In today’s world, if you want to advance your business, promote your work or run a project, you have probably come to the conclusion that having your own website is a good way to get your activity noticed. In today’s world of mass communication, a website can be a jackpot casino win for you as it serves as your business or project’s window to the world. The website gives you a forum where you can present, simply and succinctly, what you have to offer, how you can help a potential client or customer attain what s/he wants and everything that a viewer needs to know about what you are presenting.
Website builders use code to create a website where textual, audio and visual media is inserted in a manner that’s as attractive as possible. But if you’re looking for a way to create a website on a budget, there are programs that allow you to, essentially, drag-and-drop your text, images, videos, audios, links, questionnaires, contact forms and other media to create a basic – and sometimes quite substantial – website.
So why doesn’t everyone build their own website? If it’s so easy, you would think that it would be a money-saving solution for any business or project.
There are a number of reasons why building your own website is a good, money-saving and efficient idea. But there are also a number of reasons that it’s not suggested.
What are some of the pros and cons of using a build-your-own-website software?
DIY Website Builder Programs
There are a number of build-your-own-website software programs. Three of the most widely-used programs are:
- WordPress
- Weebly
- Wix
WordPress.org is a free, self-hosted, open-source website builder. Currently WordPress hosts almost 40% of websites worldwide. It’s relatively simple to use and offers a wide range of tutorials to help you advance your site with extensions, themes and plug-ins.
Weebly and Wix are similar. Both offer a drag-and-drop website builder and options to add in blogs and choose from dozens of mobile-friendly themes. Users can easily open an online store on either a Wix or Weebly website.
The do-it-yourself website builders are convenient. But not everyone likes to use them. What are some of the pros and cons of using these build-your-own-website software programs to feature information about your business or project to the world?
Why Hire a Professional Website Builder?
Many businesses and projects decide to go with a professional website builder because they are familiar with all of the aspects of website building and maintenance including best practices for SEO. Design agencies know how to interface with the webhost, the domain registrar and other intermediaries that are needed to keep your website up and working.
Pros also have the right software needed to create top-level graphics and other media to make the site look professional. A professional website builder will be up-to-date on the latest updates regarding SEO optimizations and site analytics to keep your site at the top of search engine results. Website builders create the site from the ground up in a way that optimizes it for SEO. If the site experiences technological difficulties, link breaks or disappears from the Internet, the web builder will have the skills and knowledge needed to get the site back up and running.
Finally, it’s more important than ever today to have a site that’s mobile-enabled. Worldwide, more than 50 percent of Internet users are online with mobile either part of the time or exclusively A build-it-yourself site won’t necessarily be mobile-optimized, meaning that your content won’t be easily viewed by mobile users. That means that you lose frustrated viewers who will be happy to go to your competition to find solutions to their needs. A website builder will create your site so that it’s accessible on mobile as part of the website building package.
Why Use a DIY Website Builder Software?
Cost is obviously an issue when deciding how to build a website. If you’re just starting out you may want to even go for a free website builder which allows you to get your site up on the web, though your URL will include the name of the website builder (i.e. xxxxxx.com/weebly) and an advertisement for the website builder on your site. You can upgrade at any time and pay a yearly fee of $20-$50 which not only allows you to maintain the web hosting service but also gives you access to all of the site’s add-ons.
If you build and maintain your own site you aren’t dependent on anyone else’s time schedule to get your site up and running. Obviously, this means that you have to have the time to build your site. If it’s a few webpages, it’s probably not a problem. If it’s a more extensive site with dozens or hundreds of web pages, it can be a problem for your own schedule. The decision is yours to weigh.
The website builder software has its own designs, backgrounds and other illustrative features built into the program. You have multiple choices from which to choose when building your site so your site can look great. If, however, you have a very clear idea of how you want your site to look or a specific theme that you want for your site, the website builder may not be the best option.
Building a website with a website builder program is pretty easy and intuitive. The website builder programs have dozens of easy-to-follow tutorials, both on their sites and on youtube, that walk you through the basics and the more advanced parts of the program. You don’t need to learn any code or have special technical skills to put up a site that includes text, H1, H2 and H3 headings, images, audio and visual content and anything else that you need to provide viewers with the information that you want them to have.
You can update your site at your leisure, within minutes, with new information, and remove old, outdated content. Do-it-yourself web builder sites include built-in analytic and SEO tools which tell you how your traffic is moving, which pages are the most popular, which links get the most clicks, if there are errors or pages that are down on your site, etc. You don’t need to be an expert SEO marketers or pro website builder to understand much of this information so that you can make any needed changes.
In general, website building sites are mobile-optimized but it’s important to check that this is so before you sign up with a DYI website builder company.
Your website is a major element of your ability to make yourself visible in the online world. Consider all the different reasons pro and con for building your own website vs. hiring a website builder to build your site before you decide how to proceed.
