Farewell to Google Business: Discover 5 Future-Ready Website Alternatives

Google has announced that websites created using Google Business Profiles will be deactivated in March 2024, redirecting visitors to their respective profiles until June 10, 2024, when they will encounter a "page not found" error, emphasizing the need to update online strategies to avoid losing valuable web traffic and potential customers.

Google Sites offers a new way to create a fully customizable online presence, offering a blank canvas for users to create their online presence. This is akin to moving from a rental apartment to a spacious house, where the possibilities are endless but the decorating needs a personal touch. Google Sites' drag-and-drop interface and intuitive tools allow users to create professional-looking pages without touching a line of code.

As a business grows, the site can be expanded and customized, adding a blog, an online store, or custom forms. The possibilities are limitless, making the transition from turnkey to Google Sites an opportunity to embrace creative control and growth potential. As Google Sites becomes a home for users, it's time to make it a home.

Points to Consider While Choosing Google Business Profile Alternatives:

Here is a summary of the key points you need to consider while opting for a Google Business profile alternative.

A Successful Web Platform:

An effective website platform is essential for staying competitive and ensuring your business's success. After transitioning from Google Business Profiles, it is crucial to find a platform with high performance, ease of use, SEO capabilities, scalability, security, and customer support.

High-performance platforms offer faster load times, robust server response, and the ability to handle high traffic. Speed and reliability are key to keeping visitors engaged and reducing bounce rates.

Convenience:

Ease of use is another important factor to consider when choosing a new platform. The ideal platform should be user-friendly, allowing you to manage and update your website with minimal technical know-how. With Google's simplified interface, you don't need to be a tech whiz to create a cool website.

Security:

Security is another crucial aspect to consider when transitioning from Google Business Sites. A secure platform protects your website from unwanted intruders and keeps your data safe. Look for platforms that include a secure socket layer (SSL) in their packages and offer other security tools such as malware protection and website backups.

Search Engine Optimization:

SEO capabilities are also crucial as Google Business Sites are shutting down. Choose a platform with good SEO tools to rank your site and help you appear on search engines. The better your SEO, the higher your site will appear on the search engine results page (SERPS), attracting more people without paying for ads.

Agile Customer Support:

Customer support is also essential in a new website platform. Good customer support means having someone to help you out, answer questions, and fix issues so everything runs smoothly. Even if you're still new to the platform, having an extra pair of hands can help address any technical problems or questions in the future.

Scalability:

Scalability is another important aspect of choosing a platform. It should be able to accommodate your business's growth, handling more traffic, more complex eCommerce functions, larger content databases, and integrating advanced features without compromising performance.

Besides, look for providers that offer robust hosting solutions, efficient resource management, and the ability to upgrade server capacity or add functionalities like forums, customer portals, or multilingual support.

5 Mind-blowing Future Ready Alternatives:

Web.com :

Web.com is a popular website builder for small businesses, offering affordable pricing plans and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder. It includes web hosting, a free domain name, a business email address, website security, backups, SEO, analytics, and other powerful tools.

Moreover, Web.com also offers custom web design services separately. While it has a drag-and-drop builder, affordable pricing, and pre-made website templates, it lacks a free plan and cannot be changed by the user. Web.com is an excellent Google Business Profile website alternative for business owners looking for a simple website.

Google Sites:

Google Sites is a popular choice for creating a Google Business Profile website within the Google ecosystem. It offers a block-based editor for adding text, images, contact information, and business hours, but is only suitable for basic websites.

WordPress is the best alternative for businesses looking to build a website that can grow with their business, with thousands of themes and a flexible hosting plan starting at $1.99 per month.

Weebly:

Weebly is a beginner-friendly website builder with dozens of designs and features like contact forms, photo galleries, and sliders. It offers free and paid applications to add more features, but its selection is limited compared to WordPress. Users can choose from dozens of designs and edit content using a live page editor.

Weebly is suitable for creating small websites but may outgrow its offerings over time. The free plan is limited and displays ads, making it less suitable for business users. Despite these limitations, Weebly's simplicity makes it ideal for small websites like Google Business Profile websites.

Carrd:

Carrd is a platform that allows users to create simple, single-page websites, allowing them to recreate their Google Business website without the need for a Google platform. The platform offers dozens of business profile templates, which can be customized using simple tools and a drag-and-drop interface.

The free plan is suitable for most users, but it may not be suitable for more complex websites. There are paid plans available that remove Carrd branding and allow users to use a custom domain. Carrd is a simple and free option for creating a single-page profile website.

Squarespace:

Squarespace is a premium website builder with a block editor similar to WordPress's Gutenberg. It allows users to create content like images, videos, and audio files but does not save work automatically. Squarespace offers customizable templates and allows users to add new features using Squarespace extensions, though these are more limited than WordPress's. It is easy to set up and use and includes web hosting.

However, it has limitations such as not allowing users to change hosting providers, higher costs than shared hosting plans, and no free plan. Squarespace's secure hosting platform and user-friendly interface make it a popular choice for building websites with great design.

Parting Notes:

The upcoming changes to Google Business Profiles offer businesses an opportunity to reassess and enhance their online presence. By exploring alternative website builders or investing in customized solutions, businesses can thrive in the digital marketplace.

Note: The redirect from the old Google My Business website to the Business Profile ends June 10th, 2024, so start building your new Google Site now!!!