When it comes time to build a website for your business, it can be tempting to save money and build a website without the help of a professional website designer.
There are many platforms that offer business owners a DIY website building experience.
DIY website builders platforms such as Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, and other saas (Software as a Service) website builders, offer business owners an interface that allows dragging and dropping website elements during the creation of a website.
Building a website on these platforms can come with a great many issues. Many website designers have helped clients move away from these platforms for many reasons.
Sometime the owner of a company or employee got in over their head and can’t work out what to do to complete the website. Other times, they simply do not have time to work on the website and want someone else to finish it off.
There have been many companies that have decided to move away from these DIY website builders, mainly because these platforms are often not capable of doing what the client actually wants their website to do.
There are a number of reasons why these website platforms may not be the best option, and in this article will go over six of those reasons.
Before considering building a website on one of these platforms, be certain to read this article through the end.
1. Lack of Website Design Experience
When you comes across a marketing brochure or website page that is touting how easy it is to design a website in no time, be sure to approach this sales pitch with great care.
With no experience in web design and a DIY website builder, you might be able to drag and drop items on the page and maybe it will look okay.
However, a good web designer understands what things to put on a website and where they should be placed.
Website designing comes with many hours of testing and experience and with what comes the knowledge and experience of what works and what does not work.
Imagine a mechanic telling you that car repair doesn’t require any experience or skill, would that be believable?
It is not feasible to think a small business owner or an employee can take the time to learn everything there is to know about website design. There are principles and best practices that should be applied to web design in order for a website to function correctly technically and aesthetically.
There are specific principle of web design in regards to typography, branding and colour palettes, HTML, CSS, and other code that may be required to make a website not only look good, but truly perform in converting visitors to clients for your business.
DIY website builders such as Wix, Squarespace and Weebly like to tell business owners they do not need the experience, but when you factor in all the needs of a website, it not entirely true.
Many times beginners on these platforms also find themselves wasting a considerable amount of time on things that will not help a website perform, while a competent website designer already knows to stay away from these headaches.
When help is needed from customer service of these platforms, the help can be less than effective. Saas website builders generally have less than great customer support in terms of speed and reliability.
2. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is an important factor to consider when building your website.
The best way to describe Search Engine Optimization is this is the process that can help businesses’ website pages reach the first page of search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. If a company has a great website and nobody can find it, then it really isn’t working at its optimal level.
Being found online is the key to having success with a website. Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly are known by many to be subpar at handling the needs of Search Engine Optimization. Technical issues such as the page URL structures, can interfere with Search Engine Optimization.
These structures can make it more difficult to get your company found online and this means the competition can often excel whilst your company can be left behind. While Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly websites will be found, it is often not on the first page of search results.
A professional website designer should have experience in SEO and know how to build your website so it can be found more easily by your potential customers.
3. You Don’t Really Own Your Website
Many times business owners rush to build a website only thinking of current needs and possibly not having any understanding of what future needs of the business.
Building a website on DIY website builders such as Wix, Squarespace or Weebly can eventually leave the small business owner frustrated to learn that the website cannot be extended how they would like, and may need to be transferred to another platform, because the technology is limited with the platform the website was built upon.
A company’s growth can lead to needing a better website that can handle more functions.
Some of these platforms do not allow for the transfer of the website to another platform, which means the business is stuck with the websites limitations unless they decide to rebuild a website from scratch, which can be a daunting process.
Moving and rebuilding a website can be very costly and time-consuming and it could have been avoided. These platforms use code that is built on a closed platform, meaning adding custom code to achieve exactly what you want your website to do, is often not possible.
Whereas other platforms built on open-source code, can be moved, changed, updated, and improved by anybody who understands the code.
The ability to extend a websites capabilities is imperative for any small business that might experience growth in the future.
4. Makes Marketing More Difficult
Marketing can become difficult with these types of websites. Lack of design tools can lead to frustrations. In a great many cases marketing agencies will not work with websites built on these platforms. The reason behind this is the difficulty these platforms can cause for the agency, throwing them out of their routines that what they are used to.
The fact Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly are not easily scalable and also can be a massive issue with agencies looking to grow your company.
There are limited functions and opportunities to make these platforms deliver results, and one of the biggest problems is not being familiar with the platforms functionality.
These websites can be difficult to figure things out, particularly if marketing companies are not use to the platform. There are limited forums or community help available online, so it can feel like being placed on a deserted island lacking the information you need.
With so many limitations with DIY website builders, it is often why a marketing agency would skip working with a company that has a website based on these platforms.
5. DIY Website Builders Can Have Limited Options
Even with the ability to drag and drop within the interface of most DIY website builders, many times a theme is desired.
A website theme is a pre-built websites style and layout, many times with specific bells and whistles coded in, saving web designers valuable time.
There are limited templates available with most do-it-yourself options. However, there are a lot more options available with open source platforms, such as WordPress.
WordPress offers an almost unlimited options in the way of themes and plugins. Using a platform like WordPress also allows for a designer to make the website 100% customised if that is what is needed by the website owner.
Even with the limited design options at Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly, remember, the website belongs to the platform. With WordPress websites, the design and code belong to you the website owner.
WordPress plugins are pieces of code that can be used to extend your websites capabilities, on a need-to-use basis. From image sliders to events calendars and some of these can often be free.
There are more than 54,000 free WordPress plugins available at time of writing this article and growing, so you can a head start from the limited options available from the do-it-yourself platforms.
6. The Prices Are Often Higher Than Originally Thought
Like most sales pitches, the platform will begin with the absolute lowest price that comes with limited options.
DIY website builders such as Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, and other saas website platforms all have been known to show a low price and once the user begins adding features, prices quickly escalate well beyond the original price desired.
Generally, you get what you pay for, and these platforms understand this and can charge for almost anything beyond the most basic of features.
These platforms vary in price but can start as low as ten dollars a month. Ten dollars a month sounds great, until features are added, such as a shopping cart, and the price per month can explode well beyond the initial cost.
Sometimes even the very basic function of connecting a companies domain requires a paid plan.
Conclusion
It may be tempting to sign up with a DIY website builder to begin building a business website for a company, however the pitfalls are many.
Building a website takes understanding, experience, and countless hours of learned knowledge. A good web designer will see issues long before they arise and create a website experience that will work to connect with your customers and potential customers.
From the moment a website user arrives at a website they are making determinations if the company is professional, reliable, and trustworthy.
Winning trust is so valuable in today’s online world of online sales and connection. Companies grow, shift, and expand and they need a platform that they not only have ownership of, but also have the ability to extend functionality when and if the time comes.
Platforms such as WordPress can offer true ownership and the ability to scale.
WordPress is an open-source platform that powers 39.6% of the internet in 2021.
With thousands of themes and plugins available, WordPress is a platform that can help build many different types of websites.
With the help of an experienced website designer with knowledge of design principles, and user experience you can get a website to deliver the results that are needed for your business success.
If you would like help in building a website and growing your business, get in touch today.