Small Business Series Discussions #1 - Choosing A Website Platform
Don’t feel like reading? John and I discuss the SBS #1 and some of the nuances
Joe Kim (00:00)
Cool, so okay, today we're gonna talk about our series of blog posts that we've been writing this year. know, Frontside Consulting works with a lot of small businesses and it's just, you know, kind of our personal interest. I like seeing businesses go from like zero to 60 and our small team is really able to have an outsized impact on small organizations.
And that's just always been really, really fulfilling for us to see, you know, small organizations really get up off the ground and take off. So we wrote this series of content as a guide for other small businesses because we've worked with so many. We started to figure out that, hey, there's some patterns here. And so we wanted to share those learnings with other small businesses. Front Sight Consulting is also a very small business. It's myself.
John here, Calvin and Corey, just the four of us. similarly, if you know what you're doing, you can make an outsized impact on other organizations. yeah, our first blog post, we shared this one a little while ago, but it's really one of the basic building blocks of
small business, is your website. And, you know, there are a lot of different options that you can choose out there. And, yeah, we've kind of just come to some conclusions about which ones that we like working with from additional marketers perspective. And, yeah, John has got some kind of questions we're going to work through here. So you want to get started?
John (01:40)
Absolutely. So yeah, just a couple of questions for you to kind of provide an introduction to this blog and what
you know, interested parties could learn by reading it. And just to reiterate, this is the first of a seven blog series, small business series. So if you're a small business owner looking to get started in digital marketing, if you don't even know if digital marketing is, you know, right for your business, particularly advertising, this would be a really good series to read through and, you know, find some golden nuggets in
Somewhere. So as Joe said in this first one, we're going to be talking about website platforms and How to choose the right website platform when setting up a website for your small business so Joe you've been a small business owner for five years now five plus years and You're getting really familiar with the behind -the -scenes decisions that go into operating a successful company You know not only owning your own small business, but that business primarily
other small businesses. So we kind of come at it from multiple angles here. And I think at this point, it's really common knowledge that having a website is crucial to multiple aspects of running a small business, no matter what industry that business is operating in. And one of the many decisions that needs to be made in the early days of getting a business up and running is choosing which website platform upon which to build their website.
However, most small business owners are probably not website developers, website designers, and are really just not savvy in this part of the business at all. And they're likely to think that all platforms are the same and they could choose just any of them. So first question to you is, why is choosing a website platform a bigger decision for small business owners than they may initially anticipate? And why won't just choosing any platform do?
Joe Kim (03:41)
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
what we're really looking at when we look at a website platform is we are looking at a content distribution channel, right? So that's really what a website is. and so there are certain websites that are better at distributing certain kinds of content than others. So, you know, we work with a lot of e -commerce businesses and so, you know, the, type of content that you're distributing for an e -commerce business is your product information.
as an example. So, you know, in our small business, SBS post number one, the too long didn't read of it is really straightforward. If you are an e -commerce business and you are selling a lot of SKUs, right, you've got tons of different widgets that you're selling.
really the easy answer is Shopify. Now the reason for that is because the way that it manages product information as well as the distribution of that product information to the different advertising platforms is really unparalleled. So the ability for a digital market or a small business owner to jump into Shopify
plug in their product information and then get that to Facebook Marketplace, to Google Shopping, et cetera. It's just so, so easy. And if that is gonna be the way that you spend your ad dollars, really there's not a better choice. Now, on the other hand, if you are a business that, say you're a professional services business and you don't really have SKUs, kinda like front -side consulting,
or if you have very, very few SKUs or the aesthetics and the content that you're producing is not product oriented, then we really recommend Squarespace. So the frontsideconsulting .com website is built entirely on Squarespace. It has been from the beginning. And we find that written content for blogs or building pages,
to communicate things other than product information are really, really well done there. Additionally, we find that the integrations with ad platforms. So for example, getting your Facebook pixel integration set up is really just like filling in a single field within your Squarespace website settings. And then, know, setting up Google Analytics is just like adding your tracking parameter into it.
very, very simple to get set up. We find that both the integrations in Squarespace and Shopify are really robust for all of the different e -commerce metrics. And so for that reason, we're always excited to onboard a client that is using their website on either Squarespace or Shopify.
John (06:31)
Sounds good, excellent.
