What A Do-It-Yourself Website Builder Won’t Do For You

Owning your own business is a lot of work and risk with a high reward when it all succeeds. It’s never been easy to run a business of any size and today there’s a new dimension to the difficulty in the form of the Internet and websites. Every business needs a web page. Do-it-yourself website builders are out there, but they might not do all of what your business needs to succeed.

At Cloud Talk USA we realized nearly every successful business out there uses the power of a website to sell products and services. Restaurants publish menus along with photos of delicious foods on sites to entice user’s day or night. Real estate agents flood pages with images of beautiful homes and satisfied new homeowners. And e-commerce-focused companies feature catalogs of products, user testimonials, and more. A website is necessary for every business, but not in the same way.

The easy way to get a website up and running is by using website builders like those offered by GoDaddy, Wix, or Weebly. The tools and services provided by these builders make creating and maintaining a website a user-friendly affair. Most offer drag and drop features for photos, text boxes, and more. Website builders are a great option if your businesses only need the most basic designs. Because the problem with website builders is that their simplicity limits how unique your site might look. Website builders also lack many advanced features and don’t leave the door open to features that might make your site stand out.

The alternative to website builders is web designers. Designers offer three key advantages over web builders.

Customization

While web builders offer various templates for design choices, in the end, when you are choosing from 100 templates along with 100,000 other small business owners, the variation dwindles. A web designer can make your page as unique as your business. Unique features like membership signups, robust image gallery and controls, user polls, and more are available by using a good web designer.

Cost-Effective

Let’s be clear; a web designer is more costly up front. However, in the long run, you’ll have a customized website that’s cheaper to maintain than what’s possible with a web builder which comes with monthly fees. A customized website from a web designer is also easier to transfer from one host to another than some web builders. If your business grows, a transfer is likely to happen and can ultimately be expensive without the guidance of a web designer.

Flexibility

One of the biggest problems with web builders is the lack of ability to grow with your business. As your website garners more traffic, a web builder’s hosting capabilities will fail to keep up with the demand and features like memberships, user polls, or advanced navigation cannot be added. With a web designer, these features are all available.

So, what should you choose? A small, simple business might be okay using a web builder, but for a company looking towards a viable future or an e-commerce business should make the investment in a web designer. The customization, flexibility, and optimization are advantages no business should be without.