Weebly is a US based web hosting company, well known for its easy to use graphical website builder – Weebly web builder. Having an attractive and informative website is key to success for any business in the 21st century. Even for a startup a website is a must have feature. But, not all startup companies have enough budget to hire a professional web designer to build the front end attractive and a web engineer to engineer the back-end.
A hosting company, Weebly identified this requirement of startups as a business opportunity for them. So, they invented the world famous Weebly web builder.
What is Weebly Web Builder?
Weebly web builder is a graphical web design environment where you can graphically customize your website with live preview. Weebly offers you attractive and responsive set of themes, eCommerce capabilities, site stat tracking options and many more features.
The big question, is it free to use? Weebly offer five different plans for the customers to choose between. The good news is there is a free plan as well.
What is good about Weebly web builder?
The best thing about Weebly builder is it is easy to use. As the builder is fully graphical, any one who can do some mouse clicks to drag-and-drop elements can build a website with Weebly. The next favorite thing about Weebly is its professional and modern looking design themes. All of these themes are responsive and mobile friendly.
Typically, if we change the website theme on WordPress we can expect the site elements to change significantly. So, sometimes when you change the theme, you will have to spend hours rebuilding your WordPress site. But, Weebly web builder offer a feature to switch themes without rebuilding the whole site.
Weebly free version
Weebly free version is a good option for fresh startup companies to build a site for free. With this plan Weebly offer a free sub-domain, some free themes and hosting space to build your website. Weebly web builder is also free to access with free plan. However, the free version only offer limited customization options. Chat and E-Mail support is available for free version. But, it is slow and not much helpful.
SEO features are available to some extend. However, comparing to the options which we have in WordPress based SEO plugins the Weebly’s free SEO options are not much advance.
Weebly free web builder does not offer eCommerce features like shopping card, payment gateways or inventory management like features which comes only with Pro and Business plans.
Weebly Themes
Weebly web builder offer 40+ themes in the official gallery. All of these themes are mobile friendly and responsive. The theme gallery have six different categories of themes which are Online stores, Business, Portfolio, personal, event and blog.
The themes are attractive and professional looking. But, most importantly, they are modern and suit any type of business. The only negative point about the Weebly themes is that the builder only allow to customize the theme design to a certain level only. If we compare this with WordPress like builder, WP offer in depth customization opportunities where you can totally change how the theme looks like.
Weebly for eCommerce
Weebly web builder offer a full set of eCommerce tools for business owners to get paid, do marketing and even to manage shipping process. But, neither of these options comes with the free version. eCommerce features are offered in three different Weebly packages which are Pro, Business and Business plus. All these packages comes with free domain and Google ad credit to boost your sites presence on Google.
What marketing options Weebly offer for eCommerce sites?
eCommerce packages comes with advance site stat features, analytics, SEO and Email marketing options. The Weebly web builder e-mail customizing plugin allow the site owner to setup automated newsletters to keep in touch with the potential customer base.
Weebly store management features
The most interesting thing about doing an eCommerce business is, it is always easy to track and manage. Like all other eCommerce platforms Weebly web builder also offer online shop management and stock management tools.
Weebly shop management tools include,
- Shipping management system
- Inventory management system
- Coupons and gift cards
- Product search feature
- Shopping cart and checkout on site option
- Customer review feature
Weebly eCommerce mobile app integration
A good entrepreneur always keeps a good eye on the numbers. With Weebly mobile app now you can keep your store stats always with you. The mobile app specially designed for eCommerce store management allow you to view stats, do edits and even communicate with customers without needing to log in to the store back-end.
You can add new products, edit products, add descriptions and photos, edit prices and edit the entire product gallery without even needing a computer.
The app also offer a notification feature. So, never miss a order or a massage from customer again.
Weebly web builder features
The builder is basically drag and drop type builder. Drag-and-drop type web builders are very common in the market with a target audience begin absolute beginners in the web development field. Weebly web builder is somewhat similar to the GoDaddy web builder.
Weebly app center feature
Weebly app store is somewhat similar to WP plugin store option. You can add games, eCommerce features and blog features to your Weebly site using this app center. Some apps are free to use but some comes with premium features as well. Weebly app store cover all most all niches of plugins a web developer will need. Only issue is the number of choices are limited. All together Weebly app center offer 360 apps/plugins.
Weebly web builder mobile application
This is probably the best feature offered by Weebly. Most other web development platforms does not support mobile editing of the site. Even if we consider WP, WP mobile app have very limited capabilities and the app itself is kind 0f failure.
Weebly mobile app is supported on most platforms including iPhone, iPad and android. The mobile app also support massage responding and comment section features.
Summary – Weebly web builder
Weebly is a popular online web builder which is suitable for creating blogs and eCommerce websites. It offer both free and paid services. Weebly web builder is drag and drop type builder which is relatively easy to use. To customize a site the user does not need a computer. Instead all the customization and web integration tasks can be done using Android or iOS mobile devices.
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