How to Design a Website (with Website Builders)

Launching a website is a surefire way to reach your personal and business goals. However, a website should be professional to adhere to all your requirements and objectives. There are several ways you can choose from to build a quality website today, but the most effective and simple solution is to use website builders. These systems are very convenient for everyone. Whether you are making your first steps in the web design niche or have years of experience in the development of quality projects, website builders will offer you perfect solutions tailored to your specific needs and skills. They are easy-to-use and often come with step-by-step instructions to bring the web design-related hassle to the minimum. They offer an extensive selection of templates, customization of which doesn’t take much effort and time, while the result can exceed any expectations. Finally, website builders are much more affordable than other web building options as they offer reasonable prices that don’t hit you on the pocket. These features are more than enough to use website builders as the major web design tools.

The entire web design process becomes simple and quick, when you use website builders. The following steps are generally required to successfully complete a project:

  1. Sign up with the system of your choice
  2. Select the plan, which adheres to your web design requirements
  3. Reach the template section and select a theme that suits your current web design needs most of all
  4. Access the dashboard and explore the range of customization tools you plan to use, when working on your project
  5. Design your website layout and adjust the required settings
  6. Set up SEO parameters
  7. Choose domain name and hosting
  8. Publish your ready made website.

Some website builders may offer you additional options or require extra settings, but this is the common plan most users stick to, when launching their websites with website builders. What you should also know is that websites are usually created to solve specific tasks. These are portfolios, blogs, online stores etc. Correspondingly, there are different website builders, which ensure maximum efficacy, when working on these projects. They differ in features, settings, options and cost, which triggers the necessity to have a short overview of their major characteristics. This is exactly what we are going to do right now.

IM Creator


IM Creator is a trusted free website builder, which allows building responsive websites and works great both for newbies and web design pros. The service features perfect combination of convenience, affordability and ease-of-use. It can be effectively used by creatives, artists, small business owners and other categories of users, who have an idea to showcase their works and products to make profit and build client base. IM Creator offers stunning blogging and eCommerce features and it also has a white-label plan for professional designers, hosting companies and resellers.
 


Websites built with IM Creator are of high quality and come with perfect SEO characteristics, which contributes to their effective promotion in the search engines. The system ensures easy navigation and offers a vast collection of templates, customization of which makes it possible to create visually attractive websites with excellent performance. IM Creator themes are comprised of sections, which can me modified and arranged on a page in any desirable order to give it great look and advanced functionality. The themes belong to a number of categories based on their topics. This simplifies the choice and helps save user’s time. You won’t need to master coding skills to create websites with the service - so intuitive and understandable the process is.

IM Creator has plans for business owners, commercial organizations, resellers, hosting providers and professional web designers. These are the Premium Plan and the White Label Plan, the cost of which currently constitutes $8/mo and $350/year (one-time annual payment) correspondingly. For the rest of users, who wish to establish reliable web presence, as well as for non-commercial organizations, the system is absolutely free. This plan comes with advanced eCommerce features, hosting, unlimited bandwidth and absence of any ads that can have negative impact upon the perception of your website by users.

Webydo


Webydo is a powerful website builder and CMS, which was created with the requirements and preferences of professional web designers and web studios in mind. The system has everything web design pros might need to create impressive and functional projects. Its Photoshop-like dashboard may seem a bit confusing for people, who haven’t worked in the program before, but it’s still easy to master all the intricacies of the system, if needed.


Webydo has a drag-and-drop interface, which allows creating a website layout by selecting the elements you need and arranging them on a page. You can choose any elements you need to improve your website design. The most widely-chosen elements include text, images, widgets, videos, menus, Flash files and more. It is also possible to connect an online store and a blog to websites created with Webydo. The integrated CMS makes the system suitable for building any types of websites on the go, filling them with the required content on the go. As far as the service is mainly oriented on website design (not on functionality), it remains in demand with web design pros. Versatility of design options contributes to this popularity as the system has a number of quality responsive templates that are not quite difficult to customize. It is also possible to select a blank template and launch a website from scratch to make it unique.

Webydo doesn’t have a free plan, but it has a 30-day trial, which enables everyone to use the platform at no cost to find out its major features and test the paid plans. Prior to using a free trial, though, you’ll need to provide your credit card info required to buy a paid subscription. This, however, shouldn’t prevent you from testing the system as you will be able to cancel the subscription if needed during the trial without having to pay for it. Webydo paid plans are as follows: the Pro Plan ($90/mo), the Team Plan ($180/mo) and the Agency Plan ($480/mo). Apart from that, the system allows using the White Label feature for the advanced business use of your website under your own brand name. Webydo plans are quite expensive, but this is a worthy investment, if you wish to have a decent website.

