Years ago, when the Internet was still an infant child, you only had one option if you wanted a website: build it yourself. You learned HTML, which you coded by hand, and slowly <a href>ed and <br>ed yourself a fancy website. If you wanted to make changes, you had to do it by hand, and it was tedious work, but in the end, it was your work, and you were rewarded with visitors and site traffic.
Today, things are a bit different. There are advertisements all over your social media streams and TV about how easy it is to build a website for your business. These ads show some ultra-cool hipsters making a website that looks cool, sells their product, and was super-easy to make, all in a matter of seconds. You might find yourself thinking about it, too. But I’m here to warn you – don’t believe the hype! Here are three extremely important reasons that sites like Wix or Squarespace can be bad for your business:
You want SEO not SEOHNO
One of the main reasons you want a business website is so that your potential customers can find your website through search engines, right? Every time someone visits your website to see what goods or services you have to offer, that’s one more possible client. Unfortunately, with most plug and play sites, you sacrifice search engine optimization (which is what SEO stands for, if you didn’t SEKNOW) for what seems to be easier customization. Google and other search engines want your business website to have easy-to-follow sitemap with actual page structure and content that they can crawl through and analyze, and they don’t appreciate the jumbled internal mess that they find with any plug-and-play site architecture. And that doesn’t even take into consideration how bad the mobile functionality is!
Why would you want to make it difficult for anyone to find you?
It’s Hard to be Original when You’re the Same as Everyone Else
Have you ever seen a website for a new business and thought to yourself “This looks familiar?” That’s because another sacrifice for plug-and-play functionality is customized design. Sure, you can choose a theme, and change a color and font here and there, but in the end, you’re just one house in a Stepfordville neighborhood designed by the same architect. Same floorplan, different furniture, twelve exterior colors to choose from.
Shouldn’t your business website have a unique feel and vision?
How can you manage your content without a CMS (Content Management System)?
Most importantly, you want to have total control over your content, and with a plug-and-play website, you have zero control beyond the most superficial. If that company went out of business tomorrow, your site would be gone. Kaput. One day they might just disappear and your host will be nowhere to be found.
CMS is the only proper site architecture for a business site, if you want to take your business seriously. With WordPress or something similar, you have the control to do what you want, when you want, and you own all of your work! Your files, designs, documents, and images aren’t going to disappear on a whim because they’re under your power.
Why would you want to give control over your business website to a faceless organization with poor customer support?
This is why smart businesses use a full site concierge like Venture Rich for their website needs. You get total control over your content, endless design possibilities that will be unique and tied directly to your vision, and top-notch SEO that will help you bring customers right to your virtual door! Say no to plug and play and say yes to a better, smarter business website by scheduling a consultation today!
