There are plenty of online tools that provide the capability of creating your own website from pre-made templates. It all seems promising, enticing and the companies who market those tools demonstrate them – that they are powerful and as easy as you would walk in the park. But truth the matter is there are lots of factors that you should consider before thinking using one of these tools to build your business website.
- Customization – design limitations
These tools don’t give you much options to customize, often you need to stick with the initial design. Hence your website won’t look unique. Think what if your competitors have the same design as yours, how bad will it look. Most of these templates are basic and lack the responsiveness, which is a must have feature on a modern website. And most of the times those designs won’t look professional.
- Efficiency
If you never had built a website before, these tools will take some time to get your head around it. Plus, sometimes you may come across errors which may take longer to figure out and sometimes might need to ask help from a pro. Unless your site is too simple, most of the sites needs updating/maintenance with latest technologies (plugin’s, antivirus etc). Considering all these times you’ll have to spend on your time, you may otherwise use to acquire new customers. Say for an example you spend 60hrs to build and maintenance (1 hour X week for maintenance + 8 hours to build) for the first year. And if otherwise a pro charges $3000 for the website. Think how many customers you may be able acquire using this 60hrs and how much profit you may have after paying for the web designer.
- Not Search Engine optimized
Most of these websites are too basic and not search engine optimized. SEO is one of the most time-consuming processes of the web design cycle. Unless you’ve experience in SEO, to learn it and to apply it might take longer than you would imagine. Google friendly web designs are utmost important factor in modern web. No matter how good, how fast your website is, if google couldn’t find your website you’re wasting your time and money.
- Poor support service – corrupted html, database files, links etc
Websites often come across technical issues such as corrupted html files, corrupted database files, missing links etc. unless you’re familiar with troubleshooting these technical issues, you will have to ask for a help from a pro. These web companies not well know for helping customers for such technical issues. Waiting time to attend to a support ticket is so long that you may wait for few days for a fix. Think of the lost you’ll encounter if your website is down for few days.
- Competitors may be using professional service
While you’re building your own website using a very common web template, your competitor may get a pro service and may build a unique, customized and modern website. A website is the first impression of your company for an online customer-Something that you should consider seriously.
- Advertisements & footer banner
You’ll have to advertise the brand name of the tool that you’re using. This is not a professional look on the website or on your company.
- Not mobile friendly
53% of modern internet traffic is from mobile devices. Most ready-made templates designs are not mobile user friendly and lack the basic UX (User experience), UI (User Interface) designs. Hence, it’s impossible to think about customer will return to your website if the first experience is bad.
Consider all the above facts before you decide to build your website. A professional web developer charges may vary depend on various factors such as type of website, geographical location, how many pages on your website. Etc.
