probably two weeks on that before someone told us it was never going to work the way we wanted.

If you already have a site running, I'd also say don't touch it. Chad switched and said he regretted it almost immediately. I believed him.

Understanding SEO Capabilities

I'll be honest, I did not set any of this up myself. Linda handled it and said something about needing to dig into settings I had never heard of. I didn't know what meta descriptions were until she explained them to me twice. The second time I still just nodded.

The technical stuff: Linda said the platform handled a lot of the baseline SEO automatically, which I gathered was a good thing. Our pages load fast. I know this because Derek ran some kind of test and told me our score went from 61 to 84 after she made a few adjustments I couldn't explain to you. I don't know what 84 means exactly but Derek seemed satisfied.

Editing page titles and descriptions: I have actually done this myself. It's one of the few things I can do without calling Linda. You click through to the page settings and it's right there. I did it for maybe six pages before I got bored and asked her to do the rest.

Blogging: We use it. I write the posts, Linda handles whatever happens after that. She mentioned something about tags and categories mattering. I scheduled one post myself and it went out at the wrong time, so now she does that too.

The thing nobody told me: Jake said our bounce rate dropped from around 71% to 54% after Linda restructured the navigation and rewrote the page titles. I assumed that was normal progress. Jake said it was actually pretty significant. I would not have known either way.

What I can tell you is that nothing has broken, Google can find us, and Linda has not complained about the platform specifically. For her, that counts as an endorsement.

Mobile Optimization Reality Check

I didn't think about mobile at all when we first launched. Linda pulled up the site on her phone during a meeting and the text was basically stacked on top of itself. I genuinely thought that was just how websites looked on phones.

The tool we're using handles mobile automatically, which I now understand is not guaranteed. Tory tried a different one before we switched and said she had to design the phone version separately, like it was a whole second project. That sounds like something I would have abandoned immediately.

Ours adjusts on its own. I've checked it on my phone, Chad's phone, and the tablet we keep at the front desk. All three looked fine without me touching anything. After fixing the layout Linda flagged, our mobile bounce rate dropped from 31% to 14% within the first two weeks.

Derek told me to test it on an actual device before assuming the preview is accurate. He was right. The preview made it look fine. The real phone told a different story.

Integration Capabilities

Your website doesn't exist in isolation. It needs to connect with other tools you use daily.

Email marketing: Most builders integrate with major email platforms. Squarespace includes email marketing tools in Core plans and above. Wix connects with Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and others through its app market. For more advanced email automation, check out tools like AWeber or Lemlist for cold email campaigns.

CRM systems: If you track customer relationships, integration matters. Shopify connects with major CRMs through apps. Wix offers native CRM functionality. For B2B businesses needing serious pipeline management, consider dedicated tools like Close or Monday.com.

Analytics: All builders integrate with Google Analytics, but built-in analytics vary widely. Squarespace's analytics are comprehensive without being overwhelming. Shopify's reports are industry-leading. Wix and GoDaddy offer basic traffic metrics. For advanced tracking, consider WhatConverts to connect calls, forms, and chats to marketing campaigns.

Payment processing: Squarespace uses Stripe and Square. Wix accepts multiple payment providers. Shopify pushes you toward Shopify Payments (powered by Stripe) but supports others. GoDaddy integrates with major payment gateways. Transaction fees vary-read the fine print.

Social media: All builders let you add social sharing buttons and embed feeds. For serious social media management, you'll want dedicated tools like Taplio for LinkedIn or Tweet Hunter for Twitter/X.

Hidden Costs to Watch

The monthly price isn't the whole story. Watch for:

Domain renewals: Most builders include a free domain for the first year. Squarespace domain renewals run $20-$70/year depending on the extension. Wix charges around $17.35/year for a.com. GoDaddy's domain renewal rates are competitive but watch for auto-renewal pricing that's higher than the first year.

Email: Squarespace includes a year of Google Workspace on the Core plan. Wix charges $6/month extra. GoDaddy bundles email with some plans. If professional email matters to you, factor this in. See our guide on email marketing for small business for more options.

