As a business owner, you have a skill or a product that you sell to your clients. Your clients happily pay you for your expertise because you know how to perform the task better than they do. This is the exact reason why creating a DIY website can be dangerous for your business.

You’re not an expert web developer.

And your time is best spent focusing on your business, rather than tedious website creation, maintenance and optimization.

Let’s discuss a few of the main reasons why a DIY website is not in your business’s best interest.

1.     YOU’LL WASTE TIME ON A TASK NOT RELATED TO YOUR CORE BUSINESS

Professionals know the ins and outs of website creation. Through experience, they’ll be able to create a website faster and more efficiently than you. Doesn’t it make more sense for you to focus on your core business activity?

As a business owner, you need to spend time on growing your business – not tasks that eat away your time.

Professional website developers will be able to create a website that reflects your business’s main goal. You’ll be able to attract new clients, receive new leads and present your business in a professional manner. There’s a lot of work that goes into a website’s creation, such as web development and graphics design. These are tasks that are difficult for one person to take on.

2.     MOST DIY WEBSITES ARE NOT SEO OPTIMIZED

There are millions of websites that no one will ever visit. It’s not that these websites don’t have good content, or aren’t related to a great business. The issue is that search engine optimization will ultimately drive potential visitors to your website.

Unfortunately, most DIY websites are not optimized for search engine optimization.

How will your site be found on Google if you never rank for your main keywords? Unless you dedicate a large portion of your marketing budget to pay-per-click advertising, you won’t get leads to your website.

Organic leads are not only free, but they are necessary for your website to be a success for your business. Without SEO optimization, you’re going to be missing out on a lot of potential leads and business.

3.     FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE EVERYTHING

Web design is an art. You have just eight seconds to attract a visitor’s attention before they leave your website. If your website is not designed professionally, you won’t have the graphical layout or design needed to attract visitors and provide the first impression that your business needs.

Your business’s first impression matters to your potential customers.

A professional website can be your most important advertising tool, but if it’s not created with the utmost attention to detail, you may actually be turning off potential customers.

4.     A DESIGN THAT IS GENERIC

Your business is not generic. There is something that makes your business stand out; this is why your customers rely on you. If you have the same template or design as every other business in your industry, what makes your website stand out to your visitors?

Generic templates and designs are boring.

Not only are these designs boring, but they do not reflect your business’s values or purpose. Generic designs can also have a lot major issues, technically, that can be dangerous for your business, including:

• Lack of security that could lead to a data breach or infiltration that could damage your personal brand.
• Lack of proper navigational organization. If visitors can’t figure out how to navigate your site quickly, they will leave and go to a competitor.
• Many templates, especially older templates, are slow and don’t render properly in all browsers. If the client goes to a website on their iPhone or tablet, it needs to render properly and quickly.

Generic designs are not optimized for your particular business or website. Instead, these designs are meant for the masses and can actually harm your brand.

And your site might not even work on mobile devices, which is a necessity.

5.     YOU’RE OFTEN STUCK WITH A DIY SERVICE

Sometimes, businesses need to pull up their boots and do work on their own. We understand this – you need to save money, and doing it yourself can be the answer. But a DIY service always has something in small writing that ultimately causes you to spend more money than you would if you paid a professional in the long run.

For example, many of these services require you to:

• Use their web hosting solution that is overpriced and often slow.
• Pay monthly fees despite no continual upgrades done to the service or your website.
• Use the service to continue hosting your website, or make it very difficult to transfer your website to a new web host.

Effectively, many of these DIY services hold your website hostage. You won’t have complete control over your website or the hosting that a professionally-created website offers. Your users will find your site to be generic, hard to navigate, and Google may find that your DIY site goes against the industry-recommended search engine optimization protocols.