Whether
you love them, hate them, or have only heard their name in passing in an
advertisement on
social media, website builders have entrenched themselves in
the world of web development.
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This
rise in “ease-of-access” builders has caused many people who aren’t versed in the
technical aspect of web development to believe the profession is one that is
“simple”. Some even believe that
website builders can achieve — or surpass —
the work delivered by professional developers.
This
article will go over the top reasons why website builders are, in fact,
vaporware and shouldn’t be considered by anyone unless they’re genuinely
starting out a business out of their garage.
To
keep things brief: If you are in any way serious about your online presence and
seek to build a reputable brand and website for your
business, we recommend
that you pursue a basic website that you develop in-house. It will be
significantly cheaper for you in the long run than relying on a website
builder.
However
if you are starting out by drop-shipping products, builders may be the way to
go.
Design
is everything
An
original website design goes a long way in building a brand, whether you’re an
experienced web developer or not.
Apple’s minimalism and Balenciaga’s bombastic
website design are both examples of a unified look and feel that they carry
through on all of their communication platforms. Your website must do the same.
While
a professional web developer can mold your website into any shape or form, most
website builders come with severe limitations as to what can and cannot be done
with its content. Most website builders try their best to convince you to go
for their “themes” — prebuilt websites that users plug their content into in
“
segments”.
Even
if these builders offer hundreds of different themes, it means that there will
be possibly thousands of websites that look identical to yours, which will
dilute the originality and uniqueness of your brand.
Google
hates you
For
the uninitiated,
Google ranks websites according to dozens of factors related
to your website, especially what it calls “components”. Through the use of
crawlers, Google evaluates the content of your website and labels it
accordingly in order to match users with your website when necessary.
Websites
require
search-engine optimization, or SEO, in order to ensure that these
crawlers can understand, and therefore rank, websites higher and closer to the
end-user when users search for key terms. In other words, websites live and die
by SEO in terms of organic growth and reach.
It
is there that builders tend to fail. As a layman you have no control over the
code as it happens behind the scenes, and as a result you have limited options
to increase your website’s SEO. While
Wix and
Shopify have tools that assist
you with some very rudimentary SEO best practices, these tools are generally
considered to be relatively weak. Furthermore, websites developed through
builders often load significantly slower than those developed in-house;
something that both Google and your users absolutely despise.
Your
website isn’t for everyone to enjoy
Almost
all web builders are poorly optimized for responsive design, which is the ability
of your website to automatically adjust itself to the size of users’ screen, be
it an ultrawide 43-inch monitor or an iPhone 6’s miniature screen.
This
is especially relevant when it comes to
ecommerce platforms, where users should
be exposed to calls to action and product listings form the moment they land on
the page. However, with a lack of proper responsive design, there’s a good
chance your products will be out of place or missing altogether. The likelihood
of this increases with a higher number of products.
Limited
functionality
While
e-commerce platforms such as Shopfiy have gone to great lengths in order to
develop a robust platform to attract as many would-be entrepreneurs as
possible, the opportunities for the integration of various apps, payment
methods, and other non-native applications is severely limited.
Another
thing to keep in mind is that all of the integrations found on the websites are
often automatically updated and may not take into consideration the effect that
will have on other modules embedded in the site. In other words, one module on
your website updating could cause another module to break, potentially crashing
your website altogether.
This
problem can be compounded further when less tech-savvy users have no idea this
is happening and are left unable to identify which module is causing the
problem.
Custom-built
websites don’t always have this problem, as in-house web developers can update
their modules in a test environment. This ensures that errors are caught well
before they become a significant problem.
Conclusions
Unless
you are just starting out with e-commerce, or are looking to establish a blog
within 24 hours, we highly recommend you don’t go with generic website builders,
especially those that offer prebuilt templates.
There
are many more technical reasons we haven’t touched on in this article, but the
fact that your website is very likely going to be buried in the
Google search results should give you pause. Even if your website is discovered, it will look
unprofessional.
That
doesn’t mean you should stay away from the cheap thrill: there are countless of
freelancers that use
WordPress for their web development needs; a middle ground
between ground-up web development and website builders.
WordPress
offers more utility and a bigger payoff than traditional builders, but is
significantly more technical. It won’t break the bank, either, as many
developers are willing to take on a WordPress website for as little as JD1,000;
completely customized and built from the ground up, and catering to your brand
identity and customer journey.
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