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To ensure long-term growth, treat your website like your business
DIY platforms provide novice entrepreneurs with an easy solution to avoiding the tedious work of building an online business, but does that fit the approach you want to take for your business?
Websites take time to develop, even for web developers, since there are so many parts to the process of creating a website, including the strategy and goals, functionality, user experience and user interface.
What are DIY Platforms?
DIY platforms or website builders are a way for people to design and build their own websites without using code. These platforms are also called hosted platforms. With hosted platforms, you sign up for a monthly website plan which includes your hosting, security and a website builder. This is the easiest solution to get a website online.
However, DIY website platforms such as Wix, Squarespace, WordPress (dot com), Shopify and ShowIt are costly (because you have to pay a monthly fee as long as you want your website up and running) and they do not allow business owners to reach their goals in the long run.
There is another way without Having to hire a web designer & developer:
The other way of creating a website without hiring a professional web designer is to use one of WordPress’ free themes. There are thousands of themes available on WordPress, however, they are not really flexible.
Our clients come to us either because they want to get rid of these monthly costs or they purchase a WordPress theme that doesn’t reflect their branding. Or simply because they want to focus on what they do the best while we build and grow their online presence.
When You Should Hire a Professional Web Designer & Developer:
Websites have become extremely important for businesses. Due to the global pandemic, many business owners realised the importance of being able to take appointments, sell online, and run their services online. Websites increased in number, and entrepreneurs who took advantage of digitalisation could continue to operate even during the lockdown.
In this article, we will be listing down 3 reasons why you shouldn’t build your website using a DIY platform.
1- Lack of website goals
It is tempting to shortcut the boring parts of website development and get right to the design by hiring a DIY website designer who only recently discovered HTML, or to build your website by doing it yourself. But this website is not going to be effective no matter how pretty it looks.
Your website needs to reflect your branding and include your brand’s visual elements, but there are more to consider when designing and building sites. When you build a DIY website, you miss out on the expertise. Do you know the fundamentals of building a website? Have you researched your competition, or know what a good website looks like? Do you know your target market and what you want to achieve with a website?
Creating a website should be like creating a business. You need to plan every step strategically to keep your visitors engaged and reach your goals. Don’t get a website for the sake of getting a website, because you will end up losing money and time.
2- SEO & Technicalities
It is a fact that WordPress (org) still stands as the best SEO platform and will continue to be so for a long time to come since it is fully customizable and FREE.
Installing Yoast SEO or RankMath plugins on your WordPress site allows you to easily add metadata to your posts and pages. Also, you can edit permalinks, add an alt text plugin or create a complex XML site map that makes your site’s structure easy for search engine crawlers to understand.
DIY website platforms like DIY platforms don’t mean a website will rank poorly, but there are limitations to what can be done with these programs. For instance, you cannot add H4, H5 and H6 tags on Squarespace while you can with WordPress.
You should always remember that a better ranking brings more visitors and more visitors give you a greater chance to increase your profits.
Click here to download our FREE guide to improve your website’s rankings on search results.
3- Ownership
Building your business website with a DIY platform will entail monthly payments as long as you want your website up and running. Plus, platforms such as Squarespace, Wix and even ShowIt own the rights to your website. Have a look at their ownership terms below and you will understand better.
If a website platform goes bankrupt, you lose all your website data and customer information along with all your efforts as well. Therefore, ownership is important, not only for cost reasons but also because it represents a longer investment. Although you might think that these platforms would never go bankrupt, here is a piece of news by Forbes that may prove you wrong: No-Code Website Builder Webflow Went From Near Bankruptcy To A $72 Million Series A Funding Round
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is no secret that WordPress requires a lot of maintenance compared to other platforms, but that comes as a price of owning your own business website. It is possible to develop a website on DIY platforms as a quick solution to have something on the internet, however, a long-term strategy is needed to ensure long-run growth.
Before we build your custom site on WordPress, we provide you with a website questionnaire that helps us understand your business goals, and define the components of your future site. Additionally, we contribute to your success through our digital marketing solutions. Because owning a business website doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to receive lots of traffic, take appointments, or generate sales immediately.
Furthermore, you’ll also have the advantage of dealing with only one person in the course of creating your site.
A common misconception is that in WordPress, you need to collaborate with a website designer and developer separately to build a custom website. Many designers prefer to work with their own developers, so their prices will go up. At Social Influence.Co, we both design and develop your website, and you are in contact with one person for both tasks. When we work together, we handle the visual design of the website in addition to providing all the coding necessary to make it come to life.
Looking to invest in a website built by a professional? Let’s chat!
