An Affordable Website Design Solution For Small Businesses

How's that for affordable website design for small businesses? 

I'll introduce myself briefly. I'm Tom Connery and I've been building Duda websites for digital agencies and small businesses since 2016. How did I discover Duda? Well, a friend and small business owner of mine had a WordPress site that he wanted to replace with something that was easier to update and maintain. He also wanted to sell his physical products online, so I began searching for white-labeled platform that could host this type of scenario. Duda quickly made me a believer that you don't need WordPress in order to have a successful website. Now, I've made it my mission to share Duda in an attempt to help people discover, learn, and use Duda as an alternative to other website platforms so that they can either make money or save money online. For me, Duda is the best website builder on the market, and in this article, I'll share some of the reasons why I believe that to be true. Please note, I always announce Duda discount codes via my email list. If you would like to be the first to know when coupons are announced, you can signup here.

In addition, I created a Duda overview video that has nearly 10,000 views on YouTube. If you'd like to get acquainted with Duda, see what it looks like, how to navigate, how the designer works, what it's like to drag and drop widgets, and more, then please watch my overview video on YouTube:

The first question you may be asking is, will I own my website once it has launched? As long as you continue to pay the platform subscription fee, either monthly or annual, your Duda website can be live on the internet. Does Duda include a domain as part of the subscription? No, they do not. The good news is, the majority of people research and purchase domains prior to building a website and with Duda, it's super-simple to connect to whatever domain you own. Duda also provides a free SSL certificate that they setup and renew on your behalf. Agency level customers do have a site export option that allows them to move a site from Duda to a self-hosted web server but I have not yet tried that yet myself.

Not 'owning' the website can really bother some people but here's the reason why I think it makes sense. If you enjoy manually updating plugins, themes, widgets, service packs, security vulnerabilities, etc then please, by all means, do not use Duda. But if you want a turn-key, drag and drop, website builder, that includes amazing yet customizable templates, makes it easy to manage multiple websites from a single dashboard, and requires virtually zero maintenance, then keep reading.

Full disclosure, I am a proud Duda affiliate, and some of the links on this page and within this article are affiliate links. If you click on one of these links, I would likely receive a commission if you created a free trial and later purchased or activated your Duda account. If you prefer to skip the Q&A below and want to jump right to my quick-start guide, please click here.

If you are new to website design or using website builders, it can take some time to create a website from start to finish. Even as an experienced builder on the Duda platform, my own delivery times vary for completion and it's primarily due to one very important topic. Planning.

As much as humanly possible, plan out every piece of your website. The colors, images, logo, navigation, number of pages, what content you require on those pages, etc. The better your requirements and the more thorough your planning, the faster your website build will go. I've built websites with 40+ pages in a few days and I've also built 5-page websites in a few days, mainly because there was very little direction or too few requirements in order to be efficient.

If you need a guide of sorts, you can try out the draftium.com app for free. It will help you plan out your entire website, including all pages, how the rows or sections are designed, contact forms, and more. If you provide an experienced Duda website builder a wireframe or draftium example, they will most likely be able to turn around your website quickly.

If you're serious about learning how to build Duda websites, I highly recommend you visit learnduda.com where premium courses and resources are available. At a minimum, you should consider joining the free user community where you can ask questions and collaborate with other Duda website builders.

Most small business websites have 4-6 pages upon initial design and delivery. I would say this includes: Home, About, Contact, Services, Gallery, or Projects, etc. There really is no 'one size fits all' scenario and the number of pages required should be clearly outlined while planning for the website build. The good news is, once you are live on the internet, Duda makes it easy to clone existing pages so you can repurpose them for a new service, product, offer, or message.

Another thing you may want to consider when it comes to pages is, how many pages does your average competitor have? Are they building specific pages aligned to services or products? Are they building pages that target specific locations? Do they have a blog? I'm not saying you should copy a business that may be similar to yours, but it's a good idea to know how such websites may be configured.

Duda allows you to create up to 1,000 pages and for most businesses, I'd say that more than meets their requirements. This includes blog posts as well as landing pages that may need to be imported or manually created for the website. Duda does have a blog import tool that leverages RSS feed data in order to create blog posts from an existing website. Pages, however, would need to be manually built within Duda if you are converting from some other website builder or service.

Which features or factors are most important to you when it comes to building, editing, managing, and maintaining a website? Which platform makes it easy to run your business, so you don't have to worry about plugins, widget updates, or security vulnerabilities? Which platform makes updating content fast and intuitive so you don't need to reference a help document each time you login? Which platform allows you to login from your smartphone to make minor updates and changes? Which platform responsive updates easy? What I mean is, can you quickly and easily customize the mobile or tablet version of your website?

For all of those reasons and more, is why I use and share Duda with others. When you move beyond the basic website plan and upgrade to a team or agency plan, you can unlock additional features such as: team collaboration, client management, an app store with 3rd party premium services, phone or live chat support, a widget builder, discounted website pricing, and more! Duda is also releasing new updates and enhancements faster than they ever have before. This demonstrates that they are continuing to invest in the platform and provide exceptional service to their customer base.

Oh ya, unlike some other website services on the market, Duda does NOT have any bandwidth or storage restrictions and the websites are served via Amazon's Cloudfront CDN. This ensures fast loading of content and the platform is built on Amazon AWS which guarantees a 99.999% uptime. It's a very reliable platform for website availability and speed. I'll insert some detail on Duda's current pricing model below:

Duda Agency Members: To Buy This Custom Blockquote Widget - Click Here

If you would like to use this same blockquote widget above with your Duda website, you can order it right here. In fact, another cool thing about Duda is that there are 3rd party resellers who offer custom widgets that may not be available in the default Duda widget list. If you can't find the exact widget you need, there's a chance you can have one built by a pro or purchase a widget that's ready to go.

