Why Pay For A Custom Website Design?

What’s So Bad About Using a DIY Sitebuilder?

There is no getting around the fact that we are in a very fast moving age of internet technology. This includes the way websites are evolving and the level of interaction between the sites and their visitors. There are so many more things that a website can “do” now, as compared to even a few years ago.

As things started getting more technical as far as building a website is concerned, a lot of pre-built scripts started being offered. These scripts are better known as “site builders”. Companies like Yahoo!, GoDaddy and many other web hosting companies offer them. You can also purchase programs that you can load onto your own computer.

In the time it takes to choose a template and figure out where to put in your content, you can almost instantly have a presence on the World Wide Web. Nowadays, almost anyone can have their own website without knowing a lick of HTML coding or having any graphic art skills. Nope, it’s not like back in the late ‘90’s when everything was accomplished by hand coding and the like.

And yes, tens-of-thousands of people use these site builders and are quite pleased with them. However, there’s a big “but”, and that is …

How Easy is it to Integrate New Software or Scripts? Or is it Even Possible?

I can assure you from personal experience, that even if you find a website builder that looks like it’ll be more than what you need, in not too much time, if you are serious about having a real online presence, you will invariably want to customize your site in probably more than one way.

Maybe you’ll want to add the really neat interactive chat box you saw offered for $100.00 and is said to increase sales conversions by 20%. Maybe you’ll want to add a PHP script that allows for easy banner ad rotations. Maybe you’ll want to be able to make simple font color changes to your sub-headers across your entire site with the click of one button, instead of having to go into each page and manually change the coding. I think you get my point.

Most all the people I know in this group (myself included back in the beginning of my online marketing experience), think “No big deal. I’ll just tweak this program without much trouble at all! I can do it!” Do you know HTML? Do you know about CSS? Do you have the graphic editor to change image sizes? Etc., etc.

How Much Time Do You Have to Devote to the Learning Curve Involved?

The honest truth of all this is most of these add-ons are usually NOT easy to install, or easy to customize, or easy to get to work seamlessly with other functions on your site. So, let the many many hours of your new learning curve begin (groan). This truth is based on my very own personal experience with my very first website.

Or another issue which is all-too-true: I discovered (years ago with my first website – I paid a company good money in order to utilize their site builder and hosting program) that I couldn’t use a rather simple PHP program I wanted to purchase and integrate into my DIY site because I was told PHP wasn’t compatible with the site builder program.

The light bulb on just how limiting this site builder website was, and how incapable I was to move ahead with necessary improvements to the site now went on for me.

Why a Custom Built Website is Really Quite Cost Effective in the Long Run

So now, I realized this affordable website builder wasn’t really so affordable, because it couldn’t be integrated with what really was a very simple PHP script. It couldn’t do what I wanted it to, and there was no way I could integrate the software I wanted to have on my site.

But sometimes issues aren’t even as complicated as this. Perhaps you begin realizing that your “amateur” designed website is looking like just that … amateurish! If you’re serious about a professional, online presence, and you’re like the vast majority of us, you’ll soon realize you don’t have the skills, nor the TIME to spend in order to learn everything it will take to build out a good looking and user friendly website.

Honesty, all that I’ve shared here is exactly what happened to me.

Even more importantly, you and I are NOT a professional web developer! So no matter how hard we might try, we really haven’t a clue as to how to build a properly coded, W3 compliant, SEO friendly, and easily navigable website! Did I forget professional in appearance, also?

As example, do you know:

• The ramifications of having a confusing navigational hierarchy?
• How to easily collect the email addresses of everyone that visits your site in order to help build up your mailing list?
• The proper width a website should and shouldn’t be?
• Why you should never design a site using frames?
• Why having a splash page for your intro page is a bad idea?
• Why using some of those fancy fonts in your content you like so much might not be a good idea?
• About browser compatibility issues?
• And this list could go on and on …

Are You Really Serious About Your Online Presence?

There’s a saying “put your best foot forward”. This saying also truly applies to your website. I don’t care if it is only a three page site that showcases your brick and mortar store and is meant to only attract local traffic; or an e-commerce store selling your handmade products; or a site to promote your professional services; or a blog where you hope to generate some AdSense income.

No matter what the marketing purpose is of your website or blog … if you’re serious about a long-term online presence, then a custom site will prove to be a winner for you in every way you can imagine. No kidding.

I’ve laid out these all too true scenarios for you, because professionally I encounter this “I can do it myself much cheaper” mentality too often than not. Hey I told you … I too was basically guilty of that attitude when I first got into online marketing. In defense of myself, and for lots of other people too, I’ll admit it … I didn’t know any better that I should do some online research about custom versus site builder sites. Newbies really don’t know. I understand that now.

I can only encourage you to investigate the option of starting out your new online marketing business with a custom-for-you website design. You don’t have to spend a lot. You can get a simple custom site, from honest designers, for around $500.00 on up (depends upon your needs).

Now granted, there certainly won’t be lots of bells and whistles if you’re only paying $500.00 to begin with. But the point is that you’ll have a cleanly coded site that can be improved upon easily as your needs grow. And there are ways your designer can include a built-in HTML editor for you, so you can pretty much do everything by yourself to keep your site updated with new content, ads, etc.

The bottom line here is this: I encourage you to investigate your options before you jump in head first with only MONEY – the “how much can I save?” mentality – ruling your decisions. Again, it is true that you do most times get what you pay for, and even if a custom design is only $100.00 more than what a DIY site builder site will cost you, I’d vote for spending the extra $100.00 now, and forego the daily Starbucks or Seven-11 slurpees for a month or two.

I’d love to discuss how I might provide you with your very first website or how I can revamp, update and improve your existing site. Please visit my Custom Website Design Services page for more information.