What Features to Look For in a Responsive Website Builder?

Today, more people browse the web on their smartphones than on desktops. A study conducted by Statcounter found that 50.48% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, while desktop devices account for 46.51% of total web traffic. Tablets contribute the least amount of traffic at 3%.

A non-responsive website creates a frustrating experience for mobile users. Imagine the lost opportunity: a potential customer finds your business through a search but is immediately turned away by a clunky website experience. They bounce to a competitor who has invested in a well-designed site that shines on any screen.

Not only does this hurt your immediate sales potential, but it also damages your brand's reputation and visibility in search results. Don't let poor web design drive customers away. The solution is understanding what makes a website truly responsive.

We'll cover a checklist of essential features to ensure your website effortlessly adapts to any device. By implementing these, you'll create a welcoming online presence that boosts customer satisfaction and gets your your small business ready for growth.

What is a Responsive Website?

What is a Responsive Website Builder?

Features to Look For in a Responsive Website Builder

1. Core Functionality

2. User Experience (UX) that delights

3. Technical Considerations

4. Beyond the Basics

Best Responsive Website Builders in 2024

1. Sites & More

2. Squarespace

3. Wix

4. Wordpress

5. Weebly

6. Webflow

Conclusion

What is a Responsive Website?

A responsive website is designed to adapt seamlessly to different screen sizes and resolutions. It automatically adjusts elements like text, images, and navigation menus to provide an optimal viewing experience on any device, whether it's a desktop computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Responsive design uses flexible layouts, fluid images, and smart CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) rules. This allows the website to rearrange itself dynamically based on the user's screen, ensuring a comfortable and consistent experience regardless of how someone accesses your site.

What is a Responsive Website Builder?

Building a website with a regular website builder often results in a site that looks great on desktops but struggles to adapt to smaller screens like tablets and smartphones. This means potential visitors on mobile devices may encounter issues like illegible text, broken layouts, and frustrating navigation.

A responsive website builder prioritizes adaptability from the start. These tools often include features like flexible grids, automatic image resizing, and mobile-friendly templates. This ensures your website looks and functions flawlessly on any device, providing a positive user experience for all visitors regardless of how they access your site.

Features to Look For in a Responsive Website Builder

The sheer number of website builders available is precisely why carefully examining features must be done. These builders offer a wide range of capabilities, levels of user-friendliness, and pricing structures. Not every builder will be the right fit for your specific needs and skill level.

Choosing a builder without understanding its features risks several problems. You might select one lacking the functionality necessary for your business goals (like e-commerce), or get stuck with an overly complex interface that hinders your ability to create a great website.

Investing time in feature comparison helps ensure the builder you choose aligns with your goals and technical abilities, maximizing your chances of success.

1. Core Functionality

Core functionality in a responsive website builder provides the essential building blocks for creating a successful and user-friendly website across all devices. These features are important because they directly impact the website's overall performance, usability, and adaptability.

Ease of Use

A user-friendly website builder empowers anyone, regardless of technical skill, to create a professional-looking website. Drag-and-drop functionality simplifies adding and positioning content, while a clear visual hierarchy makes the design process intuitive. This efficiency saves time and reduces potential frustration, particularly for those without web development experience.

Templates and Customization

Templates provide a valuable starting point, offering pre-designed layouts that speed up the creation process. The best builders go beyond basic templates, allowing extensive customization. Flexibility to change colors, fonts, and layouts ensures you can inject your unique brand identity into the site. This is critical to differentiate your business and create a cohesive online presence.

Mobile-First Focus

A mobile-first approach means your website is built to excel on smaller screens. Clear navigation, optimized for touch controls, is important for user experience. A responsive website builder ensures your site translates seamlessly from desktop to mobile, providing a positive experience for the majority of your visitors.

2. User Experience (UX) that delights

User experience (UX) focused features in a website builder ensure your site isn't just functional but provides a genuinely enjoyable experience for visitors. Delighting users translates into greater engagement, increased conversions, and long-term brand loyalty.

Prioritizing UX means focusing on elements like intuitive navigation, fast loading speeds, and visually appealing design. A well-crafted UX guides visitors effortlessly through your site, making it easy to find what they need and encouraging further exploration.

A delightful UX leaves a positive impression on users, making them more likely to return and recommend your business to others.

