Which website building tool should I use?
When you’re first thinking about starting your business or personal brand/portfolio site, there are a LOT of options to choose from, and it can really be overwhelming. My hope is that this quick overview can help you break down why Squarespace and Shopify work for me.
For my personal site I use Squarespace, and for my business I use Shopify.
Personal Branding and Freelance Websites:
When building up your personal brand, there are a few functions you might need to achieve:
Problem: You want people to know WHAT problem you solve. Do you help beauty businesses with their marketing? Do you streamline budgets for restaurants? This should be clear.
Solution: This is where your clear services should be able to be found—Do you help in social media marketing? Videography? Photography? UX Design? Have this clearly laid out on your website.
Gallery: Can people see a clear gallery of work you’ve done in the past along with potential testimonials?
Booking: Is there clear BUTTONS on EACH page (and multiple on the landing page) that makes it clear where people should go if they’re interested in booking a consultation with you or purchasing a resource?
I’m really thankful for Squarespace for their website building services that enable me to:
🌷offer marketing services
🌷generate leads and track website traffic
🌷share value-adding content pieces that can attract people to the right places!
Design-wise, their award-winning layouts and easy what-you-see-is-what-you-get tools make it suuuper seamless for me to share my work with the world and get leads.
Some other great alternatives I use in my toolkit:
🌊 Carrd.co: great for digital business cards for personal brands and businesses; free to use; can be linked to Pixel for Google Analytics (GA4). I print my business card with a QR code that allows me to edit live whenever I have key changes to make. you can see my example at notebeansstationery.carrd.co
🌊 Shopify.com: I use this for my brand notebeansstationery.com for selling digital products, physical products, commissions, etc.; this is your e-commerce powerhouse; the plug-ins are insanely useful - limited designing features can be shortcutted with Pagefly.io to create more customisable designs.
🌊 Notion.com: This is a great way to get your next best idea out to the world ASAP; similar to HTML and a plain Google Docs structure of building, super integrated.
Physical Product Websites
When building up your business website, you might want to think about the following:
Problem: What human need do you fill? What is the KEY problem you are solving for your customer? Is it that most services don’t provide transparency in the billing process? Is it that dog food hasn’t always been the healthiest on grocery shelves?
Solution: This is your opportunity to show the what, why, and how. What are you selling, why should someone buy from you (your key value proposition, what makes you different from competitors), and how they can do so (a clear button or SHOP NOW function)?
Benefits: Can people see the specs of your product and added key benefits? These are things beyond the need and now enter the want. While a product feature like “smooth backpack straps” can be enticing from a product design perspective, a product benefit like “convenience and comfort” can show the customer how they can elevate themselves to the next level. Another way to think of this is from a “zero-to -hero” mindset: what transformation will people have when they use your product/service?
Reviews: People act on testimonials and hear from others on what is working. Can you include reviews on your website that show past customers and clients who have purchased from you?
About: Do you have a clear page on what your story is, what your mission is, and what your bigger vision for the industry is?
For my own business, I use Shopify for the following reasons:
🌷Business Analytics Heavy: I’m able to break down a plethora of business analytics from gross sales, sales per item, and tens of other indexes to help me understand my product success or points of improvement.
🌷 Plug-Ins: the plug-ins available for Shopify are seamless to integrate with your existing product selection and offer additional services like adding reviews, putting a countdown timer, creating pre-orders, uploading digital products, and more.
There is so much more depth that goes into good UX design, website design and navigation, analytics, and e-commerce building that you can use to jumpstart your brand or business, but hope this quick overview was helpful!
Send me an email at madelineliu.co@gmail.com if you have any other inquiries on marketing for your own business or brand. I’m happy to help or offer guidance where I can!
