 | 4 Problems with Wix, Weebly, and Do-It-Yourself Web DesignsLast Updated on Monday, 09 June 2014 10:06 Written by Rob Turner Hits: 7556 |
4 Problems with Wix, Weebly, and Do-It-Yourself Web Designs
I have been designing a lot of websites lately and I'm starting to see some very common mistakes being made by small businesses. It goes without saying that your website is a reflection of your business and should be taken just as seriously as your storefront.
One very common mistake I'm seeing is the use of free or cheap website building platforms like wix, weebly, or GoDaddy hosting templates.
Why should you avoid these platforms?
1. Design.
1. Design.
Your site will look like many other peoples site. Each of these sites give you a limited number of templates. While the design may come out looking pretty good, you will likely have a very similar design as a lot of other people. You will gravitate towards the template that looks the best on that platform. So will everyone else.
2. Control
You are putting a lot of faith into a hosted solution that can change their terms of service, go out of business, phase out support for certain templates and themes. Leaving you stuck with a dysfunctional site.
3. Limited Functionality
Hosted do-it-yourself website solutions often limit your ability to extend your websites functionality. Your website should have the flexibility to interact with any new social media channel that comes along. You simply cannot do that with most of these types of sites.
4. Search engine optimization
You are often very limited on how much you can optimize the on-page SEO factors. While in theory, you should be able to rank one of these types of sites at the top of Google, I rarely see these sites prominently ranked. For one, you are having to mask your domain and not use a quote regular "domain name. It is even worse if you are using the supplied domain name like mysite.wix.com.
So what should you do?
My advice is to build your site on the self hosted version of WordPress. WordPress powers some of the most influential websites on the Internet.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of beautiful templates to choose from.
It is a known fact that Google loves WordPress sites. This fact alone makes it a clear winner.
By carefully choosing some very powerful plug-ins, you can optimize your site for optimal ranking in Google.
You can interact with any social media channel, making your website the center of your online presence. While interacting on social media sites are good thing, you should not put your faith and investment of time into the sites alone as they often come and go in popularity. With a WordPress site, your investment in time creating content can stand the test of time and you can reap the benefits indefinitely. In short, you can have your cake and eat it too!
At islandnet.com we primarily build all of our clients websites on the WordPress platform. Over the years we have developed a suite of plug-ins and modifications that greatly benefit our clients.
Check out our design special promotion.
