So you feel your business is ready to go online and you need a website? Great! Now we will always recommend using a professional web design service (what kind of business would we be if we couldn’t plug our services :-P) but we can understand why people would opt of the DIY method and use low cost, easy build website builders. Now having seen loads of these (looking through our hands) we have seen some shockers in our time. As the site builders are very restricted to start with there are a lot of mistakes out there that we have seen on DIY websites.
So what are the biggest mistakes of DIY websites?
Choosing a template based purely on looks
I would hope this would be obvious. If something looks great it doesn’t always mean it works great right? Your structure and navigation of the site is absolutely crucial. If a user can’t find what they are looking for easily then you will have lost a customer. Your menu’s and flow of the site need to be spot on – a good web designer will brainstorm this with you highlighting pitfalls, errors and seeing things from a user perspective.
Thinking that Simple design Means Easy Design
Having your website simple isn’t always easy. A minimalist website is very different from a simple one.
Here is a simple website: http://www.irishwrecksonline.net/
Here is a minimalist website: https://www.apple.com/ipad-mini-4/
You probably like the second one best right? It may look simple but actually the amount of design that has gone into it is pretty complex. The colours and feel of the site has to match the brand. Then they have to lay the site out in storyboards and produce high quality graphics. It would have been rigorously tested by lots of users on different devices and web browsers to find any problems or mistakes. As you can imagine, this won’t have been completed in a day. You really don’t want your site looking like the first one. We can help with that!
Choosing a Website Based on Cost
The old saying “You get what you pay for” rings true here to an extent. I’ve seen great websites done at low cost but these are from people who have spent years honing their craft and studying for qualifications in web design. A lot of DIY website builders may offer low costs but do you think these sites can compete with the customer design and support of a dedicated web design service? Website builders generally have poor structure, lack any features and offer no technical support. If you need your site to be a work horse for your business then it’s a no brainer.
Forgetting Your Calls To Action
When a user lands on your web page they are normally looking for a solution to a problem. E.g. if they are looking for a toaster and they come to your page, you really want to have a big flag or something eye catching that says to them “GET A TOASTER RIGHT HERE”. This is what we term as a ‘call to action’. You want to make it as easy as possible for you users to get to where they want to go. We can add these all over your site which will increase your website conversions. These often need to be customised and placed right where they will have maximum impact. You will often be restricted with these on a DIY website builder.
Forgetting Metrics
One of the important things about having a website is seeing the statistics of people visiting it. This is done via Google analytics and similar. With our websites we can fully integrate this to your site and give you access to the interface. Without tools like this you will never know how effective your site is.
Slow loading website
This goes without saying. A lot of people nowadays will click away from a website if it doesn’t load within a few seconds. DIY websites will normally be hosted on computer servers with other sites. This will impact the loading time of your site straight away. The other factors in slow loading websites are large graphics and too many server calls. A good web designer will know how to compress and optimise thee graphics for the web and reduce the amount of information the server needs to load. You don’t want a slow loading website to result in a loss of sales.
Forgetting About SEO
You want your website to be found. We see a lot of DIY websites that are poorly ranked on Google. A lot of DIY websites are not optimised for search engines. To achieve this you really need to optimise your graphics and website key words for how you want o be found. If you want to appear in that first page of search results you are going to have to spend a lot of time and research on your website. A professional SEO service can help with this immeasurably.
Poor Security Measures
How secure is your DIY website? What would happen if your website was hacked or infected with malware? Does your DIY website provider backup your site? We see a lot of lax security measures on DIY websites – your customer information could be vulnerable. You wouldn’t leave your shop unlocked overnight would you?
Our servers are highly secure and we take backups of our websites every day. We take security very seriously. If the worst were to happen we can have your website cleaned and restored to full working order within a few hours of notification.
Not Being Mobile Ready
So you have your new DIY website and it looks ok. Have you thought about how it will look on a mobile phone? Is your site responsive? A high number of DIY websites we come across are simply not built to change depending on which device it’s being viewed on. If a user can’t view your site on their phone then chances are you will have lost a customer.
Every site we build is fully responsive to be viewed on all devices.
If you would like help building your website please get in touch with our team today! [email protected]
