I've built 5 Shopify and maybe around 10 WordPress sites with woocommerce and more – I'm about to start a new website, and I was wondering, what is the cheapest way to build a *GOOD LOOKING* website. I'm inclined to just go with a Shopify store, but their fees are quite large over time, especially if sales are kinda slow at first. Please point me in the right direction, since I feel like a wordpress site will have low conversion. Would also really help if someone had a good Theme package for a normal wordpress site, which they are willing to share with me
All in all, what is the cheapest way for me to achieve high conversion rate?
Thanks in advance, fellow entrepreneurs! 🙂
Asking as someone who has built 10-15 websites, what’s the best way to build a website?
byu/SkakL inEntrepreneur
Posted by SkakL
11 Comments
I’ve been building websites for a long time and I don’t know how to code, so here’s what I suggest:
1. If it’s ecommerce – Shopify + a premium theme. If the theme is too expensive, get someone on Fiverr to sell you the theme file. The freelancers usually have those from dozens of premium themes, that’s how they can sell a Shopify store design with a premium theme for $300. I pay for mine though just as an appreciation to the original creators. The premium theme is a must though, so do what you need to do.
2. If WordPress, then get the Divi Builder, it’s only $100 a year and their templates are hard to beat, but I find it (WordPress + Woo) unnecessarily complex for a new ecommerce brand.
3. Webflow can be visually impressive but has a steep learning curve.
Share your current store link here, it’s probably not the platform’s fault you’re struggling with low conversion, there are many other factors such as product choice, quality, pricing, traffic strategies, copywriting, follow-up systems, etc. 90% of the time people are just selling crap no one wants or needs.
The cheapest way is use one of the standard templates offered by many platforms. Without a designer.
The age of the generically pretty site is over. And — for all the potential — the design industry really doesn’t have the answer to ROI discussions. They don’t split run test for the most part. They don’t actually want to have the ROI discussion.
Heck, we get questions about cold calling from design agencies — because their sites are worthless for any pragmatic business purpose. Frankly the design industry is generally ridiculous.
>I feel like a wordpress site will have low conversion.
Why? Because for the most part, if you keep peeling back layer after layer of feelings and excuses — you come to the real problem of fundamental business failures having nothing to do with the tech. People want to blame tech for their own business failings and blame a designer or code monkey for bad decisions they insist upon making. Passing blame being the wrong direction to look.
The direction to look in would be the direction leading to a mirror. A web site won’t pretty up a failing business proposition, a poor offer, a mismatched product. A web site delivers the message. What people won’t acknowledge is the most frequent message sent is “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and don’t really have a business.”
It’s the same mistake an employee makes with the infamous “Pink Resume.” It is called *Painting The Deck Chairs On The Titanic.*
[Is Your Designer Killing Your Conversions?](https://unbounce.com/design/is-your-designer-killing-your-conversions/) A rhetorical question. Business owners know ninety percent of the money they spend on a site is wasted, they just don’t know which ninety percent.
It really depends on what tools you’re used to. The best way to make a website is the one you have a lot of practice in.
WP/woocommerce can be an amazing tool, with an amazing conversion rate. I’m a big believer that great product sells no matter what tool you use, if it’s pretty and fast.
Depends on your skill set. If you know how to code, NextJS + Vercel is very fast and cheap.
it all depends on the setup you have already.
For me, I have a reseller hosting account so when a new client comes along, I build them a site and host it myself, usually with WordPress and Woocommerce along with something like Elementor or Gutenberg.
This works out the cheapest option for me.
If you are having to buy hosting for each individual project then it might not be the cheapest option for you.
Move away from Shopify
I used WIX, I’d there regret? Sure. But I wanted to build it quick and nice to look at it. Initially tried working off a template from another platform and hated it. From my limited SEO knowledge, WIX is working against me. I see it in the load times of my images. Obviously there are other factors.
Overall, do your research. You can see my WIX site [here](https://www.founderfolks.com).
It depends on what it’s for.
In my honest opinion, **the content within the site will make a simple/bland website stand out.**
[Take our website for example. ](https://www.24hour.design)We design products from the ground up, but this specific website is built on Squarespace, and has been since 2018.
Also reduce the “Attention ratio”. The amount of clickable objects within the viewpower. This can help you boost clicks to the right area. The more distractions at the top, the less likely they will scroll through your desired direction.
We build a lot of complex sites with bits and bobs – memberships, e-learning etc.
But every now and again a little electrician approaches us from the business chambers.
We can knock up a great looking site quickly. We’ll build on WP, we’ll use something like “The Gem” (on theme forest) or we’ll maybe plugin Revolution Slider and change the words on the template. We won’t charge a lot for these and will generally “rent” the site to them to help with their cash flow too.
I think WordPress. You have more control over customization and it’s not going to look exactly like every other drag and drop WYSIWYG site. Shop around a bit and see if you can find cheap hosting, but guys like GoDaddy usually have really good coupons for the first year; just try and search for killer coupons online, sometimes you get lucky.
Buy a nice theme, spend a couple days building it the way you want, throw some Google and Facebook ads behind it, heck just use canva to make them, and you’re off!
There’s definitely a bit of upfront cost but it is what it is, I personally think the sanity you save is worth the price.
Tech – wordpress (get a good theme and you can find folks for $15/hr to code).
Demand gen – that’s on you. Shopify is a hot mess for a reason (everything to everyone).