Mistakes of a DIY Website

Search Engines, Website Design

Website design process

Out there on the web there are many ways to help you create your own DIY website. It can work, but can it work well? Your website is your “online shop” and I don’t just mean e-commerce here, even if you are not selling products online it is an extension of your business premises.

Badly designed website = perceived bad shop = lost business.

A homebuilt website may save you money in the short term but will eventually cost you money. A well designed website may cost more at the beginning but will pay for itself over the long run.

Below are 3 potential errors associated with homebuilt websites.

Not understanding your design needs

This is one of the largests areas where mistakes are made. Web design is more than just making the site look pretty its about engaging correctly with your target audience. Is the image gleaned from your website matching what your company is trying to project?

For example, the site may work and the links go where they are supposed to go but what happens if the links are in the wrong place? Your navigation structure maybe muddled, so people don’t know where to click or even find where to click to navigate around you site. Maybe your favourite colour is green but should you be using it in your site? What colours, combinations of colours and amounts of colour attract what repels? Personal tastes may not be best for your website.

Using the wrong technology

Web technology moves very quickly and it can be hard to keep up so just a couple of examples of technology mistakes.

Flash based sites, they were all the rage in years gone by and there are still DIY website builders out there that utilise this technology. It gave great visual impact however there are numerous reasons why it shouldn’t be used today in creating a website, do you know why this is so? Just Google it and you will see.

Using off the shelf based templates bought from template stores. They may look attractive to start with and true the templates are cheap but once you have bought one there is little scope for an amateur to alter it to match your brand. If the template you bought is popular and remains unaltered then a lot of sites in your business field may be using the same one, generic so could be bad news. If you are working to a budget a professional designer can help to alter a template to match your brand.

Not making friends with Search Engines

Or in other words being to hard to find. Google is the most used search engine on the web and if you don’t follow their guidelines helping to create, monitor and optimise your site you will lose out in search results pages.

Good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practice is very important when designing your site and must be built in as you build your site. Quality SEO is an ongoing process and if not done correctly your site can end up buried way down the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), not appear at all or worst case get blacklisted by the search engine.