Reasons You Don't Want a New or Better Website

Here are some reasons you might come up with for not wanting or needing a new or better website.

I already have a free or cheap website through Wix, Weebly, WordPress, GoDaddy, etc.

When it comes to free or cheap websites, the saying "you get what you pay for" holds true. Even if the website looks great, it's what's "under the hood" that makes the difference.

• Template websites don't work well with search engines. This is because they utilize proprietary code that does not conform to current coding standards. Google will try to crawl the website to determine where to rank it, encounter a line of code it doesn't understand, and immediately jump off your website to another website.
• Many or most of these "website builder" templates do not offer a way to add proper search engine optimization tags (and WordPress' "Yoast" is too basic).
• You will never own your website. It's always rented. If you want to move away from Wix or Weebly or whatever company you used to build your website, you can't take the website with you since it's coded specifically for that company.
• WordPress specifically has its own host of issues, so many that it requires an entire page dedicated to all of them.

I already have a Thryv/Dex YP (Dex Media) or Hibu website.

These large conglomerate companies are not web design firms. They utilize templates that tend to look generic and are built with code that does not conform to current website architecture standards. Cheap labor from other countries are often hired to simply cut and paste your information into a pre-existing template. Changes to wording is often wrought with misspellings and grammatical errors. Sometimes large blocks of your website text will be duplicated from other websites, and Google penalizes plagiarized or duplicate content.

With Thryv and similar companies, all of the pitfalls that you face with template sites mentioned above, apply to these websites as well. In addition, Thryv, Hibu, and others often charge monthly or annual fees to "rent" the website. Not to mention the myriad of other issues that plague customers of Thryv, DexYP and Hibu.

There are two reasons to have a company website. The first is of course to attract new customers. And the second is to provide information about your company to existing and prospective customers. A professional website can make the difference between someone hiring you or hiring your competition. Even if most of your business is word-of-mouth, here are some compelling reasons why you should still have a website:

• Prospective customers may want to find out more about your company and make sure that you're "legitimate".
• Prospective customers may want to see photos of the work and details of the services or products you offer.
• A shoddy website may be a "red flag" to customers who may wonder if you'll put as much time and thought into the job you do for them as you did for your own website.
• No company website at all may make customers wonder if you're hiding something.

You could be the most honest person and do the best job in your industry, but first impressions are everything. Can you get away with not having a website? Perhaps, but keep in mind that those word-of-mouth referrals dry up eventually, but new customers can generate new referrals can keep the process going on and on.

My sister's husband's co-worker's friend is building me a website.

Unless the person designing your website is an experienced full-time web designer, this is a recipe for disaster. Would you trust someone to replace the roof on your house if they had "done a couple of roofs on the side" in the past? If not, then why have someone delve into such an important part of your company's livelihood as your website?

Just because they're not charging you doesn't mean it's free, because there's the "lost opportunity" component to consider. A properly designed website can attract new clients, but a poorly designed website will not, or could even hurt your company's reputation. The income you'll lose from potential customers who didn't call or hire you because of your poorly designed free or cheap website is going to cost way, way more than the price you would have paid for a good website.

Also... friends and family fight. Co-workers lose touch. Relationships end. You may not want to make waves with your husband's boss by asking his daughter to fix what you've realized is a subpar website. Mixing personal relationships with business is generally not a good idea, so don't have friends, family, neighbors or co-workers build your website.

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