Online Site Builders vs. Hiring a Web Developer

The Geeks will agree that an inexpensive online site builder might be a practical way to get your business on the web. Online site builders, however, are not ideal for complex websites with more features than just a few pages of text-based information.

Before you delve into building your own website, we want to help you make an informed decision on using a site builder vs. hiring a web developer.

• Most site builders claim that it takes only a few minutes to build your own website. On average, a website actually takes around 300 hours build. Do you have that kind of free time? Wouldn't your time be better spent running your business?
• You just spent weeks (or months) creating a website with an online site builder. Did you know you do not own the website you just spent hours building? You cannot take your website elsewhere since you don't own it. When you hire The Geeks, the website we create for you is yours. You own it the moment we receive your final payment.
• Online site builders might be cheap but quite often what you pay in ongoing website fees goes overseas. When you work with a local web design company, you are supporting a business in your local community (one that will most likely use your services or products in return). As business owners, The Geeks support local companies instead of sending our money outside of our community.
• Site builders for your specific industry (real estate or auto dealerships, for example) can contain duplicate content that already exists on other websites in your same industry. Did you know that duplicate content on multiple websites will negatively affect your website ranking in the search engine? The Geeks work with you to make sure your website content is unique and is specific to your business only.
• Speaking of content, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing will index and rank your website based on all of your content. Do you know how to write content for the web? The Geeks do and we will reformat the basic text you provide for search engine optimization.
• Wouldn't you rather work with a web design company that cares about your business, knows your customers and lives in your community? At AlphaGeek Web Design, we provide a better level of service, we will visit your place of business to meet you on a personal level, plus we know who your customers are and how your website can serve them.
• Online website builders are the very definition of “cookie-cutter” and are very hard to customize to reflect your unique corporate identity. The templates you choose may also be used by hundreds of other businesses online so there is nothing unique about your website. The Geeks take pride in the websites we develop for our clients. Once we complete each website, we share new projects on our website, with our business associates through networking and by showcasing them on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
• When you need help, most site builders require you to fill out a trouble ticket and then wait for an email response. The Geeks are available by phone, we respond to email in a timely fashion or you can stop by our office during regular business hours.

OK, so we admit that we might be a little bit biased on this subject but we want to help businesses make the right choice. Whether they choose to build a website themselves or they choose to hire a professional web development company like AlphaGeek Web Design, we certainly hope the smart business owner will choose the latter.