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Want to Keep Your Customers Engaged on Your Website? Here’s How

One of the fundamental principles of running a successful business is to maintain customer satisfaction. Once you achieve that, it becomes easier to increase your profit streams as they find it easier to purchase from you. Customer satisfaction comes in many forms. Ideally, maintaining a high quality of product and [...]

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Why Using a Free Website Builder Could Be the End of Your Business

Web Design Tarun Gehani todayOctober 2, 2014 5

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free website builder bad for business

Free website builders are a dime a dozen.

Well, actually, they are free. But you know what I mean.

You get what you pay for.

I’m sure it can be enticing: you see a commercial on TV from a seemingly reputable web hosting provider, advertising their “free” website builder.

“It’s as easy as 1-2-3!”

Best of all: it doesn’t cost a penny!

All you need to purchase is a hosting plan (which is around $5 – $10 per month, depending on your needs), spend a few minutes to set up your website using their easy-to-use templates, and you’ll be all set!

Sure, these free website builders and cookie-cutter templates are fine if you’re promoting a one-time event like a graduation party or your daughter’s Sweet Sixteen, but do you really want to represent your company’s brand by using a free template?

People are more and more tech savvy nowadays.

They are able to recognize when you didn’t spend much (or anything) on getting your website designed.

[Tweet “First impressions are lasting impressions; make no mistake when it’s your business on the line.”]

When you create a free website through one of the many hosting providers online, you could be hosting your entire website underneath their website.

So what?, you may ask.

Or, What does that even mean?

Well, first of all, it doesn’t look good.

When people navigate to your site, they’ll see something like www.hostingprovider.com/yoursite or www.yoursite.hostingprovider.com.

Either way, you are losing huge branding points here, not to mention the lack of direct traffic, page views and high search engine rankings.

You see, when people come to your site, Google and other search engines track how many visits you have, how long those visitors stay on your site, which pages they view, and if they click the “back” button on their browser (I know, right? Technology has come a long way!).

The point is, you and your website can never truly benefit from all the traffic you’re getting.

At least, not in the search engine’s eyes.

They see all the traffic coming to www.theirsite.com, (since yours is a sub-domain) and they build up credibility for the hosting site.

Additionally, many of these free website builders’ business models are based on displaying advertisements or shady links on your site, or by charging you a monthly fee.

Doesn’t really seem that “free” anymore, does it?

Who knows how long that company will last.

If they go belly-up, guess what?

Your site goes with it.

You don’t own the code, nor the design, nor domain, heck, you don’t even own the content that you worked so hard to write!

Why take the risk?

How much can “free” really be?

What sacrifices do you have to make in order to get a free website, which you build based on a template (which anyone else can use)?

Are those sacrifices worth it?

Besides, how will it scale up when your business expands?

  • Can you easily add a blog, social sharing buttons, a shopping cart?
  • Can you change the fields in your contact form?
  • Can you capture leads, nurture prospects and track conversions?

Isn’t that what a website should do: actually work for you?

[Tweet “There are no shortcuts to success.”]

Success is the result of many events consistently going well over a period of time.

That brings us to another point: time.

Time is money and money saves time.

You need to ask yourself if investing in your business’s website is worth the time and energy it will save you.

Time saved creating and designing the site, time teaching yourself or your staff how to maintain and update your site, something which would take a professional considerably less time (and cost you less money in the long-run).

Don’t look for the cheap and easy way out; look for what will work for you and your business in the long-run.

[Tweet “How many successful businesses were built on a free website builder?”]

Don’t limit yourself.

Don’t deny your success.

Written by: Tarun Gehani

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