It’s estimated nearly 35% of small businesses do not have a website. 35% of businesses are giving up being found. 40,000 searches are performed on Google PER SECOND! That’s 3.5 billion missed opportunities for a new customer to find your business. (Noted that not all 3.5 billion searches will be for a “vet in Norman, OK” or your business.)

By not showing up in the search engines or on the internet at all, customers can’t find you, and you lose credibility. You’re working hard to develop a strong reputation and build a client base. Don’t blow it with no website.

“OK. I’ll get one quickly with one of these do-it-yourself sites.” 30 minutes – one episode of Game of Thrones and I have a site. Careful. That may not be your best idea.

Low Search Ranking. Your DIY website will not rank well, which makes it harder for people to find. This will affect how much traffic you can potentially get because your site will not be search engine optimized (SEO.) Because self-built sites sometimes limit you to just one page, (they appear to have multiple pages, but technically, you don’t,) you decrease the amount of content Google can search for. Decreased content means fewer search results and traffic.

SEO. SEO is easy to tackle when building a website in a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress (the CMS we use for all our sites.) You develop your strategy, and you implement it across every page and blog post. With DIY sites, implementing an SEO strategy is nearly impossible. You do not have the ability to download an SEO boosting plugin. Additionally, when limited to a one-page site, you can’t create multiple kinds of keywords, page titles, or meta data to be indexed for other search terms. It’s like having a phone book with only 1 page.

Not Mobile friendly. Slow-loading self-built sites, that are data and graphics laden, turn off all mobile users and exhaust limited data plans faster. Only desktop users can see your site and they won’t wait longer than 5-7 seconds for a site to load. Would you? In DIY sites, you have to specify that you would like to build a mobile site and then enter into the separate editor. None of the site templates are responsive. A responsive website is how your site should be built. Not “mobile-friendly”.

You’re Stuck. When you develop your website using DIY sites you have nowhere else to go. They host your website and you can’t go elsewhere, which may not sound like a bad thing but…

You’re Stuck 2. What if your website is performing well and you want to add features to it that aren’t supported within a DIY site or you want a major overhaul.  Essentially, you’ve outgrown your website. If this happens it is very difficult to move your content away from the self-built sites.

Not Free. DIY sites have a very attractive initial platform as the base offerings are free.  With the free plans you have their branding on your site.  You also can’t add in Google Analytics tracking until you get onto premium plans.

Your website is one of the three most valuable assets of your business. Wouldn’t you agree that your business or organization deserves more effort into your website than the time it takes to watch a Friends episode? A quality, original website can take a few weeks to a few months, but the ROI will be seen for months and years to come. Let us know if you’d like to speak about your website.