I have been asked by a number of people, “why shouldn’t I just build my own website using Free Website Builders such as Wix, Weebly or Squarespace”.
A website for free, what a good deal, I just need a website – right? No in fact quite wrong.
To build a website, even a simple website, still needs experience, no matter what these free offerings say there is a skill to designing an attractive site that is built for a purpose.
When you create a website, you want it to “Rank”, what does this mean, you want to be found when a person types in (or says) the words that will find the business they are looking for. “Physio near me”, “Emergency Plumber on the Northern Beaches”, “Sparky in Dee Why”. Unfortunately, these DIY website builders are not Search Engine friendly.
What are some other issues
You will never own your website, as these Free Website Builders , eg Squarespace, Wix, & Weebly are closed source providers. Your website is part of your business so you need to have total control of “your business”.
You don’t control the web hosting platform, this becomes important if pages are loading slowly or if there is downtime. When you control the hosting environment then you select the most suitable platform for your sites’ needs. As your business grows, any restriction will hamper your online growth significantly, if you own the site you can expand capacity.
You don’t own your content, the company owns your content, so if you do decide to move, you can’t just back up your files & data, copy and move this to a new hosting account.
Even if you bite the bullet and decide to re-create your website, you can’t move it very easily and you will not be able to retain the name that you had originally registered (the URL), to your own hosting account. Here is a quote directly from wix.com “You cannot delete (remove) a domain purchased from Wix. Only domains that were purchased elsewhere can be removed from your account.”
More importantly, your site can be shut down for no reason. That is the services may be terminated by sending an email (or not), and all files and data deleted.
After you are up and running, what support do you receive? Very minimal if any at all, after all you are a captive tied into that provider, and once they have you there is no incentive for them to provide stunning support at all.
These DIY website builders offer limited templates, generally have a maximum number of pages that can displayed on your site, and in some cases limit the number of posts that you can add each month. If your business is expanding this is a severe limiting factor.
Bottom line, are you a web builder and designer – NO
Are you the best at your trade or profession – YES
Don’t have the money upfront to pay for a well designed website, no problem have a chat to us, we can tailor a solution for you.
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