Everywhere I look right now there seem to be ‘build your own website’ adverts on the TV or Radio – saying how cheap and simple it is just to knock up your own website at the same time that you secure your domain name.
These companies boast how easy it is just to drag and drop images and headers, add pages, text, and get found easily online. Sounds simple right?
The truth is, that we are often asked to build websites by people who have gone down the ‘build your own’ route first, and that’s because building your own site from scratch is hard work, time consuming and often confusing.
We have seen countless cases of unfinished sites – particularly when complicated features like e-commerce need to be added.
What frustrates me the most is where you are offered something which is usually called an ‘SEO’ package as you check out. It will usually be accompanied by a line that says something like ‘help your business to get found more easily online’ and will involve you ticking a box and paying either a one-off payment or additional monthly fee.
This bothers me because SEO is primarily based around keywords, on-page set-up, page titles and then other off-page factors such as Social Media, backlinks and so on – it’s impossible for an automated piece of software to be able to predict or handle any of this information without knowing the exact nature of your business, the competition involved, how well you’ve titled the pages on your site, the type of content you’re writing, how often you tweet or blog – there are literally stacks of reasons that you may or may not rank well on Google but I can tell you that simply ticking an ‘SEO’ box will certainly not help you in anyway.
There’s also the matter of content-management – how you will look after your website in terms of maintenance, posting blogs, changing images and text on a regular basis – and how the website reads and navigates to the user.
Also – these types of website are often template-driven and so you can end up with a site that looks much like a competitors’, or even worse, uses exactly the same colours, logos or generic stock-photography – not the type of image you want your business to be projecting.
If you’re running your own business then it’s important to focus on what you know and what you’re good at. Spending countless hours trying to build a website with no previous expertise might save you money on a professional web designer but is more than likely to be a false economy in the long term.
Need help or advice with your website? We’re only a call away.
Get in touch now on 08433 832 732.
Written by Matt Davis | Managing Director | The Bright Click
