Is A Site Builder For You?
Online website creation tools have come a long way in the last decade. The industry has gone from Dreamweaver’s poorly generated HTML to medium quality code generation provided by site building software like Parallels Web Presence Builder (Formerly Parallels SiteBuilder). Despite this, many are still are left wondering, is a site builder right for you? There are at least three key reasons why a site builder may not do the job well for you: 1) quality of design, 2) software quality vs. Cost, and 3) time investment.
Quality of Design
While most site building tools provide you with templates to start with, most people have a difficult time judging which template will best match their business. This creates a branding disconnect between the design of the website and the design of all other business materials like brochures, business cards and signage.
When you start integrating content with the template, you often discover that things don’t really match quite as you visualized beforehand and the whole process results in a subpar website; not a great outcome!
No matter what, unless you’re a designer by trade, chances are you’re going to wind up with a sub-par website if you build it yourself. We recommend trusting the professionals to get the job done right instead.
Software Quality vs. Cost
When it comes to site builders there’s normally just two ways to go. The first option is an all-in-one site builder and hosted platform like Squarespace. While Squarespace (et. al.) have an excellent website creation utility, you pay a premium for access to their software, along with limitations. For example $10 / month only gets you 2GB of storage and a limited number of pages. To make matters worse, if you ever need to cancel your site is gone; your data doesn’t ‘belong’ to you.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have web hosts with built in site builders that offer hosting plans as low as $3 / month for unlimited pages. Their site builder software quality may not be as good as Squarespace, but you’re also paying 1/3 the price — perhaps a trade-off you’re comfortable with.
Time Investment
This is the biggest problem with do-it-yourself site builders. So much time is wasted learning the ropes of how to build the website that people can often get frustrated and halt development. If you’re running a business and need a website, the last thing you need is to waste hours of your time every day trying to figure out where to put what on your site. Don’t waste your time learning a system you’re only going to be annoyed with — if you get frustrated then you never want to update your website and you can easily lose a fantastic resource for bringing in new business.
Conclusion
If you have all the time in the world, want to cut costs (over a professional design), and you’re not building a site for business that requires the quality of professional designs, then go with a great site builder. Even better, if you want to cut costs, go with a web hosting plan that has a site builder built in!
If you don’t have a design sense, get easily frustrated by software or, most importantly, if you’re like most business owners and don’t have the time to put in to building a website, then don’t build it yourself! Trust the professionals to get it done for you.