Navigation

Clear and intuitive navigation is the backbone of a positive user experience. Menus that work seamlessly on both desktop and mobile, combined with defined pathways to important content, allow users to find what they need quickly and easily. Frustration due to confusing navigation leads to abandoned websites, so this element is important.

Loading Speed

Slow websites equal lost customers. Optimization for quick load times, especially on slower connections, is a non-negotiable UX feature. Image compression and efficient coding play a significant role in keeping your site snappy and responsive.

Content Optimization

A website may look great on a desktop but be unusable on a phone if text sizes aren't adjustable, or images and videos don't scale properly. Features focusing on readable text, along with mobile-friendly galleries and videos, ensure your content is accessible and enjoyable to consume on any device.

3. Technical Considerations

Ensuring your responsive website functions seamlessly and delivers long-term success. These behind-the-scenes elements may not be immediately visible, but they significantly impact user experience, search engine visibility, and overall website performance.

A responsive builder with robust technical features handles tasks like adapting code for different browsers and devices, ensuring compatibility with updates.

Additionally, search engine optimization (SEO) features help your site rank well in search results. Neglecting the technical aspects can lead to a website that may function initially but breaks down over time or struggles to attract organic traffic.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Built-in features that enable you to control titles, descriptions, and keywords help your website appear higher in relevant search results. A clean code structure that search engines can easily understand also boosts your site's visibility. Without SEO, potential customers may struggle to find your site organically.

Security

SSL certificates demonstrate your website is secure, building trust with visitors. Regular software updates protect your site against vulnerabilities. Neglecting security not only harms user experience but can also severely damage your brand reputation.

Integration Capabilities

The ability to smoothly connect your website with tools like email marketing platforms, analytics software, and social media expands its functionality. This saves time and allows you to collect valuable data on how users interact with your site, enabling you to make informed decisions for improvement.

4. Beyond the Basics

Features like integrated e-commerce and blogging functionality significantly expand the potential of your responsive website, transforming it from a simple online presence into a powerful tool for growth. They are essential considerations if you plan to sell products or services online, or want to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

E-commerce features such as product listings, shopping carts, and secure payment gateways enable you to operate a complete online storefront directly within your website.

A built-in blogging platform allows you to share valuable content, attract loyal readers, and boost your search engine rankings. Seeking a responsive builder with these options future-proofs your website, allowing it to evolve alongside your business needs.

Best Responsive Website Builders in 2024

1. Sites & More

Sites & More is an all-in-one solution that offers tools for creating websites, email marketing, and CRM. Designed for a wide range of users, including small business owners, digital marketers, and freelancers who need an all-in-one solution to manage their online presence effectively.

Sites & More website themes are built with responsive design, ensuring your website looks its best on any device, from desktops to smartphones.

Responsive capabilities:

Responsive Themes: Offers 200+ modern, mobile-responsive templates for websites, online stores, and sales funnels. These templates cover various categories, including art, business, fashion, and memberships.

Drag-and-Drop Design: Sites & More drag-and-drop page builder allows you to customize your website without any coding knowledge. You can easily rearrange elements, change global styling, and ensure mobile responsiveness. The smooth drag-and-drop experience makes it user-friendly and efficient.

Mobile Preview: This allows you to preview your site as it would appear on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop. This ensures that you can fine-tune your design for optimal display across different devices.

Fluid Scaling: Everything you build in Sites & More scales down perfectly on mobile devices. Whether it’s text, images, or other elements, they adapt to different screen sizes.

The platform's pricing is transparent with no hidden fees, and plans range from $9/month (Lite) to $159/month (Enterprise) to suit diverse business needs. You can explore its features risk-free with a 14-day free trial that doesn't require a credit card.

2. Squarespace

Squarespace is an all-in-one content management system (CMS) that allows users to create and manage websites without extensive coding knowledge.

With Squarespace, you can build a website using industry-leading templates, designer fonts, and color palettes. Whether you’re creating a personal blog, a portfolio, a local business site, or an online store, Squarespace provides flexible templates to get you started.

Responsive capabilities:

Responsive Themes: Every website built on Squarespace is responsive by default.

This means that your designs automatically adapt to different screen sizes, whether visitors access your site on a desktop computer, tablet, or mobile device.

Breakpoints and Layout Changes: Squarespace uses breakpoints—specific points at which a website’s layout changes—to accommodate various screen sizes. As a developer, you don’t need to write code for these breakpoints; Squarespace handles it for you. Content resizes seamlessly, ensuring readability and usability across devices.

