Over the weekend, I read an article by Inc. Magazine that highlights trends of modern website design. His first point is to show you have you don’t have to rely on the complicated coding of a custom website design. He’s right, you can absolutely go get a website on Wix or some other DIY web design service. There are many options when it comes to that type of website.
However….
The author failed to point out that:
- You will spend a LOT of time figuring things out. You will spend hours figuring out the DIY website admin area, how their system works, and then more hours learning general web design skills. That’s just to get started. Then you may spend more hours learning every time you want to make a change to your site, or figure out how you broke your website with some stray character, or that you added something that Google thinks is sneaky and took your site out of it’s index (that’s very very bad). I can’t even begin to tell you how many hours it might take for you to fix avoidable issues that pop up along the way.
- You will spend a LOT of time adding and modifying content, and learning code to format all that content. Depending on how you learned to create content, you will spend many hours writing, researching keywords, writing more, modifying what you already wrote, and finding/creating graphics to connect your user with your content.
- You will spend a LOT of time creating graphics. In order for your website to be taken seriously, you need professional looking graphics. In order to do that, you will need to develop skills in programs such as Photoshop and/or Illustrator. There are classes you can take to help you.
- You will spend a LOT of time just getting things to work the way you want them. You may want your logo to go right there! right. Yes, there! and then…you save the page and it’s in a completely different place. Welcome to the world of CSS. This is a code you will also need to learn if you are to understand how the browsers are seeing your site, and why each views your website differently (even from the editor, sometimes).
- You will very likely not own a single piece of your website. Most DIY sites won’t let you download, backup or archive your site you spent so long on. The sites that do let you archive or backup won’t work if you move to a new server.
So, you spend 100+ hours setting up your website, maintaining your website…and then your DIY service goes belly up. Or they decide to hold your site hostage (start charging you for it to work) for $50+ a month.
What do you do then?
There’s nothing you can do. You just lost that investment of time and money, as well as your customers that are now being redirected to wherever that DIY site builder wants to direct them.
Our recommendation regarding the Do It Yourself Website
We always recommend the same thing. Own your brand. Own the domain, the website code, the original logo graphics. Own it! You should be able to grab your website, domain name, logo…and do whatever you want with it.
Domain name (.com) – go buy it from GoDaddy.com (just the domain registration – in most cases you don’t need the other add-ons they suggest)
Hosting – get it from a company that backs up, gives you access, and isn’t hosting 2000 other sites on the same virtual server (speed is important, and too many sites on a server = a slow website). We have fast, reliable hosting here at Damsel Branding.
Webmaster – make sure you have someone you can trust and who will work for you. At the same time, make sure this person isn’t going to let you lead yourself into a bad spot. A good webmaster will tell you that your plan for creating multiple pages of keywords is really not a great idea, despite what your new small business newsletter told you. A good webmaster will tell you that your content needs some work, and give suggestions on how to make it better. Our team has been doing that for years. We can help you no matter how big or small the website. We have very happy references available.
Stay in your lane
You have your business to run, and you do what you do well. If you are doing things that aren’t in your wheelhouse, and spending time learning skills you will never use, and can’t bill for, you are wasting your precious time. So spend your time doing what you do best for your business, and let someone who knows about website design handle that. You will save time and money hiring a web design company.
We can help you with all the above steps, just contact us. We will make the process easy, and pain-free!