Building a website is drag, drop and easy.
Maybe that’s the impression you have right now.
But ‘easy’ does not equal results and we urge you to consider our 10 reasons you should not build your own website before taking action.
Read on or use the table of contents to ‘jump’ to a specific section in the post.
Table of Contents
1. Quality Not Speed
DIY website builders create websites in hours while a website created by a professional takes between 2-4 months (typically).
And its common sense to derive that more time/effort/resources will produce a higher quality website that will:
- Leave a favourable first impression
- Connect with your target audience
- Be primed to convert.
Takeaway: Your website is your greatest asset and quality requires a greater investment and takes more time. Anthony Iannarino summarises it best here: “It costs a good bit more to begin with higher quality inputs, but the result is something worth more on the other end.”
2. Expertise/Passion
You know your brand, but you are not your customer.
And therefore, it makes sense to hire a professional who can use their ‘expertise’ to make informed decisions for your brand based on success from past projects.
Engaging a professional with ‘passion’ is equally as important because it gives you a powerful edge to keep one step ahead of your competitors (as reported by Forbes here).
Because unless you have the expertise/passion you’ll be closer to ‘guessing’ the solution than ‘knowing’ it.
Takeaway: It makes sense to engage a professional with expertise and passion because your brand succeeds when it does – as explained here by Dan Schawbel of the Personal Branding Blog.
3. Efficiency
Unless you have the ‘skills’ (you will quickly find out) when building a website:
- You don’t have the right tools and experience
- The learning curve is steep
- It will take much you much longer than it needs to.
And time is money!
Your time needs to be spent growing your business.
Paying an expert saves you time and money (long-term).
Takeaway: Any successful brand obsesses over efficiency (these brands did and look what happened). So just accept an expert can deliver a better UX (user experience) for your website visitors (a key SEO ranking factor).
4. Design & Branding
DIY website builders have design limitations.
And this is the last thing you want (with your website) when you are trying to make a:
- Great first impression with your target audience
- Statement that you are a ‘distinctive’ brand.
Because unfortunately there is a ‘sameness’ about DIY built websites, when you need to stand out from that, to establish a competitive edge.
Takeaway: First impressions for your website are critical (you only have about 50 milliseconds) and differentiation is crucial to any brand’s success, as summarised by CXL here.
5. Customisation
DIY website builders cannot be customised. They are:
- Basic
- Not interactive
- Limited.
So if you want additional features, third party integrations or advanced functionality – you won’t be able to do it.
And why immediately limit your brand’s success? When customisation can give you a competitive advantage and breaks you away from the ‘sameness’ we spoke about in design & branding (4.).
Takeaway: You’re limiting your brands growth if you invest in a DIY built website. Because brands grow (and fast), so it’s not too long before requirements change, and the website needs to adapt.
6. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
You can’t have a great website without driving qualified traffic (SEO) to it.
And SEO optimised websites are prioritised by Google over DIY built websites (that lack SEO functionality).
It’s therefore critical to invest in a SEO optimised website that is:
- User friendly (11 characteristics of one here)
- Google friendly (to allow search bots to crawl you website easily – steps to do it here)
- Mobile friendly (with the rise of the mobile-only user).
Takeaway: SEO is what ‘fuel’ is to your car. Every website needs it and so if you don’t invest in a SEO optimised website you can’t expect online visibility (getting found) and results (with conversions).
7. Performance
The analytics used by DIY website builders is basic, limited and often inaccurate.
Because the key data behind analytics allows a brand to:
- Establish baselines
- Set benchmarks
- Put in place goals to keep moving forward.
That is the summary made by the Council on Quality and Leadership here and Grow add to that here by outlining data can:
- Help you make better decisions
- Solve problems
- Understand performance
- Improve processes
- Understand customers.
Takeaway: We live in a age of analytics and it’s the importance of data quality that counts. And when you invest in a professional website you can expect professional analytics that helps drive all brand decisions for maximum success.
8. Security, Support & Maintenance
Security, support and maintenance sound boring but it only takes the tiniest breach of Google’s Terms of Service for your website to be shut down (and with the prospect of your brand having to start from scratch).
So yes – it’s critical!
And DIY websites (as opposed to professional websites) will never be as:
- Secure
- Supported
- Maintenance friendly.
Takeaway: Think big picture (things go wrong online) and take a proactive approach (planning for the worst) by only investing in a professional website with the right security/support/maintenance to give your brand peace of mind.
9. Competitive Advantage
Building a DIY website is mainly science.
But there is an art and science of building a great brand.
And by engaging an expert (to build your website) you engage the ‘art’ and ‘science’ of building your brand that is needed for success.
Takeaway: Understand that competitive advantage is everything and that all starts with a great branding strategy (made up of art and science). And from there, to maintain your competitive advantage, you must improvise and innovate in every scenario you face according to Entrepreneur.
10. Return on Investment
After you’ve gotten over the ‘hurdle’ of making the investment in a professional website you will quickly discover that it’s cheaper (long-term) and provides better:
- Results
- Conversions
- Return on investment (ROI).
And marketing ROI is proven to be the metric that matters most to investors.
Takeaway: As a brand you must always be thinking ‘big picture’ to achieve maximum success. And only big picture thinking will allow you to correctly choose a professional website (maximising your ROI) over a DIY website (not maximising your ROI).
Conclusion
Author Roy T. Bennett summarises it best: “Do what is right, not what is easy.”
So don’t just build a DIY website because it’s easy and pay attention to the 10 reasons you should not build your own website (we’ve mentioned in this post).
Because it’s proven a professional website will build a brand (of any size) better.
Over to You…
Do you agree with 10 Reasons You Should Not Build Your Own Website? Or is there something missing, or you would like to add?? Would love to hear from you in the comments – any feedback is greatly appreciated.
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