As technology advances, more and more people turn to a DIY website builder like WIX or GoDaddy everyday. New tech is great and can automate marketing services such as website design; email marketing, banner ad design and even video production. As a Fort Lauderdale advertising agency, we are very aware of these services, they take money out of our pockets on a regular basis. Are we bitter…. Nooooo (sarcasm).
The fact is we’ve moved on from our bitterness to embrace new advertising automation, we actually use and recommend the email marketing service MailChimp. When it comes to website design, Springboard uses the WordPress platform. It’s an SEO-friendly platform and combines many of the features used with a typical DIY website builder.
People build their own websites for a few reason, economics being #1. Others have a certain amount of tech savvy and fell comfortable tackling the project own their own. For those of you determined to ad “Website Designer” to your list of job titles, here are a few things you should know.
Drag and Drop (yeah right)
We’ve all seen the TV ads for website services that make building your site as easy as click, click done. Some of them work OK, others not so much. If you have photos in a variety sizes and resolutions, it can be tough to resize and crop them. Getting your logo and other branding graphics to fit seamlessly into their templates can also be problematic.
Build It and They Will Come (wrong)
Ok, you’ve built your website. You’re as proud as a new parent. That’s just the first step. Now you got to make sure the website is properly optimized so that that search engines like Google can find it and list it when someone searches for your product or service. This is call on-page SEO. It involves doing keyword research on your product or services and placing those keywords and phrases in the right places on your site.
The next step is getting your website and contact information listed properly across the web. This is call link building. The more credible places, (LinkedIn and CitySearch), your website is listed, the higher you will rank with search engines.
Don’t get me wrong, using a DIY website builder works great for a lot of situations. They can provide an affordable solution for people that need a basic web presence. But for companies that need their website to drive new business or sell products, you need a quality website that will get you there.
Good luck to all my DIY peeps. I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labor.