Ready to preview a sample Duda website that is "not so template typical"? Meaning it is 100% unique and will not mimic ANY other Duda website on the internet today? Check out clearstonemktg.com (built by Ayni Media). Although I believe Duda was built to help serve local small businesses in your area and even some franchises, Duda can be used for pretty much any individual, freelancer, creator, consultant, or business owner.

If you have designed some unique Duda websites, please consider sharing them as a comment below!

With Duda, SEO is very easy to manage and maintain, and the platform's architecture is very SEO friendly meaning you will not require any type of addon widget or plugin in order to manage SEO for a Duda site. You can add Google Tag Manager within site headers or link to Google Analytics right in the site settings. "Dev mode" makes it quick to access site body-end code, headers, CSS, schema markup, and more.

Is it all sunshine and rainbows? There is no perfect platform. I'll share a couple of blog-related cons below. Currently, Duda blog posts restrict dev mode so you would not be able to add schema markup or structured data on blog posts specifically BUT other page types can be customized without issue. Also currently, you cannot use ads.txt for Google Adsense as there is no way to validate the file without access to the root directory. The good news is, you can still embed Google Ads via Adsense using the basic HTML widget in Duda but not having ads.txt could impact ad revenue.

Being responsive and providing dynamic serving is essential for today's websites in order to improve user experience. Google is pushing user experience more and more from a ranking perspective and with Duda, you can quickly jump from desktop, tablet, and mobile designs. This makes it fast to customize and hide specific elements based on device type so the mobile experience can truly stand out. Now that iPads leverage the desktop experience, tablet design and management is less and less important BUT it is available for customization.

You can control page urls, titles, and meta descriptions from each page's settings menu. On-page SEO is a breeze when it comes to adding alt-image tags, H1, H2, H3-H6, and paragraph copy. Robots.txt is automatically included as is the sitemap xml. Overall, Duda sites can rank very quickly once connected to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. The lack of dev mode for blog posts is worth noting but I wouldn't be surprised if Duda removes that limitation somewhere down the road. I've seen clients increase SEO scores by 20-30% once we moved them over to Duda. Every site is different.

Yup. Adding e-commerce through Duda will require an additional monthly fee and the current shopping platform is built on Ecwid. Even if you do not want to leverage the integrated shopping solution, you can manually add HTML widgets that allow code embedding. That means you can add PayPal buttons or sell digital products with solutions such as E-Junkie if you'd prefer. You could even create a free Ecwid account on Ecwid's website and embed that if you only required minimal online store capabilities.

Duda's premium integrated store solution allows you to sell on Facebook, Instagram, and other sales channels. Track inventory, leverage 40+ payment gateways, offer gift cards, view abandoned carts, track payment and shipping status, sell digital products, and much more. Depending on which subscription level you choose, your capabilities for e-commerce improve. I've built multiple online stores using Duda as a solution, and in my opinion, it's very well suited for small businesses that want to sell a small collection of products. Although it can support thousands of products, I am not yet convinced that Duda is the perfect solution for large, robust, online stores.

Sometimes your changes don't go quite as planned. I recall researching WordPress backup and restore solutions in the past and it got complicated. Sometimes it involved added fees and more plugin management. No thanks. With Duda, it takes SECONDS to create a backup or restore your site from a previous backup. Instead of me typing out how it all works, check out how fast it is to record a new backup and then restore from a previous backup in the video clip below. Like I said. Seconds! The best part? It's all built into the platform with no added fee and you can have as many backups as you'd like. There are also times when the platform creates automatic backups as well. Either way, I teach every Duda user I work with to get into the habit of creating manual backups before they make changes.

There are currently 100+ website templates to choose from as a starting point when creating a new Duda website. Once you login to your Duda dashboard, you would simply click the Create a Responsive Site button in order to be taken to the template selection screen. If you did not want to use one of the fully populated templates, you can always start with a blank template or canvas. I've done this multiple times, especially when a client provides a wireframe where the entire site needs to be built to custom specs.

Overall, creating websites on Duda is a fantastic alternative to WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix. More people really need to know about the power and capabilities of Duda as an affordable website design solution for small businesses. Whether you want a DIY website builder or want to begin building and selling websites as a freelancer of a full-fledged digital agency, Duda is a fantastic solution that you should seriously consider.

Ready to get started? Please click this link to create your Duda account right now or go visit my FREE get started guide where I'll walk you through the process, step by step.

Looking for more Duda website builder information? Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel where I create how-to videos and also share information on related digital marketing topics and services.

If you would like to review our portfolio or inquire about our current Duda website pricing, please use our contact form. We have pricing models specific for agencies and also models that best-serve small businesses directly. Whether you are looking for a completely new website design or just need a refresh of an existing website, we can help. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this article. I truly love working with the Duda website builder and want to help as many people as I can. I hope this information has helped you!!

These website building questions were commonly asked online and I wanted to use them in such a way that would help you see the value and potential for using Duda as your website builder. Whether you want to build or DIY your small business website or begin offering website design services to clients, Duda is an amazing platform and will serve you well. They continue to invest in the platform, have thousands of supporters as well as passionate agency customers, and are growing year over year. The time to create your FREE Duda trial is now.  Click here to get started or you can always review my step-by-step guide.