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Website Builders - the Affordable Alternative Need a new or updated website? You are not alone. With all the competition out there, choosing how you'll develop your site is your first tough task. The Kelsey Group estimates that 35-40% of small businesses in the United States now have Web sites. The number will exceed 50% in less than two years. (3/26/05) That's a lot of websites to be developed, designed and built. If you are a small business or non-profit looking for a new website you have three real choices: Hire a web designer/design company, buy the software and build it yourself, use a website builder often provided by a hosting company. Costs vary significantly but typically you can expect to pay $500- $5000 for a custom designed website. Quality varies as much as price. Choosing a designer can feel like a crapshoot - roll the dice and pray. Building your own isn't cheap either. You'll need a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get) and image editing software. Your initial costs - before hosting fees - can start at $150 without any guarantee that you'll find the time or resources to actually build your site. Building your own site can be costly if your home built site drives off the customers, clients, donors, visitors that you need to attract. More and more people, businesses and organizations are turning to website builders to create and maintain a website. As with custom designed sites, you are supposed to get all the tricks and tools the professionals used bundled with hosting services for one low monthly fee. Using a builder can save you thousands of upfront design dollars and get your site up, running and making money in hours. Of course, use the wrong builder and you run into the same problems as building it yourself - it's either too difficult to use without experience or you create a site that is just a waste of web space. If you decide to go with a website builder you'll need to evaluate the service for the three fundamentals for a successful website. User Friendliness Website builders should be easy to use and lead you through every step to create a successful website. If you have to learn website design before using the builder, it isn't worth the effort. Your time is money. You run a business, you shouldn't have to add site design and SEO to your skills. -Most people need a site builder with complete template designs. Learning what content goes where on a website and why could take you months or years of research. A handful of web elements (buttons, dividers, images) are not good design. -A good site builder should help you write the content that your visitor is most likely to be interested in. You know your business, organizing it for a website is a critical function of site design. -Your site builder should format the headlines and other text content letting you focus on what you are saying, not how to present it. -Online web site builders let you update your content from any computer with an Internet connection. If a builder requires special software, it reduces your flexibility and opportunity. Visitor Friendliness If your website isn't easy to get around, your visitor will leave before learning how great your product, service or event really is. Your site must offer clean, consistent navigation on every page. -Your site builder should format the text content so that your most important messages are most accessible. -Your site builder should offer fonts that are available on the majority of computers and are tested as easy to read. Its not enough that you like the way a font looks. It has to be available and it has to be readable. -A good site builder offers color combinations that enhance your content not distracts from it. Light colors on a dark background are not user friendly. You may catch the visitor's eye but you are unlikely to make the sale if reading your page is uncomfortable. -Your site builder should help you format your images to be web ready. Images that take too long to download will limit the number of visitors that stay on your site. Search Engine Friendliness Most websites rely on search engines to generate traffic and ultimately sales. If your site can't be search engine optimized, it can't bring in the numbers to be successful. For a site that only receives a handful of visitors, the numbers can be pretty discouraging. With a statistically sound conversion rate of 2-3% it takes a lot of unique visitors to make your website pay well. Unless your site can do well on Google, Yahoo and MSN, it's nearly impossible to generate the kind of traffic most need. A good site builder must offer the tools to make your Search Engine Optimization easy. A great site builder will do the work for you. -The most important factor in search engine optimization is your readable text content. Without solid content, there are no tricks that will help you achieve high ranking. -Hidden under the page, are a number of code items that the search engines look for. If a site builder doesn't let you create these bits of code (or do it for you), your site can't be optimized. You may or may not have heard of meta tags and alt text but using a site builder should make it easy to use them. -Search engines change their algorithms frequently. You need a site builder that keeps up to date and helps you get to the top and stay there. Conclusion A good website builder is more than a good deal. Yes, you should compare prices. You should also look at the product you are buying. Don't be fooled by a low monthly cost if the service can't deliver the goods. Big name web brands don't always offer the best value, just the most obvious one. Industry specific web builders may sound good but all websites need the elements we've discussed. Do your homework and get the site you need. About the author: JoMarie Thomson has been a professional web site designer and developer since 1997. She is the creative force behind http://www.crucibledesigns.comand http://www.ProBizHosting.net
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