Everyone knows that when it comes to first dates, you don’t want to go cheap; McDonald’s isn’t a good first dinner date.
With a nice meal at a fancy restaurant, you want to make a good first impression on your potential partner. The same is true for your company’s website.
You could use a free website builder, but you get what you pay for, and with a free or low-cost website builder, you’re more likely to get disappointing results and little to no online visibility.
5. A website is useless if no one can find it
So you create your company’s website using a free website builder. So, what now? How will people find your website and contact you or buy your products?
Nowadays, word-of-mouth only gets you so far. Approximately 8 out of 10 people look online before making a purchase decision. According to AdWeek, 81 percent of people conduct online research before making a purchase. Sharing your website link with family, friends, and business associates isn’t enough to make your website stand out among the hundreds, if not thousands, of companies offering the same thing online.
When you use a free website builder, your website is not designed to be easily found on search engines. Many free website builders claim that their sites are built to be found on search engines, but they get away with it by including the most basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as part of the website build, essentially not explicitly hurting your chances of being found on search engines, but also not doing much to help either.
The alternative is that anyone can use a free website builder to create a website and publish it online. However, producing any results from that website and getting people to find your website requires a team of multi-disciplined professionals on your side.
To avoid your website going unnoticed by the majority of your potential audience, you’ll need a web design agency that includes SEO professionals, web designers, web developers, and other Internet Marketing professionals to build your website with an SEO-friendly site structure, allowing your website to achieve valuable, high positions on search engines when people are searching for your product or service.
4. A free website builder is not designed for lead generation
Assume a potential client visits your law firm’s website and needs your legal services after being injured in a car accident. They may be interested in hiring your law firm, but how do they contact you to set up an initial consultation?
While it may appear obvious that the potential customer should contact your company, you may be surprised at how many free website builders fail to make this as simple as possible for interested customers.
The alternative: If you use a free website builder, you will miss out on opportunities to optimize your website for lead generation that would otherwise be available if you built your website with a professional web design agency.
People have grown accustomed to finding important information, such as contact information or a phone number, in specific locations within a website’s layout after years of using the internet. Web design professionals understand the best placement and presentation for prompts that entice potential customers to contact or buy from your company. It is critical for an organization’s website to be designed with the user experience in mind, guiding potential customers through their purchasing decision in such a way that working with your company is the obvious logical conclusion.
3. A Free Website Builder May Not Be Appropriate for a Growing Company
If your company is expanding, so should your website. You may currently provide certain services or sell certain products, but growing businesses frequently expand or change their offerings. When using a free website builder, even seemingly minor updates, such as additional inventory, compliance changes, additional services, or even making blog posts about company news, can be much more difficult than they need to be.
Some free website builders only allow you to make changes to your website if you know how to code in computer languages like HTML, CSS, and/or JavaScript.
While other free website builders do not require you to know code to make changes to your site, they may include frustrating content controls that appear to be intuitive, but when you log in and try to make changes, the intended look and feel of the website may break.
A drag-and-drop interface sounds nice until you drag and drop a content block that doesn’t clearly explain what it’s for, changing the layout of your site and adding clutter. You could delete what you just added, but sometimes the damage has already been done, and it can be difficult for someone who isn’t a professional web designer to restore the desired look and feel. Inserting some extra text into a free website builder may unintentionally stretch out a part of the website design, which can break the intended look and functionality of a site.
The alternative: For any organization’s website, it is always best to hire a professional web designer. Professional web designers and web developers can analyze an organization’s specific needs to ensure that all technical and aesthetic considerations are taken into account in order to achieve the goals you set for your website.
When you work with a professional web design firm like Marcelo Design X, Inc., your website will be built with a Content Management System (CMS) (CMS). A professionally developed CMS is designed to make site updates as simple as possible while also preventing website updates from breaking the web design.
2. A free website builder only provides a one-size-fits-all solution.
You’re not creating a website for a company; you’re creating a website for yourself. While there are numerous free website builders that appear to provide a plethora of options for customizing your website to fit your business, a free website builder is inherently a one-size-fits-all solution.
When you use a free website builder, your options for building your site are limited. With a free website builder, you can select from a variety of options for certain elements of your website design, which you can then modify to fit your brand and business. But what if you wanted to display your multi-tier pricing in a specific way to encourage the sale of a specific product? What if you didn’t want to use the free website builder’s default layout?
When you use a free website builder, you’re taking a cookie-cutter approach, which means your website will look a lot like everyone else’s. However, doing business entails competing with other businesses, and standing out is the only way to get noticed by potential customers.
The alternative: Working with a professional web design firm allows you to create a custom web design that is tailored to your company’s specific goals.
1. A free website builder may result in the loss of potential customers or clients.
We’ve all tried and failed to find something we’re looking for, whether it’s our car keys, the remote control, or our phone (often, it turns up right next to you). However, when we are considering purchasing a product or service from somewhere and are unable to find what we are looking for quickly, we give up and look elsewhere.
If they can’t find what they’re looking for right away on a mobile site, 61 percent will quickly leave for another site.
Because potential customers or clients are especially transient on the internet, it’s critical that your company’s website makes it as simple as possible for them to find what they’re looking for.
While you may be familiar with your customer base, you may be unaware of certain search terms that the majority of people use to find the products or services you provide.
A simple-to-use website is essential for preventing potentials from becoming lost opportunities, in addition to making your site easy to find when people are searching for what you offer.
A business website’s navigation should make it simple to find desired products or services. This necessitates that a company’s website navigation balance both search term goals and user expectations for where they’d expect to find specific information or services.
When you use a free website builder, you’re on your own to solve SEO, UX, and navigation issues rather than working with a professional.
Speak with a Web Design Company Before Using a Free Website Builder.
When using a free website builder, there is a lot that can go wrong and little to nothing that can go right. While a free website builder can assist you in getting your website online, they frequently result in low online visibility and anemic online lead generation.
Marcelo Design X. Web Design & SEO has helped 200+ companies create a professional web design. Our over 19 years of experience include custom web designs for small businesses and national corporations.
- All of our websites are made to look and work equally well on phones, tablets and computers.
- Our team includes SEO professionals and analysts, delivering a web design solution that features a site structure that’s optimized to achieve valuable positions on search engines.
- We make website editing easy.
- Each of our website design projects are custom to achieve the individual goals of each client.
To discuss your organization’s web design needs contact us…
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