You know, as you already alluded to, there's multiple platforms available to build a website on, but there are really only three main players in this space, Shopify, Squarespace, and WordPress. Now you already got into some of this in the answer to the first question, but just to simplify things a little bit and look at a higher level view, can you provide just an overview of each platform in regards to what type of businesses they best suit?
Joe Kim (07:00)
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, to recap really quickly, if you are like a direct to consumer e -commerce business, right, Shopify. If you're a professional services business, Squarespace. If you are a artist, that's another one that we see done very, well on Squarespace. So your wedding photographer or fine art.
artist of some kind. That's also very well done on Squarespace. Now WordPress, is for, or we find that that is best suited for the business that needs a lot of customization.
You know, we see some e -commerce clients come in and they're on WordPress and the WooCommerce integration for e -commerce. And in a lot of cases, it's a very, very powerful tool. But, you know, as Uncle Ben from Spider -Man says, know, great power is great responsibility. So you got to know what you're doing with that tool. And in a lot of cases, if you don't need all of the firepower that is behind WordPress, it's like trying to open
with a chainsaw, like you can do it, but that's maybe a little overkill. And so, you know, with all the features and customizability of a WordPress site, you know, you got to know what you're doing and, you know, the plugins and, you know, customizations done to a website can really get out of hand quickly. So for that reason, you know, if you're not doing anything really crazy, know, Shopify makes a lot more sense for e -commerce.
John (08:36)
Excellent, so just to recap that bottom line, keeping it simple here, Shopify for e -commerce, multiple SKUs, selling actual physical products that you're going to ship, Squarespace if your business provides services, and WordPress if you're a e -commerce retailer and you need a little bit more customization, have a little bit more complex business.
WordPress would be the way to go. Is that
Joe Kim (09:06)
Yeah, an example of something that would be built on WordPress is like we've had clients in the past have like, you know, they're in like bespoke or custom apparel. And so like, I want to change the color of the sleeve or the collar is going to be a different length or what have you. Like that app build was done by their web dev team and then integrated into their WordPress site.
John (09:33)
Excellent. All right. So lastly, you already mentioned that the Frontside Consulting website was built on Squarespace as we are a digital marketing and advertising agency and we provide a service. Just wondering if you could provide a little bit more detail about why you did choose Squarespace beyond just the fact that hey, service is our primary offering and we aren't an e -commerce company.
Joe Kim (10:02)
Yeah, so man, that was done a long time ago. And I had played with Squarespace quite a bit in the past. you know, I mean, frankly, I think I'd heard some advertisements on a podcast and I was just like, I was monkey around with this. You know, not being a web developer, but, kind of having some coding experience in the past. You know, I just needed it to be really simple. I needed it to kind of just display.
the value propositions of our organization fairly concisely and just do it in a way that was aesthetically pleasing. Also being able to turn on Google Analytics and understand where our traffic was coming from and what they were doing on their site really quickly. We weren't trying to do anything really complicated. Even today, I think we have like six pages
five SKUs. So, you know, with all that being said, Squarespace has been a perfect fit. And, you know, we continue to see it as the solution for us.
John (11:03)
Excellent, excellent. And the only thing I could add there is, you know, I'm definitely not a website designer by any stretch, but there have been a few situations where I did have to jump in and build a couple of websites from scratch. And I use Squarespace every time and the ease of functionality.
of that entire platform is incredible. You can know nothing about building a website and they just provide a host of templates that literally gives you a pre -made website and you just go in and change images, change the typefaces, change some colors, change some basic designs and you can have a website in a really short amount of time that looks really, really good. Having
little to no knowledge about website building at all. So that's my small plug for Squarespace, even though they aren't a sponsor.
Joe Kim (11:58)
No, no, none of these folks are sponsors. If you do want to sponsor us, like give me a call Joe at frontsideconsulting .com send me an email, we'll gladly take your money.
John (12:08)
Awesome.
Excellent. That is everything that I had for you. Just a bit of an introduction to the first part of the SBS series blog. Take a look at it. You can find it on our website. There's links to it on all of our social media. And if you're a small business owner looking to get started in the world of digital marketing, digital advertising, this is a really, really great series and it's all free. All of our blogs are free. So
Just get on our website and check them out.
Joe Kim (12:40)
Yep, absolutely. The goal of the small business series is eventually to have enough content for any small business owner to be able to come to our website, consume the content, watch videos like this, and be able to get off the ground running on their own. And then eventually you can become one of our customers. All right. Yep, of course.
John (12:57)
Excellent. All right. Thank you, Joe.