Have you fallen into the free website builder trap? Check!

What is a free website builder trap and have you fallen into it?

You may have already tried a free website builder or you’re thinking about giving one a chance.

They’re pretty easy to use (you don’t even need to know how to code) and seem cheap.

Free website builders provide things like free templates, easy-to-read support articles and 24/7 customer care. In addition, you can get your perfect domain for free for 12 moths! And when you pay a little more for a premium account, the provider will remove their branding and ads from your site. Sounds good enough, doesn’t it?

So you get your free website and all is well and good. This is until one day you realise that your website doesn’t look as professional as your competitors’ websites, and more importantly, it doesn’t bring you any business. Consequently your return on investment (ROI) is poor.

Moreover, you notice that your business website is difficult to find on Google as it doesn’t rank very well.

Perhaps, the monthly payments for the “free website” are also starting to increase.

What should you do if you find yourself in this situation? What steps should you take next?

How can you escape your free website builder?

If you didn’t purchase the most basic plan, you can downgrade your current one. This obviously comes with some consequences – the provider’s branding and ads will return to your site, you may have to change your URL to include their name, and so on. This may look even less professional.

If you don’t want to downgrade, you can do the opposite and pay more to upgrade to a better plan. However, if you do that, you will increase your overall investment and won’t necessarily improve the quality of your website.

Some free website builders also offer paid apps that you can add to your site to help your ranking. It is however difficult to say how effective they are (read about SEO here). Getting traffic to your website is one thing, converting is another.

Another option would be to switch to another “free” provider/ free website builder. The problem is that you will get almost the same product – they don’t differ that much. In addition, you will have to copy the content of your existing website by yourself which can be a tedious task.

You could also consider employing an experienced web developer but you will likely have to pay £800+ to get your site fixed (depending on the number of pages and amount of content). This may be terrifying.

A web designer may tell you that because there is no way to access the files of your website (free builders don’t allow it!), you can’t just migrate them to a new site. Consequently, your existing website will need to be re-done completely from scratch.

This is a bigger issue if your website is full of content and you have 30+ pages. You don’t want to lose all the work you’ve done…

This is unfortunately one of the biggest “free website” builder catches. They allow you to produce an unlimited amount of content which then becomes too expensive to migrate by a web developer.

Perhaps now you feel like you’re stuck with what you have at the moment. Ultimately, you just want to advertise your business at low cost.

Why taking the leap and asking a web designer for help might be the right decision?

We understand why you might be hesitant. Your website hasn’t made much (if any) money for you yet.

But think about this – if you’ve had your “free” website for a long time, it’s likely that you have already paid the equivalent of how much a website created by a web developer would have cost you in the first place.

If you’ve only just created a website, think about your return on investment. Do you think it’s worth it? Is it going to make you money and return what you’re investing into it on a monthly basis?

If, let’s say, you’ve had your website for 6 years and have been paying £18 per month for it (given there’s been NO price increases), you have already spent £1,296.

Why should you trust a web designer?

The answer is simple – they are specialists at what they do.

They will advise you what exactly is wrong with your website, why it may not be working for you, and advise you what to do next. They may tell you a few things about your existing website; that your SEO needs improving, your loading time needs to get better, or that the site needs to be made mobile friendly.

Furthermore, if a web developer creates your website in (for example) WordPress, you will be able to amend it or ask another developer to amend it for you. There are much fewer limitations, even when it comes to designing the look of your website.

Are you unsure but curious? It’s definitely worth doing the research. You need to think about your business and budget. If you are to pay for your website monthly, calculate how much it’s going to cost you (in total) in 5-8 years.

Book your free discovery session with one of the Intellistart experts to discuss the pros and cons. We are here to help.

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