You are hopefully already aware of just how vitally important having a strong online presence is for your business. Having a central location that promotes your business 24/7, and represents your brand well is the best marketing asset you can invest in. However, one of the critical mistakes many entrepreneurs and new business owners make is the decision to build their own site, rather than work with a web design professional to craft a custom professional website.

It is completely understandable, as starting up and running a business is an expensive undertaking, and paying a professional company to build your website may seem like an unnecessary expense. This feels especially plausible with the myriad of automated website builders that offer the promise of easy, do-it-yourself website construction.

A good website is vital and increasingly indispensable to the success of any business. Although DIY websites may have their appeal as an inexpensive option, as they require minimal upfront investment, on the whole they won’t deliver the same quality assurances or customisability that a custom built website can. Today, we will explore this further and go over the top five reasons why a DIY website might actually be bad for business.

Unexpected Expenses

One of the benefits DIY website builders do offer is a general maintenance service for your website, which is often included in the monthly subscription fee. While there is peace of mind in knowing that minor issues can be handled swiftly, surprise expenses can often pop up and they must be accounted for if you are planning on using a DIY web builder service.

Features such as social media sharing, email hosting, store or calendar integration, and search engine optimisation will often not be included in the standard subscription fee of DIY website services. Before embarking on a web build project, you need to decide what kind of services and extra features you would like to include in your website, and budget for these accordingly.

Inadequate SEO

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, refers to the process of making sure that your website is designed in such a way that it will rank highly on the list of results for search engines such as Google or Bing, ensuring that your site will actually be seen and visited by your potential clients.

While DIY website design services do offer many sleek features, most fall short when it comes to SEO. Most DIY websites will not allow Google to verify your site using their Webmaster Tools, which can directly hurt your ranking in the search results. Furthermore, the majority of these websites will not integrate with Google Analytics, depriving you of key data that your business requires in order to grow online. Lastly, most of these services simply can not optimise on-page internal site pages.

Doing SEO right is a complex process and it requires expert input to do it correctly. Moreover, SEO is a constantly evolving field that requires ongoing education to stay current with. Google and other major search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, along with the requirements for websites to be noticed and promoted in search results, therefore, leaving your site to professionals is always a wise choice. Consider a professional website design agency that specialises in SEO and also offers helpful services like website maintenance to ensure your website stays relevant to Google.

No Support

There is a general rule of thumb in the tech world that professional web design is about 20% design and development, 75% troubleshooting, and 5% dealing with unexpected problems. Running any business website will inevitably involve dealing with glitches, errors, and making sure that the site always remains up-to-date and compatible with the constant changes and updates from Google.

Generally speaking, DIY website hosting services come with limited assistance, and signing up for one of these will allow you to build a site, but may leave you hanging when it comes to ongoing support for your site. Can you afford to have your site go down for hours or days at a time? If the answer is No, a custom website with website maintenance is an offer you can’t afford to pass up.

You Don’t Own Your DIY Site

One of the biggest issues with so many of the DIY website builder services is that you don’t actually own the website you build. Many of these companies own the design and image rights, and when you stop paying for their services, you may well find that you no longer have access to the content used on your site. Additionally, almost none of the DIY website building services allow you to migrate your website to another server.

This essentially means that if you ever decide to move away from the DIY service you signed up with, your only choice will be to leave your current website behind and start from scratch again. This is not only considerably more difficult than building a custom website the first time, it could be considerably more time, labor, and capital-intensive as well.

Wasted Time

Spending hours on learning how to use the interface of DIY website builders, hot fixing the site after a major Google update, and solving unexpected problems that inevitably crop up with SEO or mobile interfaces is not a good use of your time.

You are an expert in your line of business, but web design may not be your strong suit. That’s OK! You most benefit your business by spending your time and energy in the areas of your expertise, and you only stand to gain by delegating creative work to creative professionals. Don’t waste your time — let a professional web designer build your site.

Talk to the Pros!

At Minx Digital, our team of web design experts is ready to help your business reach new heights with the best WordPress web development and website maintenance techniques around.

Offering both full services and ways for you to learn how to do some web maintenance on your own, we have a wealth of experience in digital marketing. With over 30 years of web design and development experience, helping your business keep up with new designs, industry trends, and website maintenance will be a breeze.