Which web platform do you need?

When it comes to considering a home for your website, there are quite a few platforms to consider. Here at Local Truth Studio, we make use of three (they're the best options in our humble opinion). Now don't worry, when you look to us to design and build your website, we will make the choice for you based on what will suit your business. This blog post is to give you a quick glimpse into the platforms that we love to use.

Squarespace:

We love Squarespace for a million reasons! It's almost all-inclusive when it comes to the costs that you'll be paying (it includes hosting, security, maintenance, themes) and includes a free domain for the first year (unfortunately does not support .co.za domains). Another neat feature is that it also includes a year of free Google Workspace (meaning an email address custom to your business domain) if you aren't already a member!

Squarespace is also very user friendly. This means that you will be able to make minor updates to your website yourself! After our thorough tutorial you'll be able to make blog posts or upload new products to your digital store, update images and make tweaks to your copy yourself, without the need to pay every time you'd like us or anyone else to do it!

Something that we love to incorporate on our Squarespace website is the use of custom CSS. We dive deep into the backend code to make tweaks that will make your website stand out from competitors! There are so many fun little things that we can incorporate in this way to add life and personality to a website.

Squarespace is so easy to work with that our turnaround for website designs and builds is quicker than other platforms! If you have all your copy, images and brand identity ready to go, the website could be ready in as little as a week! That's pretty awesome if we do say so ourselves!;)

WordPress:

WordPress is a very popular platform for websites. If you look into the source files of any website, we'd guess that about 70-80% of them using on WordPress. One of the pros (and cons) of WordPress is that there are THOUSANDS of themes available to choose from for your website. And a WordPress site is only as good as the theme it's built on. While WordPress is free to use (this of course excludes the domain, security and hosting fees that you'll be paying for separately), the themes can range wildly in price, from as little as $30 to as much as a couple hundred dollars. The price determines the customisability of themes, the level of support you'll receive if necessary, and the knowledge that it likely won't break anytime soon because their developers are constantly working to keep things updated. We have a few tried and tested themes that we work on that exceed expectations on all required fronts.

WordPress also makes use of plugins. For all the add-ons on many websites like Instagram feeds, Google Map integration, SEO and analytic services you'll need plugins to make them run. There are plugins for almost anything that you can imagine! For as many themes that exist, we're sure there are at least three times as many plugins. One downside to this is that the plugins constantly need to be updated to ensure that the website continues to run smoothly. We can teach you to do this yourself, but it is recommended to make use of our monthly maintenance service to ensure that everything stays safe and working as we keep backups of everything as we go (WordPress websites can be a little finicky and if they break it can be quite an extensive, and expensive, process to get everything back up and running!).

The turnaround time for WordPress sites is also a little bit longer as there is a lot more that goes into building and setting up all the nitty-gritty. If you're very tight on time or excited to get your business out into the online world right now, we don't recommend this route as it can take up to 3-4 weeks to complete everything.

Shopify

Shopify is a mighty beast. It is only an option that we use if you have or need an extensive online store (hence the shop in Shopify). Shopify sites can be on the pricey side because of everything that goes into them. You need to be sure it can handle people's sensitive credit card details, that it will keep up with inventory, that it will be be user friendly to potential customers, all while looking amazing and inviting! There is also a learning curve into the process of uploading new products and making sure they're all SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) friendly. We will provide a thorough walk-through and tutorial for you to do this yourself but here we also recommend that you make use of our monthly retainer to keep things smooth so that you only have to focus on making your lovely products (heck, we can even photograph them for you!).

Whichever website platform we choose for your website, you can be sure that a ton of research and thought went into the process, we want you to walk away with the best! We are passionate about people having beautiful, and functional, online homes that they can show off to the world!

We're excited to help you start this web journey, reach out to find out what your next steps need to be!