Struggling with slow website growth and limited return visitors? Building an online presence from scratch can be scary, because it’s easy to get lost in the weeds unless you know exactly what you’re doing.
Ultimately, you want to attract traffic – and turn those visits into sales – without burning yourself out or emptying the bank in the process.
You’ve likely searched for real answers, but received only generic advice so far. Luckily, there are plenty of marketing tools available within the best website builder platforms that you can get running with little to no extra cost. What you need is built-in solutions that do the heavy lifting for you, saving you from managing endless plug-ins with complex setup instructions. Here’s how.
Attract, engage, and convert: Understanding how websites grow and retain audiences
Growing your website means guiding visitors through a clear journey. This is what we call the inbound marketing funnel, a proven path that turns strangers into loyal customers. Think of it like hosting a dinner party: you attract guests with great invitations, engage them with interesting conversation, then convert them into friends who’ll come back again.
The funnel works because it matches how people actually make decisions. Nobody buys from a website they’ve never heard of on their first visit. Instead, they need to discover you, learn to trust you, then feel confident enough to take action. Each stage builds on the last, creating a natural flow that feels helpful rather than pushy.
Here’s how each stage works:
- Attract: Draw in potential customers through valuable content, SEO, social media, and targeted ads that solve real problems they’re searching for
- Engage: Convert casual visitors into leads by offering helpful resources like guides, newsletters, or free tools in exchange for their contact information
- Convert: Guide interested leads toward making a purchase through personalized emails, demos, testimonials, and special offers that address their specific needs
- Delight: Keep customers happy and turn them into repeat buyers and brand advocates through excellent support, loyalty programs, and ongoing value
How website builders can help you grow online traffic
Modern website builders like Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and Hostinger have developed into complete marketing powerhouses. They’re not just for creating pages anymore, these platforms flex serious traffic-growing tools right on their dashboards. You get everything from SEO wizards to social media schedulers, all designed to work together without separate subscriptions or complicated setup.
Wix leads the pack with its built-in SEO features, including keyword support from Semrush and an AI meta tag creator that writes optimized titles and descriptions for you. Meanwhile, Squarespace excels on the content marketing side with stronger blogging tools and built-in analytics that show exactly which posts drive the most traffic. Shopify dominates ecommerce marketing with tools for abandoned cart recovery, discount codes, social selling integrations, and detailed customer segmentation.
What makes these platforms powerful is how everything connects automatically. When you publish a blog post in Squarespace, it can auto-share to your social accounts and update your sitemap for SEO. Shopify’s email campaigns pull customer data to send personalized product recommendations. Even Hostinger includes AI-powered SEO guidance as a standard feature.
Instead of juggling multiple platforms and scheduling tools, Wix Ascend gets you a single system that creates and posts content automatically. This saves hours each week and ensures your brand stays active across Facebook, Instagram, and other major networks without constant manual work.
The platform offers over 100 professionally designed templates that match your brand style, making it easy to create eye-catching posts even without design skills.
You simply connect your social accounts, choose from templates or create custom graphics, then schedule everything in advance. The basic plan allows only five posts per month, but unlimited plans remove all content restrictions.
Read our full Wix review to learn more about what the platform has to offer.
Launch automated newsletters with Hostinger Reach
Hostinger Reach makes email marketing surprisingly simple with its AI-powered template creator that writes entire newsletters for you. Just tell it what you want to promote, be it a sale, a new blog post, or a company update. It instantly creates a mobile-friendly email complete with subject lines and call-to-action buttons. No more staring at blank templates or worrying about design skills.
Reach handles the technical stuff automatically, including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records that help your emails land in inboxes instead of spam folders. Contact management is equally effortless, since you can manually add subscribers, import spreadsheets and databases, or sync directly with forms using Hostinger Website Builder. The free plan includes unlimited contacts and 200 monthly emails to 100 subscribers, making it perfect for testing the waters.
Our full Hostinger website builder review tells you everything you need to know about the platform.
Optimize your pages with Squarespace Search Tools
Squarespace’s AI SEO tool takes the guesswork out of search optimization by automatically generating page titles, meta descriptions, and image alt text for your content. The system examines each page on your site, references your brand identity, then creates SEO metadata that helps search engines understand what you’re about.
