Are DIY Website Builders Good for Your Business?

While watching TV, one of the commercials I saw featured a guy driving down the street in an older VW convertible pulling up to up to a man and woman building a tree sculpture and the man said he was the internet and said he knows a bunch of people who would love what they are doing. Then the narrator says, build your website within an hour, something like that. 

There are quite a few Do-It-Yourself website builders out there including GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace, Weebly and others. If you are a business starting out looking to put something up quickly, that will look reasonably well and will be responsive (viewable on mobile devices), then one of these choices will do. These solutions have done a lot of the hard work for you, like starting you off with designs that look good, build the technology that powers their websites, and they even host the site on there own servers and data centers. They also offer guidance on how to get more out of your website, but if you are a business who needs to get the most out of your site like more sales, leads and offer online services, then you may need more. Here are some of the things you should consider when choosing one of these solutions.


What do your clients like visually?


When building your website, have you done enough research to figure out what your customer or the visitors like and who they are? If you are a business looking to make more money off your website, you will want to be sure your site visually appeals to your target audience. These solutions do not provide much help with the needed research to make sure your site visually attacks your clients. 


Have you written your content for your target audience? 


If you are creating new content or redesigning a new website, have you made sure that your content is written for your target audience? These DIY sites may offer guidance on what to write but they will not know what will work with your targeted audience.


Are you trying to drive more traffic to your site?


If you a looking to drive more people to your website, then these solutions come with base SEO (Search Engine Optimization) features, suggestions, and guides, but driving people to your site is a pretty involved process. It requires in-depth research, upfront work, and ongoing optimization to get it right. 


Are you ready to use metrics to optimize your website?


Once your website goes live, are you ready on a regular basis to read the data that tells you how your website is performing and what to fix? These solutions do come with built-in statistics about how many visitors have come to your site, but if you need more, you will need to sign up for a service like Google Analytics. Then you will want to review that on a regular basis and make the necessary changes to increase your website traffic and give your visitors what they want.


Do you have the time?


The last point I want to consider is, do you have the time to do the research needed and spend the time building your site and managing it on an ongoing basis? If you are a small business or solopreneur, do you have the time to devote to do what is needed to get the most out of your investment in your website or do you want to focus on your business and the clients you could receive from your online marketing efforts?