Navigating the website builder landscape
Should small businesses use a DIY platform or call a developer?
Amazingly, it’s still difficult for small businesses to build affordable, nicely designed, search-friendly websites. Business owners are caught in a classic dilemma — Should they search the web for ‘best website builder’, create an account with a DIY website building platform and do it all themselves? Or should they find and pay a freelance website developer to set the whole thing up on a well-known platform like WordPress?
Certainly both options are still viable. For businesses considering the do-it-yourself route, here are some thoughts on the state of the website builder market.
What functionality should a website building tool offer?
Any self-respecting website builder tool will include
Templates — select a template and start adding your content
WYSIWYG page editor — a browser based design tool that lets you format, edit, and edit pages without having a background in design or development
Hosting — Your website builder should help you buy your domain name and host your site
…dozens of other common website features and integrations that you may need some day.
Eventually the question will come down to how much flexibility you need. And its hard to tell when you’re just getting started.
Which website builder is right for you?
There are several different flavors of website builders out there. Some are for designers, some are development platforms, and some are for end-users without any design or coding skills. Whether you have your site built for you or you build it yourself, you’ll want to be able to login to the system as a content contributor and edit and add content without modifying the code or design of the page.
Next generation website builders
Recently a few startups have attempted to re-invent the website building space.
Unsatisfied with self-serve design tools, The Grid aspires to let artificial intelligence design and format your website for you. The Grid boasts an ability to “automatically adapt design to make your content shine.” Is AI the best way to ensure a high quality website design?
Pagecloud aspires to give you more design control than most website builder can offer. Pagecloud offers “world first features” like paste from Photoshop and a CSS sucker / template creator. But is more control a good thing? Does Pagecloud solve a problem that businesses have or does it compound the problem by giving non-technical people more control?
The problem with self serve tools
While most of these modern website builders tool are easy to use, the reality is that they often give non-skilled business people too much design power. After choosing a template and clicking around, many business people break their site design, get frustrated, give up and call an expert to build their website on another platform. Too often, the power of a self-serve tool leads to frustration.
Additionally, the template model can be a turn-off for businesses. Why would some other brand’s template be good enough for your brand? And inevitably templates need to be customized which opens them up to all kinds of problems.
A throat to choke
In addition to not wanting to do everything themselves, many businesses prefer to hire a vendor to handle their website simply because they prefer to hold an expert accountable. When your website breaks, you may want someone to call and yell at rather than trying to troubleshoot it yourself.
In a recent survey of 400 small businesses, I found that 52% of respondents prefer the account management or full service vendor model. Only 27% of respondents prefer self-service. 19% of respondents prefer a full custom CMS platform.
What do you need your website to do?
Most likely the goal of your business website is to generate leads. So the end result has to be Google-search-friendly, include web-to-lead forms, and expose your email and phone number to potential customers who stumble across the page. Your website is meant to bring in business for you. Additionally, the site needs to polished, tell the story of your specific brand, include plenty of great, high res photos, be easily read on mobile devices, and integrate with your social media accounts.
The first thing your website needs is content
The hardest part of building a business website may not be using the self-serve website builder tool itself. Rather, it can often be creating the content that you need to bring your web page to life. A business website needs plenty of marketing copy that describes your brand, product and team. And photos, lots of photos. Not just stock photos but custom, high quality photos of your business place, your employees, your products, customers, and anything else that helps you visually tell your story.
Before you start shopping for a website builder tool, write down all the potential requirements you site will have. Have plenty of high quality, custom photos taken and sketch out on paper what you imagine the page layout to look like. Start writing content for all the pages you’ll need like, Home, About us, Contact Us, Team, Product, etc. Do as much as you can on your own before picking up the phone. The first thing a vendor will ask you about is your design ideas and available content.
Build or buy?
The good news is that there are many powerful website building platforms to choose from. But a self-serve platform alone cannot ensure the success of your website. They all assume you want full control, which can be a lot of responsibility if digital marketing is not a role you want to take on.
Certainly, the website design industry is not threatened by the flood of website builder tools. Ibis World reports that the custom web design industry is a $24B market in the US alone.
The question is what level of control you and your internal team want in house vs. outsource. Is setting up your own website or hiring an expert vendor a better fit for your organization?
This post on the website builder market is part of a 6 part series:
Part 1: Navigating the website builder landscape
Part 2: The website builder market is so hot right now
Part 3: The death of DIY website editors has been greatly exaggerated
Part 4: Why hasn’t the web development market been platformized by DIY tools?
