07/13/2016
More Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use the “Free” Website Builders:
The “Free” website builders may seem like they simplify getting your business site onto the Internet, but there are other more important factors that you should really consider.
Flexibility, Control and Transferability of Skills.
Building your website using a “free” site builder only seems easy on the surface, since it provides the illusion you don’t need to dream up the visual appearance of your website. You can simply use their provided templates. But despite what newcomers think, designing a website is more than creating an pleasing visual look. There are far more important aspects to web design, including usability and search engine friendliness. As you learn more about these things, you will want to modify your website so that it is more usable and search engine friendly. When you limit yourself to a “free” site builder, you are surrendering flexibility and total control in exchange for initial ease-of-use.Now, of course it’s possible that some site builders provide you with facilities to modify every aspect of your web pages. To do that, you will probably have to spend time learning the interface and working with it (or even around it) to accomplish your task. Why bother? All the skills you acquire in working with the site builder are not transferable. The moment you leave that web host, you have to re-learn everything again. You might as well have spent the time learning a standalone web editor, such as WordPress. Your skills will then be usable no matter which web host you use, even if they don’t provide a site builder.
Content:
The most important part of the time creating any website is drafting your content, whether it is your product description or sales pitch. When you use a site builder, you still have to invest time and energy writing that content. There is no shortcut. If the pretty face of the online site maker led you to think that creating a website will take you no time at all, think again. The only one that can generate good content is you. The site builder will not write it for you. All it can create are the pseudo-Latin “lorem ipsum” gobbledygook meant as placeholders for your real text.
Transferability of Web Design: Are You Locked into Your Web Host?
We’ve heard about how other people’s websites were locked to a particular web host, because they used their host’s website builder. The template and graphics used by the builder were copyrighted, and licensed to them for use on their website only if the site remained on that host. If they were to move to another web host, they could no longer use that template. This is the most serious problem of all. Does your site builder tie you to your web host? Will you be able to move to another web host simply by transferring all the files to the other host? If you find that the terms of use of those templates do not allow this, you should not even consider using the site builder. Never allow your site to be locked into any web host. If the hosting company deteriorates, or unreasonably increases their rates, or even goes out of business, your website and your business will be held hostage.
A Very Simple Solution:
Why bother with all the hassles of learning or updating your “free” online site builders? We at iCatching Webs can help. A professionally and custom built site may not be as much as you’d expect and it certainly may take less time than you’d expect. Your custom site will be owned by you, not us. So even if you decide to move your site to another web host or maintenance person, no problem. We’ll supply your site files. At iCatching Webs we also have 6 month and annual website maintenance packages. Any changes that you want during that period we will make. Just email us your content and/or any images. It’s that simple.
Learn more about us at iCatching Webs here: www.icatchingwebs.com
