Over the last year I have had quite a few businesses come to me to make changes or updates to sites that had been built with one of the many website building systems available. In every single case we had to start over and rebuild their site from scratch. In each case it was due to one of a very short list of basic issues.
In case you don’t know what a website builder is, it is a service that, for a monthly fee, provides website hosting and a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web site editor. The main selling point for these systems is that you can build your own website without knowing any HTML and without paying someone to build it for you. This sounds very enticing, but if you are at all serious about your business this is a major mistake.
First and foremost you will never ever rank well in the search engines. This can amount to a business that is dead before it gets started. If you don’t rank well in the search engines no one will ever find your site and of course that means they can’t hire you or make use of your products and services. To paraphrase a famous movie, “You built it but nobody came”.
Another pretty serious negative is that your site will never be unique. No matter how they are setup and no matter how they phrase it, every website builder is based upon a certain number of design templates or templated elements. By limiting you to only the template designs provided by the website builder you and thousands of others will have websites that have the exact or very similar code and design. This can be devastating to a new website. Your website is your first impression and you want to stand out and reflect your businesses uniqueness not get lost in the crowd.
In my opinion, the most serious down side to a website builder right behind low search engine rank is that these systems give you a very convincing illusion that for a small monthly fee you own a website. Unfortunately, you never really own your website. Basically, you pay a fee to use that company’s program which gives you the ability to use a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to build a site based on templates the company provides to you. The code is their code and site is their site. When you stop paying a monthly fee, want to add a feature of function that company doesn’t provide or God forbid the website builder goes out of business you cannot bring that site’s code to other hosting provider. I have run into this particular issue again and again. You have spent all this time and money but you have absolutely nothing to show for it.
Building a website for your business is really a lot like building a house. Your website is the foundation for you entire online presence. If your foundation is strong you can build something that will stand the test of time. Build on a sub-par foundation and at the first storm or tremor it will fall to pieces. Using a website builder is not a good way to get your business found online or to show your clients the uniqueness of your company. By having a custom built website you can let your uniqueness shine through and really show how your business is unique and that will reflect to your clients. In turn this will create trust and branding to your clients.
So before you decide to start a website for your business and use one of those cheap website builders, ask yourself these questions. Is my business worth it? Will it make a difference if my business is unique? If you answered yes to one of those questions please contact The OSP today and see just how inexpensively you can get a professional and uniquely you website for your business.
