Arguably one of the most popular and well liked website builders is Weebly. From its easy user interface to powerful website tools, Weebly takes first spot as our most recommended site builder. Even a beginner who has never looked at a line of code in his life can create a website masterpiece with just a few clicks. Don’t worry, the ease of use has not in any way compromised the cleanliness of the code generated by Weebly nor does it negatively affect the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your website. Hands down, Weebly is the most powerful and easiest website builder currently available.

Weebly offers amazing customer service and is talked about by some of the biggest tech media companies in the world!

Let’s get started reviewing the Weebly Website Builder:

Sign Up Process

The sign up process is really easy and guides you through step by step.  Email verification wasn’t required which is a surprise to me because most website builders ask that you verify your email before creating your website. The entire sign up process took about 30 seconds.  Before I knew it, I was looking at my account dashboard and prompted with a checklist of what I need to do before I can launch my website.  I love the idea of Weebly offering a checklist so that even for a novice, the process is easy to understand.  My only complaint is that the checklist was too far down the screen in the right hand column which at first made it hard to notice.

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Creating A Website and Picking A Theme

Once you’ve created your account, you will need to click the ‘Add a site’ button which will then ask you to choose a domain option. You can either create a sub-domain (i.e. yoursite.weebly.com), use an existing domain or buy a domain through Weebly. Weebly offers domains for sale that you can buy through your account; however, the domains cost around $39 which is on the pricey side for a domain. You can get domains through Godaddy for $12. If you get a ‘third party’ domain through a company like Godaddy, just point the name servers to your Weebly account and choose the ‘use an existing’ domain option.

Elegant Design

Weebly is known for it’s simple design which makes it really easy for users to navigate through.  Some might say it’s the simple design coupled with the ease of use that makes Weebly such a popular website builder.  As a designer, I personally love working with burnt orange and blue in a website’s color theme. It’s very fitting for a tech company and to me suggests ease of use.

Weebly’s Robust Functionality

The functionality of the backend interface may seem limited at first glance because of its simplicity, but don’t let that fool you. You can add html code through Weebly’s embed code widget, add video, text, pictures, poll’s, map’s and custom forms. The widgets are organized into modules in the left column which can be easily dragged into your theme. As you drag a module over to your theme, you will notice specific areas light up with a thick colored border which indicates that it’s a position where you can add the module.

Each Weebly theme is designed with placeholders that can hold modules. The themes are designed this way to keep the aliment of text and graphics well aligned with the layout so that your website doesn’t end up looking messy. Too often I see websites that have poorly written CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) that cause texts and images on the site to look misaligned and out of place. Weebly helps you with that by creating these dockable placeholders within your theme. You can even see what your changes look like in real time because as you add modules, the theme updates along with your added changes.

Easy to use drag and drop capabilities are turning more business owners away from CMS (Content Management Systems) like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal and toward an easy to manage website builder solution like Weebly!

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SEO and Marketing

For a website builder, the markup and code is really clean. There is not an overwhelming usage of javascript and jquery in the source code that you would see with a website builder like Wix. One drawback with adding images is that you can’t add alt tags to your images. Alt tags help Google better understand what the image is all about. The font stylesheets appear to be imported in from Google which could be good or bad. Google has fast servers which is good, but if your site has too many external references, it can slow down your website. All in all, the Weebly code looks straight forward and clean.

Upselling and Feature Restrictions

If you’re using a free subdomain of weebly, then you will see a popup message asking you to buy a domain every time you publish your website. This is annoying, but lets face it, you shouldn’t be using a subdomain of Weebly anyways unless of course you are just taking Weebly’s free account for a test drive. Other than that, there isn’t any other annoying upselling popups that you have to worry about. If you want to use a feature like adding a favicon or using the ecommerce shop part of Weebly, then you will see a message that you need to upgrade to use that feature unless of course you have adequate permissions through your current membership level.

Weebly Starter Plan Features

• Add a favicon.
• Remove Weebly link and branding
• Customizable footer.
• Premium support.
• Expanded stats.
• Connect your own domain.
• Add unlimited pages.

Weebly Pro Features

• Add a header slideshow.
• Add and manage HD Video and audio players.
• Password protect your website pages.
• Add a search box to allow visitors to search your website.

Weebly Business Features

• Add a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to protect your website from hackers.
• Membership website, allow your visitors to log into your website to see hidden content such as videos or articles.
  • Allow your visitors to register on your website and become members.
  • Sell products and services through your website.
  • Manage your inventory.
  • Tax and shipping calculator.
  • Add and manage coupon codes.

All three membership level options: Starter, Pro and Business come with a $100 Google Adwords credit.

Mobile Compatibility

With mobile users increasing every day, it’s more important now than ever for your website to be mobile compatible. Weebly offers completely responsive mobile friendly themes which means that your site will look good on devices such as iPad, iPhone, Android and tablets.

A little more about website mobile compatibility and which types of business should really care.

According to Smart Insights mobile marketing statistics of 2015, mobile internet users have now passed desktop users back in 2014 and continue to take up more market share. But it’s important to consider who your target audience is. Are you B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Consumer)? If you’re selling to other businesses, then I would argue that most of your website visitors will come from desktops as that is the preferred device at the workplace; however, if you’re selling to consumers (i.e. local bakery) then I would argue that most of your website visitors would come from mobile devices such as tablets and cell phones.

In conclusion

Weebly offers better looking themes, an easier UI (user interface) and offers the lowest priced website builder in the market. Which is incredible, because when you get the best, you usually expect to pay more, not less? I would love to hear your thoughts and experience using the website builder Weebly in the comments section below .

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