I’m a firm believer in multitasking. Now since I’m originally from the south, I call it killing two birds with one stone. So as a habit, while I am working, I will keep some source of news, music, or other input that I can either focus on— Or tune it out This leads me to hearing a lot of commercials for companies, business, etc. One of these is Weebly.
Personally I cannot stand that name, nor Wix. But I am not here to bash these companies at all, in fact I greatly respect the fact that they are successful and allow individuals to get some sort of presence online quickly. But that’s just it. They will get some sort of presence— Not the kind of presence that is generally impressive or has any particular wow factor. So it seems Forest Gump’s Mama was right on target— You never know what you are going to get. Drag and drop web design like the kind you get when using a DIY site is a lot like that. You really can’t anticipate getting perfect results. Sites may look okay, but they are what they are, cookie-cutter websites plain and simple. Understand, we aren’t trying to make you feel bad or dumb if you have a Wix or Weebly site. We are simply asking you how it’s performing. If it’s not performing well, then some of the opinions and facts outlined here may be in play! Website design and development is much more complicated than many people think, and the advertising for Wix, Weebly, goDaddy and others portray it as something very simple, when in fact, that’s the furthest thing from the truth! It’s not just bing, bang, boom, and you are found on the front page. Dare I say it’s never been like that!
Is That you Clark?
Do you want to entrust your business’s presence online to a drag and drop template? Or would you rather have a professional designer, a content writer with years of experience, and a graphics artist that puts the emphasis on “Artist”? What about these cookie-cutter sites ability to show up on the first page of search results? Check for yourself. Take any popular search term, and odds are very, very good that they are sites that people work on very hard, and are not hosted by Wix or Weebly. Even in this advanced year of 2016— no software is perfect, and this includes the online web editors that create these basic websites. I have used many of them, and my impression of most of them is better left unsaid, but then again, I would rather use notepad.exe to code a website than a drag and drop WYSIWYG website designer that runs on some websites. Note that some are better than others!
What Remains is the Winner
Now it’s not that I’ve never used these types of web authoring tools. In fact, in the beginning before one knew better, they were useful. Maybe 18-19 years ago there was a cool web authoring program named Trellix that was really innovative, ahead of it’s time, but also just as short-lived. It’s success was ease of use, features, and its ability to build beautiful websites quickly. Trellix could have kept going, but was ruined by corporate bumbling, but of course that is an entirely different track best left for another day. When web design first was necessary, there of course was the ubiquitous Microsoft Front Page, and its infamous extensions, (circa 96-97.) Hey, at least you could send a form with CGI. This was before the word SPAM meant unsolicited email, and you could still eat it for lunch if you so liked. Oh come on! You know you love a nice spiced-ham sandwich. But it sounds like I am getting nostalgic and off track at the same time. So back to why you should always choose a qualified web designer with available resources and references over a click and drag, and hope it’s right online website builder.
What are the Advantages?
The advantages of choosing Beach Web Design & IT are plentiful. First, we use words such as, “plentiful”. But seriously— Let’s list just a very few of the most important in a nice list below.
- We handle everything from step 1 to X
- We have mucho grande experience
- You are never left scratching your head
- You are never left wondering why, or why not?
- We are experts with opinions & skills, not just a blinking cursor
- Site types and site functionality are unlimited
Limitless Opportunities
Let’s discuss only the last point, the limitless part. Your website should represent limitless opportunities for you to pick up new customers, clients, sales, or what have you. If it’s not doing that, you should find out why. If you don’t care, then skip the rest of this post, but if you are thinking about building your own website, you probably have a great idea how that website should look. Because these online website builders are systems, you are limited on how you can interact with them, and the types of information you can add to them. It’s their way or the highway as they say.
You may be thinking that of course that’s my opinion— YOU want ME to let YOU build MY website, then you can charge me every month. Hmmm— Actually— We have zero monthly fees, and we will live without building your website if we must. This is not a boastful statement, just the truth. Another truth is that if we are allowed the great opportunity to build YOUR site, we will treat you better than most anyone in business, because we live up to what we say we do, and do more than is required or even expected.
Learn the Facts
What we are trying to get through to you time and again in articles we’ve written such as, Invest in Your Website, Hundreds or Thousands, and Mobile Friendly Website Design, is the simple fact that a website is key to generating sales for your business. If you were a web design wizard, or if it was as simple as they make it sound in the commercials that I referred to in the opening of this post, then we wouldn’t be in business, along with tens of thousands of other qualified web designers and you could let your five year old manage your website. But as Odin told Thor vehemently, “But you’re not!”
The point is that you shouldn’t leave it all up to a few templates that quickly grow stale and code that doesn’t always appear valid! If you aren’t someone that is intimately familiar with SEO, content marketing, websites creation (including source code) and concepts such as page speed, website security and image optimization, minifying content, gzipping web pages, etc. You probably shouldn’t anticipate that just anyone can build a website that’s going to generate tons of hits, web traffic, links and number one search engine rankings. Do you even know what some of this means? If you don’t, just call Beach Web Design & IT— we do. 850-896-1817. Besides, aren’t you busy enough running YOUR business?
