Building a website can be daunting, especially if you’re trying to do it yourself. Companies like Wix make everything simple, requiring no experience in web design in order to build a website in your free time. Sounds perfect!

Well… it is perfect until every waking hour that you’re not in work is spent:

-planning your website’s sitemap

-changing templates

-working out why you can’t get a bit of text to go where you want it 

-asking your other half what they think of a font pairing (anyone else hate having to give their opinion on something they don’t care about?)

Goodbye evenings, weekends and holidays. That is before you’ve even thought about the copy you want to have on each page and the images you are going to include. 

Using Wix (or any other DIY website builder) may be the perfect recipe for a divorce and if that isn’t enough, here are 5 more reasons why you should NOT use Wix! 

No Identity

Wix has over 90 MILLION users and only 500 templates. The likelihood is your website will end up looking just like someone else's, maybe even your competitors. In order to stand out, your website needs to have a unique design that clearly communicates your brand.

No Optimisation 

A successful website is always being optimised. As with any other part of your business, you must constantly be improving it. With a Wix website, you don’t have the freedom to use A/B testing and user flow testing, and therefore you may struggle to improve things like the engagement rate. The result is that your website won’t grow or evolve.

No ownership

If you create your website with Wix, you won’t own it. Wix does. If they decide to take down their platform or remove certain features, there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re essentially just a subscriber to their platform to which your licence is revocable. As a business owner, you should never be that dependent on an external company. 

No Support

If there’s something on your website that isn’t working, or you can’t figure out how to add a certain feature, you’ll struggle to find someone to help. Need a new feature or something custom built, time to enrol in university to get yourself a degree in programming.

No Way Out

Finally, there’s no way out. There’s currently no way to export your data to another platform so if you decide you want to add some new features to it that aren’t supported by Wix or decide you want a complete refresh, you can’t. You’ll end up having to completely rebuild your entire website from scratch- and that’s no fun. 

Cost

Finally, as your business grows and you require more features for your website, you can expect your monthly subscription to increase as the premium features incur a premium price tag. 

What about SEO?

Even if you do manage to build a decent looking website, has it been optimised for SEO so it gets found on Google? Is it designed and built to generate leads or is it just pulled together randomly? 

Finally...

Building a website is a bit like building a house- it is incredibly personal and requires a team of professionals with specific skills to get exactly what you want. 

You wouldn’t try to build a house by yourself so why try it with your website? 

Getting it wrong could be very expensive. How many leads might you miss out on because your site isn’t built to convert leads - getting a professional website built might actually save you money!

Web designers (like us) can help you create a website that is unique to your business, fully optimised and completely yours - and even after it’s complete, we’ll still be around to support you and make any changes as your business grows and develops. 

So make a smart decision - use SMK and stay married!