One of the biggest mistakes that small business owners make is not investing in their websites. In many cases, your website is the first contact that customers have with your business, so you want to make that initial impression a good one!
We all know that money is tight for everyone these days, and every business owner is looking to save money whenever possible. With ads for free websites all over TV and social media, it may be tempting to try one out. Before you do, here are some things to consider:
- With domain names like MyCompany@FreeWebsite.com, you may lose credibility with your target audience. Perception is everything, and you want your customers to view your business as professional and credible.
- Search engines may not send traffic your way due to lack of trust. Search engines give more credibility to paid domain names.
- With most free sites, you don’t own the site, you’re only renting it. If the hosting company goes out of business, you’ll lose your website.
- If you decide later to move your site to a new hosting company, you may not be able to and you’ll need to rebuild the site from scratch.
- Much like those free business cards, free websites are mainly template based. Your website could end up looking exactly like your competitor’s.
- Unless you know about creating different types of graphics and pixel dimensions, the images and colors on your site may not match your branding and even worse, be distorted and blurry.
- You could end up with banner or pop-up ads for other businesses on your pages. Not only are these ads taking away from your message, but you have no control over the look and subject matter of these ads. The cost of having the ads removed could very well be higher than the cost of traditional web hosting.
- Help and customer support is usually poor or nonexistent.
- There may be a limited number of pages or storage space for your site.
- Many have limited options for additional features, like shopping carts and custom contact forms.
- The site may not be free forever – check the fine print!
The Best Way to Build Your Website
Work with an experienced, local web designer like Central Studio Design & Communications to register your own domain name and build your website from scratch. You may pay a little more up front, but the rewards will be worth it:
- Your site will be search engine optimized using the latest techniques.
- Your site can have as many pages as needed to get your message across.
- We can add on features like shopping carts, mailing lists, custom contact forms and much more.
- We’ll never put any ads or pop-ups on your site unless you ask us to!
- Our designers will take care to work with your current branding including existing logos, colors and fonts.
- When you call for help, you’ll speak directly with someone who knows about your site and can answer your questions and resolve any issues quickly.
- You’ll receive pricing before we begin work on your site, so there are no surprises when your bill comes.