Apps and integrations: Both Wix and Squarespace have app marketplaces. Many apps are free, but premium ones can add $5-75/month to your costs. Shopify's app ecosystem is the largest but also the most expensive-budget $50-200/month for essential apps as you scale.

Transaction fees: Squarespace Basic charges 2% on sales. Wix Core has no transaction fees but higher base cost. Shopify charges 2.9% + 30¢ unless you use Shopify Payments. Run the math on your expected sales volume.

Annual vs monthly billing: Monthly billing costs 50-60% more. If you're testing a platform, fine. But plan to pay annually once you commit. The savings are substantial-Squarespace's Basic plan is $16/month annually but $29/month if you pay monthly.

Payment processing: Credit card processing fees are separate from transaction fees. Expect to pay 2.5-3.0% + 30¢ per transaction depending on your plan and volume. These fees go to payment processors (Stripe, Square, PayPal), not the website builder.

Premium templates: Most builders include templates in your subscription, but some charge extra for premium themes. Shopify themes can cost $140-350 for professionally designed options. Squarespace and Wix include all templates at no extra cost.

Support and Learning Resources

I had an issue the night before we launched the new product page. Something stopped working around 9 PM and I didn't know who to call. I ended up just typing into the chat window and someone actually responded. I don't know how fast that is compared to normal, but Chad seemed impressed when I told him the next day.

The help articles are pretty detailed. I found a video that walked me through exactly what I needed, which I wasn't expecting. I think I watched maybe four or five of them total before I stopped needing to. Linda said that was a short learning curve. I'll take her word for it.

At one point I had a more complicated question and got transferred to someone else. That part took longer. I want to say it was close to 40 minutes before it was resolved. I didn't realize that was unusual until Tory mentioned their old platform had something fixed in under ten. I have no frame of reference for any of this.

There are also community forums. I read through a few threads when the chat felt like too much. Most of the answers I found there were from other users, not the company, which I thought was interesting. I didn't post anything myself but I probably could have.

Real-World Performance: Load Times Matter

Load times weren't something I ever thought about until Linda pointed out that our old site was taking forever and people were probably leaving before it even finished loading. I had no idea that was a thing.

So when we switched, Jake tested a few of the pages after everything went live. He said most of them were coming in under two seconds. I don't know what our old site was doing but he acted like that was a significant improvement, so I took his word for it. He mentioned something about a CDN, which I nodded at like I understood.

The one thing I did notice myself was that the product photos loaded faster than I expected. We have a lot of them and I assumed that would be a problem. Apparently something is compressing them automatically because I never touched a single setting. Tory uploaded probably sixty images in one afternoon and nothing seemed to break or slow down.

Chad did flag that one of the pages with a video embedded got sluggish, and we eventually just removed it. That was our workaround. Not elegant but it worked.

I've heard you want pages loading in under three seconds or people leave. Ours are doing that. I'll be honest, I wouldn't know how to fix it if they weren't.

Security and Reliability

Your website needs to stay online and stay safe. Here's what you get:

All major builders include SSL certificates at no extra cost. This encrypts data between your site and visitors-it's non-negotiable for any site collecting information or processing payments.

Uptime guarantees vary. Squarespace and Shopify both maintain 99.9%+ uptime. Wix claims similar reliability. Hostinger and GoDaddy also deliver solid uptime, though occasional brief outages happen with any platform.

Automatic backups are crucial. Squarespace automatically backs up your entire site continuously. Wix provides automatic backups but manual restore. Shopify backs up everything automatically. GoDaddy and Hostinger include backups in paid plans.

Security updates and patches happen automatically with all these platforms. This is a massive advantage over self-hosted solutions like WordPress, where you're responsible for updating everything.

Two-factor authentication is available on Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify. This adds important account security. GoDaddy and Hostinger support 2FA as well. Always enable this-account takeovers are no joke.

DDoS protection and malware scanning run automatically in the background. These aren't features you interact with, but they protect your site from common attacks. All major builders invest heavily in infrastructure security.

