Why You Shouldn’t Go for a Generic, DIY Website
If you’re running a startup or small business, money is essential. Every single penny counts, and you may be constantly looking for ways to cut your costs. But when deciding what to spend on, consider this: will the money you spend now have a good result in the long term, or will the money you save now end up costing you more in the future?
For some business owners, for instance, the idea of a ‘cookie-cutter’ generic and do-it-yourself website is highly tempting. Imagine, you can pay a very low fee every month to have your website, and you can even design it yourself. But there are many reasons why a generic, DIY website may not be one of your best options. Let’s look at these reasons.
Websites which lack Unique Appeal
One of your essential goals is to make customers realise how different you are from other businesses which offer or sell the same things. You want to show them how special your company is, and you want your customers to know that you can provide a wholly unique service. But if you go for a generic, cookie-cutter site, you are essentially contradicting your message of uniqueness, because generic websites are, as their name implies, generic – you’re just the same as the rest. You don’t get a chance to stand out with a website design that’s being used by hundreds of other companies.
It’s not yours
Another reason why generic, cookie-cutter sites don’t work is that they’re not yours - as web designers in Bristol we notice this with websites regularly. You’re simply ‘renting’ a template and then having a platform host your website. You are making use of a particular platform’s system, and this means that your level of proprietary control over your site is limited. If you make a decision, later on, to migrate to another platform because your site isn’t getting proper results, you have to start from the ground up. You can’t just transfer your website. If you’ve managed to build up a good SEO strategy on the website, then you will lose it when you start over.
Non-optimisation of SEO potential
Speaking of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), a generic website may not really give you what you require when it comes to SEO success. What you want is for potential clients to know about your business and to find you when they do a search. If a client does a search for keywords related to your business and you don’t pop up in the first few results, chances are, you will not be found. It’s not just about selecting some pre-chosen template keywords, either – it’s about doing a lot of research on your market and being aware of the latest search algorithms (which change all the time), which a cookie-cutter site won’t really be able to keep up with.
Tagged as: Web Design
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