Fluid Engine and Mobile-First Design: The Squarespace Fluid Engine offers greater control and flexibility when designing and customizing websites. You can implement a mobile-first design approach, focusing on optimal performance and user experience for mobile users.

Usability and Accessibility: Squarespace ensures that your client’s website is responsive, allowing you to focus on creating beautiful designs. Responsive sites improve user experience, reach a wider audience, and enhance visibility and search engine rankings.

3. Wix

Wix is a user-friendly platform for creating customized websites. It provides a suite of design and business tools to support a website's creation, management, and growth, including e-commerce functionalities, blogs, and event management.

Responsive capabilities:

Automatic Adjustment: When you create a website using Wix, it adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes. Whether visitors access your site from desktop computers, laptops, tablets, or smartphones, the content adjusts appropriately.

Responsive Typography: Wix Studio creators can set minimum and maximum font sizes for text elements in the editor. Text can scale between different ranges for different breakpoints, ensuring that your website typography remains fully responsive.

Full-Width Elements: Wix sites built in the Wix Editor are becoming more responsive. Exciting full-width elements expand to fill the entire screen width, enhancing the overall responsiveness of your site.

4. Wordpress

WordPress is a web building platform for self-publishing, popularly used for blogging and other creative works. However, new users may find the platform's extensive features and customization options overwhelming at first.

Responsive capabilities:

Responsive Themes: When building a WordPress site, start by selecting a responsive theme. These themes automatically adjust the layout and design based on the user’s screen size.

Fluid Grids: Responsive themes use fluid grids, allowing content to adapt proportionally to different devices. Whether it’s a desktop monitor or a smartphone, your site will look great.

Responsive Images: Use srcset attributes to provide different image sizes based on the user’s device.

Consider using lazy loading to improve page load times. Plugins like Jetpack and WPtouch enhance image responsiveness.

Mobile Plugins: Jetpack offers mobile-friendly features, including responsive design, performance enhancements, and security. WPtouch creates a mobile-friendly version of your site, ensuring a seamless experience for mobile users.

5. Weebly

Weebly is a website and eCommerce service designed to help entrepreneurs easily create professional websites, blogs, and online stores. The platform also streamlines order management, shipping, and payments for online stores while integrated marketing tools help you expand your customer reach.

Responsive capabilities:

Responsive Themes: All Weebly themes are responsive by default.Whether your visitors access your site from desktops, tablets, or mobile devices, the content automatically adjusts to fit their screens. This responsiveness enhances user experience and contributes to better search engine rankings.

Drag-and-Drop Design: Weebly’s drag-and-drop builder allows you to create a professional website without any coding knowledge. Simply customize a responsive template by adding elements, rearranging content, and adjusting layouts. You can preview your design on virtual mobile devices to ensure it looks great everywhere.

Mobile Optimization: Weebly ensures that your site is optimized for mobile browsing. The same content appears consistently across all devices, making it user-friendly and search engine-friendly. Whether you’re building a fully responsive website or a mobile-specific design, Weebly provides the tools you need.

6. Webflow

Webflow is a powerful platform ideal for designers, creatives, and agencies seeking greater control over their website's appearance. Its intuitive drag-and-drop website builder empowers users to create custom websites, blogs, portfolios, e-commerce stores, and more without extensive coding knowledge. Unlike traditional website builders, Webflow combines visual design with flexible coding options.

Webflow sites are built to be responsive, automatically adapting to different screens for optimal display on any device. This responsiveness is achieved through several techniques:

• Reflowing Content: Text elements and other content blocks adjust their width dynamically based on the browser window size.

• Relative Sizing: Webflow encourages the use of percentages, viewport width (VW), and viewport height (VH) instead of fixed pixel widths, ensuring elements scale smoothly across devices.

• Breakpoints (Media Queries): Webflow allows you to define specific layout adjustments for different device ranges (desktop, tablet, mobile), ensuring a tailored user experience.

Conclusion

A well-designed, responsive website provides a seamless experience across devices, improving customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and search engine rankings.

When choosing a responsive website builder, prioritize core functionality, delightful user experience, and technical soundness. Additional features like e-commerce and blogging can take your website to the next level. By making these smart choices, you take the first step towards building a powerful online presence for your small business – one designed for long-term growth.