Making your own website might seem like a great idea. You’ve started thinking about a new website, and maybe you’ve done some Googling. As a result, you’re seeing a load of targeted ads from Wix, Squarespace and plenty of other providers.
Whilst those sites may be useful for someone who has just started their business or wants to trial a new website, they’re not suitable for the majority of businesses that want to build something unique, tailored to their needs and built to last.
We’ve collated 5 things to remember if you’re thinking about building a website on your own.
It’s not as easy as you might think
Let’s get this out of the way first – building a website isn’t actually as easy as it’s made to sound.
For those using website builders like Squarespace and Wix, it’s implied that you can drag and drop and boom – you’re done. There are a lot of factors that aren’t quite as romantic and don’t make it to the adverts.
Whilst you might be able to make something that looks cool, functionality, UX, UI, branding and mobile responsiveness are essential in ensuring your website succeeds online. Unless you’re talking to a web design agency or web developer, it’s unlikely those providers will offer any support on ensuring all of those factors are working in your favour. Instead, you end up with a poorly functioning site that isn’t delivering the results you’d expect.
Templates aren’t all they seem…
There is a middle ground. Instead of using website design and hosting companies, you can download a theme and use it on WordPress to build your own site.
Templates are a good resource – but only if you’ve got a decent level of knowledge surrounding design and development. Otherwise, you’ll notice that unless you want the theme to look exactly as it does in the template, things may start to go wrong.
Very quickly you can have a site that’s no longer responsive, with irregular branding throughout and likely to go out of date within a year or two, thanks to the updates to external plugins fighting against your out-of-date theme.
Making small changes can cause big problems
Similarly to our last point, small changes can lead to big, unwanted issues. Simply moving one element on a page can open a pandora’s box of unexpected side effects. Before you know it, you’re paying developers to patch up holes and provide fixes to previous fixes – and it can all get a little much.
Some specific problems to watch out for when you’re making changes:
URLs
When changing URLs, they can often damage internal and external links, meaning buttons may no longer work and your UX is impacted.
Responsiveness
When you make a design change, double-check it on mobile, desktop and tablet. Just because it looks ok on one, that doesn’t mean it looks ok everywhere.
SEO
If you’re changing the names of pages or page content, Google will know about it. Unless this is managed properly, it can impact rankings and reduce the effectiveness of SEO campaigns.
Optimisation for SEO and PPC
With a fully custom-built website, you’re in control of your SEO and PPC opportunities. Our websites are built using WordPress, which has an extensive range of plugins available to help benefit SEO and PPC campaigns, whereas other providers such as Wix struggle to offer these integrations.
The help of a web development team can be invaluable – especially when it comes to building specially optimised pages for PPC, or creating content that is aimed at increasing rankings with SEO.
Security and updates
It’s getting more important than ever to enforce security – and the risks of having an unprotected site can be huge.
When running a website yourself, you’ll be in charge of discovering and implementing safety and security updates. Often this can be more confusing than people expect.
As part of our service, we ensure all of our 500+ clients are up-to-date at all times, doing our best to keep their websites safe from cyber threats and protect them from any security compliance issues as a result.
Remove the risk – talk to our team
We’ve built over 500+ websites for clients all over the globe, giving them the best chance to be found online, as well as impressing their potential customers when they find them.
The proof is in the pudding. But it’s also right here, where you can view our projects.
Ready to talk to an expert? Let’s chat about what we can do for you.
