There is a spider web of website builders around on the internet. In an online world having a wonderfully designed and optimized website has become extremely necessary for running a successful online marketing campaign. If you are a new business house with a lesser proportion of online business and lower revenues then it is advisable that you create your own website using an online website builder tool.
But, for MSMEs (Medium, Small, and Micro Enterprises) using website builders can result in higher costs and more wasted man-hours.
In this article, we will try to focus on understanding website builders and website designers in simple language, identify their pros and cons and then find out how having a website designer is better off than using customized website builders.
Website Builders VS Web Designers
Website Builders
A website builder is a DIY tool that consists of several pre-designed templates with pre-installed designs and programs. Depending upon the size, target audience, and requirements of your business website builders offer you various design templates to create your website. On the basis of your budget, you can opt for both paid and unpaid website builders suiting your business requirements.
Here are the 4 most famous website builders to design and develop your business website: –
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Shopify
- Weebly
Let us now understand the pros and cons of website builders in brief.
Pros
- Easy to start
Website builders are extremely user-friendly. It could only take you a few mouse clicks and keyboard entries here and there to start creating your business website using website building tools as the entire process is extremely hassle-free and designed in a way to support you. With no coding, designs, and redesigns within a span of just a few minutes, you can drag and drop the features of your website using website builders.
- Easy to use
Once you have developed a raw website, making changes to it and adding pages is an easy step-by-step process. Just trying the tool by yourself or doing as guided in several online tutorials available on the internet will make things easier for you. The process for further use of these tools is hassle-free and comparatively easy to make changes without any prior expert knowledge in the field.
- Support Availability
Website building platforms are designed in a way that they provide support to the end-user and complement the entire process of website development. So, wherever you are struck you will encounter people who are ready to support you through your entire process. Chat, email, phone, or live forum questions and answers help is provided to those on these platforms 24*7 to those who ask for it.
Cons
- Poor SEO Rankings
If your aim of using a website builder is just to use it for designing and developing a website to provide information about your products and services to people then it is ok but then don’t expect your website built using website builders to rank higher on Google! A website created using website builders would rank lower on Google and cannot help you meet your SEO requirements.
- Time-Consuming and expensive process in the long run
When provided with a selection between time and money, most entrepreneurs would choose time. Website builders consume a lot of time in the long run and do not help you generate a considerable amount of business on the input cost of time, money, and energy you have invested in building your business website. Their framework harms user – experience, reduces accessibility, restrict website speed, and lowers its usability.
To cater to changing audience demands you need to invest more time and money which is unsustainable for your business.
- Unprofessional design appearance
With limited template options and no template designs created in alignment with your businesses’ customer base or vision, website builders come with a pre-fixed designs template due to which you appear unprofessional taking your customers away from your business rather than bringing them towards it.
Moreover, with these tools, you cannot make changes additions or subtractions to your business website, and due to which your website fails in providing real value to your visitors.
Website Designers
Website designers are experts who create professional website design templates in alignment with your business model and your businesses’ mission and vision. In short, they make your business dreams appear as reality on your website. A good website designer can tailor your website after understanding your customer base and competitor analysis to deliver a website design that can help your business generate more sales.
Pros
- SEO – Friendly design
When opting in for a web designer, you need to be rest assured about the rankings of your website. As your website is optimized to support both mobile and desktop devices there are chances that your website will rank higher on Google. A good website development company should have in-depth knowledge about SEO, keyword research and make your website structured according to those keywords.
When the website is well designed it is easy to integrate these keywords in with it and optimize it to achieve higher rankings and generate more visitors through search engines.
- Customization
A good website designer takes your needs into consideration while designing and developing your website. Based on your business needs, your products, and services a good website designer will customize your website to pitch your brand message carefully by using the right page design templates, color schemes, design tools, and third-party applications for your website.
- Creates your brand identity
While hiring a website designer you are actually hiring someone who is responsible for establishing your brand’s online identity by using the best color scheme, fonts, balance, and deep understanding of user – interface design. All these skills are relevant for your business to generate higher leads and bring more options and opportunities for the expansion of your business to the table.
Cons
- High costs
One of the biggest disadvantages of hiring a professional designer or developer is high upfront costs involved in the project. If your business has lower streams of revenue and budgets are running tight then this could be an extremely money-draining exercise for it.
- Time-efficiency
It takes time and effort to design a fully functional website that meets your requirements. The brainstorming sessions, long testings, approvals, changes, and constant additions elongate the time it takes to design a website. Moreover, the longer it takes to finish and implement the design of a website the higher are the chances of you paying more for it.
- Quality variations
Every designer and developer has their own way of working on a particular project. There are low entry barriers in this industry to call yourself a designer. Therefore, it is very important to consider the client portfolio, case – studies, and reviews about your designer or design agency before making any decision about their services.
Why are website designers efficient against website developers?
Website designers are the people who help you design your website in alignment with your mission, vision, and goals about your company and organization. Although the costs involved in opting from them must be higher but they can provide you the best digital presence for your company which helps your brand gain more visibility against your competitors.
With their attention to detail and precise techniques they could make your website easily standout from the others by making it unique.
That is why it is recommended that you opt for the best website design and website development company that understand your business needs and project the best brand message suitable for your brand.