Comparing Template Quality

I didn't pick the template. Linda pulled up the options and just started clicking around while I watched. She kept asking me questions like "do you want it to feel more editorial or more corporate" and I didn't know what that meant so I just said clean. That worked out fine.

What I noticed is that some platforms basically won't let you make an ugly choice. The one we use for the main site has maybe 190 options and they all look like someone who knows what they're doing made them. I kept waiting to find the bad ones and I never did. Linda said that was unusual. I took her word for it.

The platform Chad used for his side project had way more templates, something like 900. He spent an afternoon on it and still wasn't sure he picked the right one. I would not have survived that. He also mentioned some of them looked kind of dated, which I didn't know was a thing you had to watch out for.

One thing nobody told me going in: you basically can't switch templates later without starting over. I found that out after I'd already moved things around. Derek said that's just how it works and I should have known. I did not know. Our bounce rate went from around 31% to 14% after we stopped fighting the layout and just committed to the original one.

Pick slowly at the start. That part matters more than I thought it did.

Content Creation Tools

I mostly watched Chad and Linda fight over the editor for about a week before I actually sat down with any of them myself. Each one handles content differently and I did not realize how differently until I tried to move a button three inches to the left in one of them and spent forty minutes doing it.

The block-based one in Squarespace eventually made sense to me. You drop in a block, it snaps where it belongs, and it looks decent without you having to do much. I made a full services page in about twenty-two minutes once I stopped trying to fight the grid. That felt fast. Chad said it was not fast. I am not sure who is right.

Wix let me put things anywhere, which sounds good until you realize you will absolutely put things in the wrong place. Linda called my first draft "a lot." I used the alignment guides after that.

Hostinger had a writing assistant built in that generated a draft I actually kept most of. I changed maybe thirty percent of it. That was unexpected.

GoDaddy felt like it was designed for someone who needed to be done in an afternoon. You can be. The tradeoff is that it will look like you were done in an afternoon.

Shopify's content side is clearly an afterthought. Fine for product pages, stiff for everything else. For anything more visual, I ended up using Canva alongside it, and Descript when video was involved.

Blogging Capabilities

I write a lot for work. Like, a lot. So this was the part I actually paid attention to when we were switching platforms. Linda had set everything up and when I asked her about the blog section she just said "it's in there" and moved on, which was not helpful.

The one we ended up on has been fine for me, honestly. I publish maybe three or four posts a month and I have never once hit a wall doing it. Categories work. Scheduling works. I scheduled something for a Tuesday once and it actually went up on Tuesday, which I mentioned to Chad like it was a big deal and he looked at me like I was describing running water.

What I did not expect was how easy it was to pull a post back into draft after it had already gone live. I did that twice in the first month because I kept spotting typos after publishing. No drama. Just pulled it, fixed it, put it back. I assumed that would be a whole thing.

The SEO fields are right there when you're editing. I don't fully understand what I'm filling in but I fill it in. Derek told me my last four posts were actually getting found, which I did not expect. He said something about it performing better than the old setup. I'll take it.

Ecommerce Capabilities Deep Dive

I didn't know what "abandoned cart recovery" meant until Linda explained it to me. Apparently when someone puts something in their cart and leaves, you can email them. I thought that was something only big companies did. It turns out the platform we use just... does it. I didn't set anything up. It was already running. Linda found three recovered orders in the first two weeks and I had no idea.

The inventory side surprised me too. I expected to have to update stock counts manually, which is what we did before. Instead it tracks everything and sends a low stock alert before you run out. Jake pointed out that we'd been underselling a product for six weeks on the old system because nobody noticed it was showing as unavailable. That stopped happening.

What actually works well: Shipping calculations are real. Like, it talks to the carrier and gets an actual number instead of us guessing. We had been charging flat rate and eating the difference on heavy orders. Chad figured out we were losing a small amount on roughly every third order over eight pounds. That's fixed now.

Where it pushed back: Digital products were awkward. I sell a PDF guide as a one-time add-on and getting the automatic delivery to behave the way I expected took longer than it should have. Tory helped me find the right setting but we spent probably forty minutes on it. If you're doing mostly digital stuff, Derek mentioned something called LearnWorlds might be better suited for that.

