We’re pretty proud of our research process because not many sites can say they’ve carried out such in-depth testing before making recommendations. Here’s how our in-house research team goes about finding the best website builders on the market.
We put every builder through our rigorous research process, focusing on key categories such as pricing and ease of use because we know they matter to readers.
This helps us rate and compare the builders fairly, allowing us to bring you data-led recommendations. Groups of everyday people also test the builders and give us feedback, which we then analyze. This helps us:
- Understand exactly how easy (or difficult) beginners find the builder
- Uncover any issues within the builder
- Judge customer satisfaction
We’ve applied this research method to over 50 website builders so we can bring you accurate results and recommendations. Read on for a closer look at the categories we test:
- Overall score (includes price, ease of use, help and support) – 5%
SEO is a unique area to research, so we bring in each website builder’s overall score (from our core research findings) to help determine our rankings. The overall score combines areas such as value for money, help and support, and ease of use.
- Website features – weighting: 35%
Our research on website features covers a wide range of sub-criteria, including blogging functionality, SEO, marketing tools, app markets, internationalization capabilities, domain names, email addresses, members area, storage space, and site speed. We’re especially interested in the quality and quantity of features on offer.
- SEO – weighting: 10%
Of course, for the best website builders for SEO, we pay close attention to each builder’s SEO capabilities and features. For example, we want to know if a builder can support meta titles and descriptions, social media integration, analytics, keyword support, and 301 redirects. We also test a builder’s SEO resources and prompts, and whether your website can be optimized for mobiles.
- Blogging – weighting: 50%
Without good SEO practices, a blog will struggle to generate organic traffic so we’ve given this category the highest weighting at 50%. Of course, we first examine whether a builder supports having a blog and the blog-specific SEO tools on offer. We also cover areas such as writer profiles, analytics, social sharing, display categories, archive functionality, comments, search capabilities, and scheduling.