Website Development

Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace or WordPress

Wyatt Meese
By Wyatt Meese

I really like the look of my website, but people have a really hard time finding it.

Yup, sounds familiar.

Let me guess:

  1. Your current site is built (or is being built) by your sister’s friend’s cousin
  2. You got burned or know someone that got burned by a self-proclaimed webmaster a few years back
  3. You made a Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace, or WordPress site because you wanted to be able to update it yourself
  4. You watch a lot of DIY channels

Well fear not, there is still hope. First, let me debunk the above website stereotypes.

  1. Chances are you never saw a portfolio from your sister’s friend’s cousin, so you learned your lesson and you are moving forward.
  2. Fear not, the web dev industry has changed a lot and those developers of years past that haven’t adapted newer technology, content management systems (CMS) and marketing capabilities into their mix are slowly being weeded out. Again, you learned your lesson and are moving forward.
  3. Most sites now allow you to make standard text changes through a CMS.
  4. We know you are a DIYer, but have you also seen Disaster DIY on HGTV? Yes, there are some things best left to the professionals – soldering pipe and website development.

Do You Have the Tools to Build a Customized Website?

There are some great tools out there to provide you a rentable platform to present your product/brand on a website, like Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace. They walk you through the process, you pay monthly. Easy right? Well, just because you own a hammer doesn’t mean you can build a house.

There are many many elements to properly marketing your website: engaging images (properly sized), strong calls to action, good ratio of image to text, keyword-rich text, optimized content, and well-thought-out web structure. So your option is to learn the above or to hire a marketing agency that asks you, ‘What are your business goals?’ and presents those clearly on your website, which will in turn bring in new quality leads for you.

Yellow Pages Ad OR Lead Generation Machine?

One change in website development is that your website is no longer a yellow pages ad but a living breathing marketing lead generation machine. Do you really want it to be a cookie-cutter template? And even if you can customize it, do you really have the time and expertise to do this on your own?

Our advice is to hire a professional to understand your business goals and let them create an online presence that mimics your company’s business objectives. The professional agency has done this before, many times. They will do things you didn’t even know were possible to optimize your website as well as provide you great insight into promoting your brand, utilizing your blog and your social networks to your advantage, and gaining new leads.

Time Commitment

If you choose Wix or Weebly or SquareSpace, you will spend a week researching which is best. And you better pick correctly, otherwise you’ll have to duplicate all the setup time on the next platform.

Next, you’ll lock yourself in your office and ignore your actual business to spend at least a week picking photos, cropping and resizing them, writing content, researching competition, and designing your website inside the template provided only to pull back in your sister’s friend’s cousin for advice. Meanwhile, your business — the one you are doing this for — is lacking your management and expertise and not bringing in sales without you.

You’ll get it launched, voila! Beautiful, you pay your monthly rental fees and you wait for new business to come in. You wait some more. You read some articles on SEO. You even call a few marketing agencies and ask if they can help you with your SEO.

Fast forward a year. You’ve now spent at least 4 figures with a website that brings you no leads, generates no new business and that can only be found when you type your business name. Sigh. (This is not a hypothetical situation, we’ve seen it, numerous times)

Our solution, skip all of this and call a marketing company and let them create a presence that will represent your brand and drive leads to you.

Is your Wix, Weebly, or SquareSpace Worth it?

There may be some cases, where a SquareSpace site is fine. But, if you are looking to bring new traffic and new leads to your business, you need to consider letting a professional marketing agency design and develop a professional representation of your work, one that you own and works for you.

Choose Custom WordPress Development.

A professional web developer or marketing agency is someone that can take your business goals and develop them into a marketing plan while utilizing your website as the hub for all your marketing activities and marketing strategies.

Website ROI baby.

How much do you have to sell from your website to return the investment on a custom site? Gather your quotes, look at the numbers and think, if I had x more sales from this site, then the site will pay itself off in x amount of time. Simple really.

And if you are ready to take that leap of faith with a professional agency that has helped hundreds of businesses and organizations thrive, check out our custom web design services!