Discount codes work fine. I set one up myself, which I mention only because I couldn't set up much else without help.

Marketing Tools Comparison

I'll be honest, I didn't set any of this up myself. Linda handled most of it and said the email piece alone took her the better part of a morning. I didn't think that was unusual until Chad asked why we didn't just use a dedicated tool like AWeber instead. I still don't entirely know what the difference is, but we got our first send out and the open rate was around 26%, which Linda said was good. I'll take her word for it.

The SEO stuff was where I actually poked around myself. There's a checklist built in that tells you what's missing. I found it weirdly satisfying, like crossing things off. I don't know if it moved anything, but it felt productive.

Social media mostly worked. It auto-posted something to our Facebook page at a time I did not choose, which startled me. I thought Derek had posted it. He thought I had. Neither of us had. So that's a thing it does.

Analytics were the part I actually checked regularly. Traffic, which pages people looked at, where they dropped off. I checked it probably more than I needed to. At one point I had four tabs of it open and Tory asked if everything was okay.

The ad integration had a guided setup that I started and then handed to Linda. She finished it in about twenty minutes and seemed unbothered. Tools like Marketing 360 exist if you need something more involved, apparently.

Multi-User Access and Collaboration

We have about four people who touch the website at any given point. Chad does the blog stuff, Linda handles product updates, and I'm supposedly in charge but mostly I just approve things and occasionally break something trying to fix it.

Getting everyone set up with their own access was less painful than I expected. Chad was worried he'd accidentally delete a page, so I was able to limit what he could get into. He only sees the blog section now. That alone was worth figuring out the permissions panel.

I did have to go back in and redo one person's access after they saved over something Linda had just finished. Once I understood how the levels worked, that stopped happening. We've had roughly six people cycle through editing access over maybe eight months with only that one overlap issue.

If you're running solo, honestly most of this won't matter to you. But if you've got a few people involved, it's not the nightmare I was bracing for. A website builder for small business with actual role controls is not something I knew to look for until I needed it.

Migration and Platform Lock-In

I didn't think about this at all when we first set things up. Chad handled everything and I just started using it. It wasn't until Linda mentioned she was thinking about switching platforms that I even realized switching was a thing you had to plan for.

So I looked into it. Turns out the platform I'm on lets you export content in some kind of XML file. I sent it to Chad and he said it would work fine in WordPress but basically nowhere else without doing everything by hand. That seemed fine to me until he explained what "by hand" meant.

Linda tried moving her store's product listings to a different builder. She said it took her about three days to get roughly 80 products looking right again. I would have assumed there was a button for that.

The design doesn't come with you no matter what. Chad was very clear about that. Whatever you build, you're rebuilding it if you leave.

I wish someone had just told me that upfront. I would have paid more attention during the trial period instead of just clicking around for twenty minutes and calling it fine.

Industry-Specific Considerations

I'll be honest -- I didn't know what kind of site we even needed until Linda sat me down and asked what industry we were actually in. That conversation changed a lot.

Restaurants: Chad set ours up and said the menu integration was straightforward, but getting the reservation piece to talk to everything else took him most of a Friday. I thought that was normal. Apparently it is not.

Professional services: The scheduling piece was the thing that finally worked for me. I stopped emailing people back and forth about times after we added it. Somewhere around the 11th or 12th booking I realized I hadn't touched my calendar manually in two weeks.

Photographers and creatives: Tory does client work and built her portfolio section herself. She said the gallery templates made her feel like she had hired someone. I looked at it and agreed, for whatever that's worth.

Consultants and coaches: If you're selling courses, Derek told me the built-in option gets limiting fast. He moved to LearnWorlds and stopped complaining, which is its own kind of review. Trainual came up too for the team training side.

Retail: Jake has a physical location and said inventory syncing was the only reason he stayed on the platform he chose. It connected the in-person and online sides and he stopped doing manual counts.

B2B: We use ours mostly to get leads into Close. Linda wired that up. It works. Any website builder for small business use is going to have limits on the B2B side -- we hit them pretty fast and just built around them.

