Wix and Squarespace, a bad idea – This is why
The number of enquiries we have received about building a site for someone using Wix and Squarespace or WordPress.com sites has grown substantially over the last year. It is highly unlikely that you will find a well qualified experienced developer to agree. There are many reasons why it simply isn’t a good idea. However below I’ve listed a few.
The investment that you make in your website will project the image you wish to portray about your business. By placing your trust in what is essentially a coding mill, can you expect to stand out?
You don’t own the design/template/theme
When you use SAAS (software As a Service) to build a website, you have very little control over the theme, template or design that you choose. While it may look spectacular to you, ask yourself this – With a finite number of designs, how many other websites are going to look exactly like yours? Will the template be supported indefinitely? What happens if the template is withdrawn because of tech issues on the server?
Migration – your site cant be moved
As your business grows, you will realise that you need to have more control over the server. You won’t be able to migrate the site, exactly as it is. Sure, you can copy and paste the content page for page, but you wont be able to migrate the site as a whole. This is because the Content management system will be unique to the platform that you built it on. The design you have will have to be recreated from scratch if you want to keep it. If you don’t want to keep it you still wont have ownership over other designs on the site.
You cant control server management
You are sharing a server with thousands if not millions of other low grade sites.When you use a hosting company, even with a shared server you wont be caught up in the battle for traffic bandwidth, especially if your business needs to ensure visibility over seasonal periods such as Christmas. When you have no control over your servers at all, you are handing the technical welfare of your website to strangers.
SEO is affected by the servers
Your Website visibility does not depend solely on how pretty it is and the content on the pages. It also depends on a whole lot of technical stuff on the server side. How quickly the page loads is instrumental. How the files are minified and where the pages are cached will influence how efficient Google thinks your website is. None of this can be controlled or fixed by you if you’re using a SAAS platform. When it comes to increasing traffic these are going to be critical factors in your digital strategy. The reasoning is the same when trying to get the edge on your competitors.
Wix and Squarespace software restrictions
Everything from how you tag your images, to the tags in the headers that make you visible to search engines will be controlled by the SAAS provider. You wont be able to change things like how the memory is managed on the server and this can seriously affect response times. This becomes a bigger concern as certain types of code become obsolete. It’s a mammoth task to update code and how it used for thousands of websites, rather than for just one.
Server security is beyond your control.
The only thing that you control when you subscribe to a SAAS web design platform is the content. This would include the appearance.This means that you cant control security. Your provider may decide that their security is sufficiently robust to keep away the virus population online. But what about hackers? Too often your personal account info is at risk. Would you rather have the power to pull the plug when a hacker is scouring your personal details? Alternatively you could leave it to a provider that may only discover the theft of information days, weeks or months after the event. Consider how this will impact on your reputation. You may be able to suspend your site, but you don’t have the control over what happens to your personal details.