Squarespace even provides a personalized SEO report showing exactly which pages need attention, then lets you improve them with AI. You can review, edit, or regenerate any suggestion until it feels right for your brand voice.
Beyond metadata, Squarespace also includes automatic SEO fundamentals like clean URLs, mobile optimization, and auto-generated sitemaps that work behind the scenes. Its system continuously learns from your content style and business type, making its suggestions more accurate over time.
Read our full Squarespace review to learn more about what Squarespace offers.
Increase store conversions with Shopify Flow
Shopify Flow shakes up ecommerce management by automating repetitive tasks that usually take up your entire day. Its drag-and-drop workflow builder operates on simple trigger-condition-action logic. When something happens in your store (like a new order), it checks your conditions (order value over $100), then takes action automatically (send a thank-you gift card). No coding required, just smart business rules that work 24/7.
Flow is perfect for inventory management, customer segmentation, and order fulfillment automation. You can set up workflows that automatically tag high-value customers, restock popular items, or flag potential fraud attempts. It also integrates with dozens of popular apps like Klaviyo for email marketing, Rise.ai for gift cards, and various fulfillment services. All of this makes your online store more responsive and customer-friendly, increasing the chances of returning customers.
Check out our full Shopify review to learn more about how the platform can help you grow your store.
Build targeted campaigns with GoDaddy’s Marketing Planner
GoDaddy’s Digital Marketing suite includes an AI-powered Marketing Planner that creates custom action plans based on your business goals and current online presence. Instead of wondering what to work on next, you get specific tasks that move the needle in the right order of priority.
Unlike generic SEO checklists, the tool analyzes your industry and competition to suggest realistic, achievable marketing steps. It combines multiple marketing channels in one dashboard, including branded email campaigns, social media management, and built-in SEO tools that help you get found on Google.
You can create professional content using GoDaddy Studio templates, then distribute it across email, social media, and your website automatically. Analytics and reporting features track performance across all channels, showing which efforts generate the most leads and sales. Social media integrations feed directly into your dashboard, while search optimization features make every page crawlable.
Read our GoDaddy website builder review to discover more about the platform.
Create personalized experiences with HubSpot’s Smart Content
HubSpot’s Content Hub includes powerful Smart Content features that tailor your website experience based on visitor data stored in your CRM. Instead of showing the same cookie-cutter content to every visitor, you can display different messages and offers based on things like location, previous activity, or lead status.
It all works seamlessly with HubSpot’s built-in analytics and marketing tools, automatically tracking which personalized content performs best with different audience segments.
You can create entire dynamic content sections that change based on visitor behavior. Like showing special offers to returning visitors or different service pages for various industries. When someone interacts with personalized content on your site, that data flows into automated email sequences and sales workflows.
Read our HubSpot website builder review to learn more about the platform.
Remove technical bottlenecks with Bluehost’s SEO Checker
Bluehost’s Digital Marketing Solution includes an SEO Checker that instantly audits your website for common optimization issues like missing meta tags, broken links, and slow speeds. Without any technical help, the tool provides clear fixes that directly increase search rankings.
Bluehost also automatically sets up Google Analytics and Search Console integration with one-click installation, giving you immediate access to traffic data, keyword rankings, content performance metrics, and more from a single dashboard. Performance monitoring tools track critical SEO ranking factors and provide ongoing suggestions for improvement.
Moreover, AI-assisted content planning features help identify related keywords and generate SEO-focused content briefs that match both search intent and user needs. Plus, 24/7 support from digital marketing specialists means you can get guidance on everything from setup to advanced optimization techniques.
Elementor Pro comes with powerful built-in widgets that let you take full control over your site’s marketing and content features. These tools make it simple for anyone to design landing pages, capture leads, or showcase products without writing a single line of code.
You get everything from forms and price tables to sliders and popups, so building high-converting campaigns is faster than ever. The Form Widget lets you create custom lead capture forms, contact pages, surveys, and other interactive elements. Meanwhile, Popups divert attention towards discounts and newsletters without disrupting the browsing experience.
Other versatile widgets include the Posts Widget for custom blog layouts, Testimonials to build trust, and Call-to-Action buttons that drive visitors to the next step. Each widget gives you granular control over styling, animation, and behavior, so your site can stand out in all the ways that matter.
