Presence on the Internet is essential for all businesses. Without an intuitive and well-designed page describing its services, a business will miss an opportunity to attract many customers. The easiest way to get started online is by creating a page on a popular social media site, such as Instagram or Facebook. But not everyone uses these platforms, so you are limited to their user bases. While having a page is better than having none at all, many business managers soon realize they need their own website to scale online. The main challenge is that many owners lack the technical knowledge to create such sites. As a result, they feel anxious about choosing website platforms. This article reviews two strategies to help business owners choose website platforms without technical knowledge.
Strategy 1. Look at the Existing Business Applications of Website Platforms
Most website platforms indeed have complex technological profiles that are almost impossible to understand without expertise in computer science. However, most of those complex technical characteristics were usually created with particular business fields in mind. This means that many business owners before you already had an opportunity to test particular platforms and decide whether they are good for them or not. So, your first step should be to look at success and failure cases for various website platforms.
For example, the difference between Webflow and WordPress is not only technical: they also fit very diverse business strategies. WordPress is great for big sites that require a lot of custom development. It is used by organizations like NASA, big corporations like Microsoft, and various large-scale news publications like BBC America. Sites of those organizations often include a lot of content that is updated regularly and requires maintenance from multiple specialists. They have complex structures that often require the use of multiple unique page designs. The obvious downside here is that maintenance is usually quite expensive and requires input from multiple experts. This means that, based on this usage data alone, a person without technical expertise can quickly deduce that WordPress is good for large organizations or media publications that regularly publish new content (news reports, opinion articles, or detailed analysis). This technology may not necessarily be great for smaller businesses outside of some non-conventional use cases.
In turn, Webflow is a platform that is popular among companies that work in more niche sectors. Success cases on its site indicate that it is popular among startups, with dozens of examples showing that those businesses can leverage the technology to quickly scale their presence online. Bigger companies offering custom web apps that do not rely on popular content management platforms also use this platform, of course, but they are much less numerous than businesses that work in niche sectors (of course, they are not necessarily small). For example, Dropbox, which is a cloud service, uses Webflow to create landing pages and quickly adjust its site design. As a result, even without technical knowledge, you can quickly deduce that a platform like Webflow can be great for a small or niche business that seeks to create multiple landing pages for its products fast and needs a tool for quickly adjusting its marketing designs.
While technical knowledge can most certainly help in making such choices, just knowing who uses a particular technology a lot can help you.
Strategy 2. Find Reviews Discussing Development Speed and Complexity of Maintenance
Twenty years ago, finding high-quality reviews on particular technologies was indeed difficult. Most of them were limited to technical issues discussed on professional forums dedicated to web design or coding. Today, however, the discourse on those technologies goes far beyond purely technological issues. Many people are now discussing them from an aesthetic and, of course, a business standpoint. Sites like Reddit and YouTube offer many discussions of those technologies from a more practical standpoint. For example, many users share their experiences of using platforms like WordPress or Bubble in response to the requests of other users or to prepare high-quality guides for other users. Apart from technical, software-related information, they also discuss such issues as development speed and complexity of maintenance.
One of the best steps you can take here is to simply read several discussions and testimonials. Many users are actually willing to share their experiences. In many cases, they can point out issues or highlight unexpected benefits of various technologies based on real use cases. By comparing your circumstances with those of other users, you will be able to quickly deduce whether a certain technology fits your business or not without having to go into technical detail. Many users describing the experience of using particular technologies do not have coding experience themselves and often look at those technologies from the standpoint of practical application, deployment speed, and maintenance. It is even quite possible that you will be able to find use cases that are almost identical to yours in some aspects if you are thorough enough.
Conclusion
To summarize, technical knowledge is not always necessary to make a strategically sound choice of website platform. In many situations, analysis of use cases online, testimonials, and discussions can help you create a narrow list of technologies that are suitable for you. This is especially important because platforms like Webflow or Bubble now allow development without coding and handle most complex processes automatically. And if you are still not sure what technology to choose after looking at use cases and testimonials, you can always address software development partners like Keenethics. By working with experienced developers, you will be able to combine your practical expertise with extensive technological knowledge.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: Business Applications found on a Website Platform Cover Photo Credit: freepik