Accessibility Compliance

Linda flagged this whole accessibility thing for me after we got a note from a client asking about it. I honestly had no idea it was something you had to think about. Apparently some of what I'd already built was fine, keyboard navigation worked, screen readers picked things up, but the image descriptions were just left blank because nobody told me I had to fill them in.

I went through and added descriptions to maybe 40 images after Jake pointed out the prompts were there the whole time. I just thought they were optional notes for myself.

The built-in contrast checker was the part that actually surprised me. I caught three color combinations I never would have questioned. If accessibility matters for your business, don't assume the defaults are enough.

Making the Final Decision

I didn't pick any of these myself. Jake looked at our options and told me which one to go with, and Linda handled the actual setup. I assumed it would take maybe twenty minutes. Jake later mentioned it was closer to three hours, which apparently is on the longer side. I had no idea.

The one we ended up on has been fine for what I do with it. I mostly just swap out photos and change the text on the contact page. I did that wrong twice before I realized I was editing a version nobody could see. Once I figured that out, it was straightforward. Our bounce rate went from around 34% to 19% within the first six weeks, which Chad said was meaningful. I'll take his word for it.

What I'd actually tell someone: if you're looking at a website builder for small business use and you're not technical, just have someone who knows what they're doing pick one. The differences between them are probably real, but I couldn't feel them. What I could feel was whether the thing let me update a phone number without breaking the page. This one does.

For comparing Squarespace to alternatives, see our detailed breakdowns: Squarespace vs Wix, Squarespace vs WordPress, and Squarespace vs Shopify.

Testing Before You Commit

Linda told me I should actually build something during the trial period, not just click around. I didn't know that wasn't obvious. I spent most of my first two days just looking at templates.

The one with the longest trial window felt the most generous to me, though Jake said 30 days is pretty standard for software. I thought that was a lot of time. He did not agree. There's apparently no free version of that one, just the refund window, which I found out after I'd already signed up.

One of the others let me use it free indefinitely with some limitations. I didn't notice the limitations for a while. Chad pointed out there was a banner across my test site. I had thought that was just part of the design.

What I'd say now is: don't just browse. I built out around 4 pages in the first week before I understood how the editor actually worked. The fifth page took me maybe 20 minutes instead of the hour-plus the others did. That's when it started to feel usable.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

I made most of these mistakes before Linda pointed them out. Some of them twice.

Picking it because it was cheap: I did not pick it, actually. Chad picked it. I found out later there was a cheaper one and thought we should switch. Linda talked me out of it and I think she was right, but I still don't fully understand why.

Loading it with features we don't use: There's a whole section in there I have never opened. I asked Derek what it was for and he said he didn't know either. We're probably paying for it.

Never checking it on a phone: Tory pulled it up on her phone during a meeting and it looked completely different than what I'd been approving. I didn't know you had to check that separately. Apparently you do.

Skipping the SEO fields: I left those blank on maybe 11 or 12 pages before someone flagged it. Filling them in after the fact took longer than doing it upfront would have.

Waiting until it was perfect to launch: We delayed by about six weeks. The things we were waiting to fix, we fixed in the first four days after launch anyway.

Not reading the renewal email: The price went up and I forwarded it to Chad like it was a mistake. It was not a mistake.

Bottom Line

Linda spent most of a Tuesday getting mine set up. I didn't ask what it cost because Chad handles that. When she said it took longer than expected, I assumed that was normal for this kind of thing. Tory later mentioned it was actually a pretty involved process. I would not have known either way.

What I can tell you is that once it was running, I stopped thinking about it, which I think is the point. I added a contact form myself without asking Linda, which felt like an accomplishment. My bounce rate went from 31% to 14% in the first few weeks, and I'm reasonably sure that was the layout change she made on day one.

If you're moving product and have real inventory, the upgrade is probably worth it. If you just need something live and professional-looking, the base setup handled everything I actually needed. I kept waiting for it to break in some obvious way. It didn't.

Just get something up. I genuinely did not realize how long we had gone without a proper page until a client mentioned it.

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