Why Shouldn’t I Just Get Some Site For $399?

It depends on what you want the site to do. Many of these ‘site builders’ allow one to make an extremely pretty looking site for next to nothing. They are extremely ‘cookie-cutter’–which is fine for many people. Most all of them seem best suited to a ‘business card site’ design.

However here are some hard truths:

• They offer absolutely terrible search engine results (SEO). No matter what they may advertise, they cannot get your product or service noticed. It is simply impossible.
• But far worse: they can’t create content, which is the most important part of a site. They can’t give you decent photography. They can’t write good copy about what you do. They are counting on you to ‘fill in the form’ and most people just are not that great at it. So what you end up with is a ‘shell’; a slick looking theme which says nothing about your business.
• Finally, such sites are almost always very difficult to modify if you have even simple needs. A typical approach for these companies is to advertise an impossibly low price and then up-sell you the features you really need. I liken this to airline tickets where the cost of ‘the ticket’ tends to be far from the actual cost you end up paying after taxes, baggage fees, etc.

A concrete example

I have done a lot of Attorney web sites. In most cities, if you search for an attorney, you will almost always be driven to the same big names; not the people nearest you. The reason for this is that most attorneys, as smart as they may be, subscribe to a web-site builder service which gives them a web presence. The idea is that this company specializes in attorneys so it has to be good, right? But because these sites are so generic, the attorneys never get to the top of search results; even if you live right next door! It doesn’t take Warren Buffet to figure out that the money they lose from missed searches is far more than the price of a proper web site.

Here is what happens to me about once a week: Someone calls me with a desire for a new site. As we talk, they give me the URL of a site they really admire. They try to pry a dollar amount cost from me. And then I never hear from them again. About six months later, my assistant goes through my phone logs and sees what became of all these people. And seven times out of ten, we find that they did get a new site, but it’s one of these $399 jobs. And of course, it looks and works nothing like the site of their dreams. They just ‘settled’.

A better idea? If you are on a tight budget, just tell me what your real budget is. I’ll make sure you get a site that, while modest, still does what matters: makes you look professional and makes you easy to find.