Biggest mistakes of DIY websites
With so many website companies offering free do-it-yourself (DIY) web services on today’s market, the temptation is great for those who want a site for themselves or their business to take advantage of such offers. These services provide folks with no coding experience user-friendly interfaces that allow them to design their own sites by dragging and dropping elements into place. They can add functionality to the sites, like social media functions, community forums, newsletter sign ups, and more with easy-to-add plugins and applications. With the ability to handle updates to the sites themselves, it’s easy to see why site owners could view DIY websites as a great way to save money and have a decent-looking web presence too.
Having a decent-looking free site is all you need, right?
Not quite.
How DIY Websites Can Hurt Online Marketing
An effective website needs many qualities to be a valuable part to your business. Here are seven reasons why a DIY website not only falls short of what you need, but could potentially hurt your marketing efforts.
Poor Search Engine Optimization – The best website in the world does you no good if no one can find it. That’s what SEO does for you. It’s a system of techniques used to help your website achieve top positions in search engines without paid advertising. Even where SEO tools are offered by DIY services, the freedom to develop SEO correctly is not there. Without SEO techniques in use, your site can easily be lost in a sea of similar sites.
Third Party Control – A DIY site is owned and offered to you by a third-party service. They reserve the right to change the conditions of your site whenever they want without notice. They can also suspend or delete your account at any time for any reason without notice. A website provided by a third-party service for free is never truly your site to begin with and even if you’re able to develop a site you like using such a service, the risk that it can be deleted or changed at any time without your say is an unacceptable condition.
Not Mobile-friendly – With more than half of all online searches being conducted on smartphones or tablets, your site must be mobile-friendly and display well across all devices. Any given DIY web service may offer a mobile-friendly version of your site or provide the tools to create one, but there’s still little to no room for real customization of your mobile site when and where needed.
No Customization – Most DIY website services are WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and while they provide templates and small ways for you to use a company logos or banners, chances are a site you create using the service will look pretty similar to other sites using the same service. At most free website services, the ability to make customization to the site, to truly make the site look and function as you envision, is not there.
No Backups – Many DIY website services don’t provide free backups of sites created using their platform. If the unthinkable happens, and your site is hacked or compromised, you will not have access to the site files as they were before the attack. You will have to start over from scratch.
No Room for Business Growth – The free DIY website you built when your business was first starting out might have been the perfect site at the perfect time. As your business grows, however, your website might also need to grow and that would be difficult under the tight control that most DIY website services maintain over their platforms. If your business plans include growing your business in the future, most free website services can’t offer you the room or tools your website needs to grow with you.
No Professional Monitoring – When you use a free website service, you’re provided a self-service platform. You aren’t given expert advice or access to experts who can answer any questions you have. Learning to do things on your own, through trial and error, can be time-consuming and risky to your business. In the long run, is it worth it to lose time in learning how to do your website instead of focusing on your business?
Get A Custom-Made Website
At the end of the day, a website can either be a digital brochure that offers very little information on your business or it could be a real asset that’s crucial to your online business plan. If you need a custom made and responsive website designed where you also have full control over it- we’ve got you covered! Contact our experienced website design team here at Creative, and let’s discuss your new digital project.