Mobirise



Being the offline software, Mobirise stands out from the crowd when compared to other systems reviewed in the post. The service requires download and installation to be used as intended. The nuance, however, is not a drawback. In fact, many users consider the platform more convenient than web-based tools as it allows creating and editing websites anywhere and anytime, without the need to connect to the Internet. What’s more, the system doesn’t offer hosting options, which allows users select any hosting provider they prefer. This is also one of the advantages of the service.



Mobirise makes it possible to create different types of websites, but it is mostly used to launch quality promo websites and landing pages. The web building process is super easy here, which makes the service a perfect solution for newbies with little or no web design expertise. The intuitive drag-and-drop website editor allows creating any layout for your website in almost no time. As far as the system is block-based, the process of designing a website enables users to experiment with the arrangement and content of blocks used during the web building process. Fortunately, the system has hundreds of blocks you can make use of to design a professional website without any technical background. Additionally, you can add free or paid extensions to your Mobirise website, which will add extra performance to it. Some of the free apps include SoundCloud, Google Analytics, Facebook Comments, Dropdown Menu, Twitter Feed etc. The assortment of extensions is pretty wide and allows for the freedom of choice. One of the notable highlights of the system is the AMP Website Builder Tool, which allows creating AMP websites by modifying and placing the major AMP elements on a page. Such websites are easy to browse, which is an extra benefit for users.

Mobirise is a free website builder. You won't find any paid plans here, while the set of features the system offers contributes to decent and quick result. The only things you’ll have to pay for are the domain name, hosting provider and paid extensions, which are optional. Absence of fees makes Mobirise one of the most popular website builders for newbies, who aim both at creating quality websites and improving their web design skills.

uKit


uKit is a renowned website builder used to create small/medium business websites. The system is easy-to-use, convenient, intuitive and affordable. It works great for newbies and web design pros, offering a broad range of features and options. Its drag-and-drop editor is simple enough to enable non-tech savvy users to launch professional websites for any purpose. No wonder, the system has millions of fans worldwide.



uKit offers a broad and diverse feature set, which contributes to smooth and efficient web building process. Each user, irrespective of web design skills and expertise level, has an opportunity to launch a beautiful website with all the required functionality, meaningful content and impressive SEO characteristics. No coding skills are required to do that. What’s more, uKit has a rich collection of applications and widgets (Social Networking Buttons, LiveChat, CallBack widget, User Comments etc.), integration of which will give your website superior performance and advanced look. uKit templates are worth individual attention. There are hundreds of them here and each theme comes with suitable images, galleries and texts that are the best match to the topic of your website. You don’t even have to replace them with your own website elements. Just update the content, adding your own information and feel free to publish your website. If you don’t like any templates for some reason and wish to make your website unique, you can select a blank template to create your own design. Mind that you won’t be able to change the template on the go without losing the content you will provide. To avoid this, be attentive when making the initial choice. If you are concerned with your website security, uKit allows solving this problem as well. The system offers an opportunity to connect the SSL Certificate to the website to protect it from the possible online dangers.

uKit is not a free website builder, but it has a 14-day trial to let you test the major system features. By the end of the trial period, you’ll have to decide whether the plan you are interested in adheres to your needs or not. If it does, then you’ll be expected to upgrade to the paid plan of your choice. These include the Premium Plan ($4/mo), the Premium+ Plan ($8/mo), the eCommerce Plan ($9.6/mo) and the Pro Plan ($12/mo). Obviously, uKit pricing policy is very tempting and more than affordable for an average user.

Bottom Line
It is a widespread misbelief that building a website requires notable investment of effort, time and money. While many people spend enormous sums to hire professional web designers and web studios, others keep looking for simpler solutions like website builders. Creating a website is super easy with these systems as they are built with the needs and skills of different user categories in mind. The choice of website builders is quite impressive nowadays and it’s not easy to select the right service at once. The thing is that different website builders are meant for specific purposes and you have to know your web building objectives to make the right choice. Some of the contemporary niche leaders are IM Creator, Webydo, Mobirise and uKit. These systems can come up to different web design goals, ensuring safe, smooth and efficient web building process that will eventually trigger decent result.
This article is written by Howard Steele — founder and editor-in-chief of Superb Website Builders.
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