engageyourbiz

Why DIY Website is a Bad Idea

info@engageyourbiz.com (Engage Team) — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 05:07:00 GMT

Why should I spend so much on developing a custom website when I can develop it at dirt-cheap cost?

Oh yes! You may be right — but have you pondered over it deeply? What if your website builder suffers a malware attack, and it crashes?

I’m sure you’ll not have thought about this scenario. DIY website builder tools suffer from many such deficiencies.

Popular website builder tools, such as Weebly, Squarespace, or Wix do offer plenty of options to create a small website effortlessly at tempting costs. But they still stand no chance against a custom website developed by a professional agency.

Consider the following 5 reasons before opting for a website builder tool.

1. Page builders are terrible for business growth

SEO capabilities of website builders are very limited. These if used seriously limit your business growth in the future.

You must know that the HTML markups created by website builders are exponentially bloated compared to those created by professional website developers.

But how does this matter? I think it’s the pretty efficient and clean code writing process.

True! But this simplicity comes at an expensive price. Though a final website may look aesthetically great, the code powering them is often clumsy. This can make your website significantly slower.

2. No access to code

To fix any issue in your website, you require access to the source code.

But you don’t get this liberty in website builder tools. The maximum you have is the full access to frontend editor. You cannot make any fundamental change with such websites. With custom websites, however, you can achieve any goal.

Website management requires a variety of tasks, such as title and H1, H2 tags, URL slugs, structured data markups, canonical URLs, or meta descriptions. You cannot achieve this with DIY web tools.

3. Poor mobile friendliness

Though DIY websites claim to be mobile-friendly and responsive, but these features are not that practical. The reason is that a responsive or mobile-optimized web design uses CSS3 media queries to adapt to user’s device size, while website builders lack this feature.

4. Poor SEO

DIY builders are notorious for bad SEO capabilities. A huge negative for WIX and Squarespace is they don’t allow for a lot of technical SEO customizations. You cannot access or customize their sitemaps. All of these issues limit the technical SEO capability of a DIY website.

Many users also complained that Googlebot finds it difficult to crawl all pages of Wix or Weebly pages. Though they have tried to fix some of these issues such as shortening of URLs and upgrading codes, they continue to have only limited success.

5. Poor value for money

Overall, spending money on DIY website builders is a total waste of money, provided you have serious ambitions. Small businesses that are already constrained with capital, should never opt for such website builders. You may find them cheap initially, but they offer little value for what you pay. You’ll just get a little corner in the digital sphere and that’s all.

Summing up…

All of these issues discussed above make DIY websites a hugely underperforming website. If you have a long term growth plan, going for a DIY website builder tool will be a bad idea.

6 Components You Must Know of the Small Business Friendly Website Layout

info@engageyourbiz.com (Engage Team) — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 04:09:19 GMT

A website for small businesses should be designed in a way that could attract customers. From powerful headlines, delivery of the right marketing message, to a visual hierarchy and other key elements—every component of the puzzle should fall in place.

The real reasons behind the sheer brilliance of a website lie in its layout or architecture. It’s actually the first stage of the website design where you decide which component will go where, what will be the layout style, size and website component.

It defines the navigation path and specifies spaces where the most important elements such as headline, subheadings, images, videos, CTA buttons, forms and other elements will be placed.

6 Essential components of a website layout

Here are the six essential components of a website web layout:

1. Header

This features at the top of the webpage and is surely a strategic part of the area. It contains the core information on digital assets so that users can access it quickly. The header space should be catchy, concise and useful.

The header area can contain logo, brand name, and slogan, corporate image of the company or its leaders, links to basic categories of website, basic contact information, search field or subscription field.

2. Navigation

If your site has a lot of information, break it down into different sections in the dropdown menu. However, having more dropdown menus should be avoided as adding an extra step acts as a hiccup in the user’s experience.

Placing different menus at familiar positions is a good idea. Users expect those UX elements where they have seen them previously. Try to make these expectations work in your favor.

Using breadcrumbs can help aid navigation path within the website. This is important to direct users inside, from external pages.

3. Valuable and informative content

Your website is to help your consumers, so avoid the mistake of making your website ‘all about you’. Make sure they have landed up to the right place through the right marketing messages.

You can also hire a professional copywriter to deliver a powerful marketing message. The purpose should be to tell a great story in an exciting manner. The message should be clear and powerful. Avoid putting in a lot of text.

You should convey your value proposition and benefits of your product and services. Try to humanize your brand as much as possible.

4. Choose a user-friendly design

How well your website ranks, depends on how well it has been designed. If your website doesn’t offer a great user experience, the chances are that the bounce rate will be high and engagement quotient will be low.

So never ignore any element that keeps them hooked on your website. You can achieve this by adding long-scrolling pages, clear message, powerful headers, and effective navigation.

5. Focus on visual representation

Maintaining proper visual representation of blogs can help as a picture can tell a story of 1000 words. Use high quality and professional images.

Avoid using too many stock images, use relevant screenshots and original images. Investing in professional photos of your own products can represent the human face of your business.

6. Easy-to-find contact information

Would you like to lose a competitor just because you made it difficult for him/her to contact you? The website should not test the patience of your user.

The contact information should be at the place where they can find it easily.

Placing the contact information in the top left or top right corner of the home page can help them locate it easily.

Final thoughts

In short, a good small business website has an intuitive website layout, clear navigation, great content, and also offers smooth user experience. Using these points while developing your website will make it easy to connect with your users. The above tips can help your website be a success and win new customers.

7 Reasons to Hire a Web Development Company over a Freelancer

info@engageyourbiz.com (Engage Team) — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 09:01:10 GMT

So you have decided to launch a brand new website to augment your business.

You certainly deserve a pat on the back for this smart decision. And since your tech team doesn’t have enough bandwidth or capability, you’re looking to get a contractor on board as fast as you can.

But who should you be working with — a web development company or a freelancer?

The decision can be tricky, and making the wrong choice here means your dream of a digital presence for your business can fail.

A careful and thorough analysis of both options can easily reveal that hiring a web development company has a distinct and unbeatable edge over a freelance web developer. Here are 7 strong reasons for the former:

1. A wide range of expertise

When you hire a web development company, you receive specialized expertise of a team of developers, designers, and marketers. Consequently, a web development company can deliver a high-functionality and a feature-rich website. You get a responsive, SEO-friendly, and mobile-optimized website loaded with strong security features.

Hiring a freelancer, on the other hand, offers a generic and narrow set of technical expertise where everything is taken care of by a single person. They may deliver a good-looking website, but your website may lack required functionalities and cybersecurity features.

2. Trustworthy service

Imagine a scenario: your freelance developer abruptly leaves your project midway, costing you both time and money.

Are you ready to bear such nasty shocks?

On the other hand, the possibility of such unprofessional behavior is very low with a reputed web development company because they care about their brand reputation.

They obviously cannot disappear suddenly and start working under a different name. Many times established vendors even prefer incurring a loss on the project than compromising their reputation.

So your project always remains in safe hands when you hire a website development company. The same cannot be said about a freelancer for obvious reasons.

3. Professionalism

Market reputation and customer reviews matter a lot for a professional company. You’ll rarely have to face project delays and missed deadlines with a professional company since their resources all adhere to stringent rules of professional ethics. They also have a team with the required bench strength to deliver your project within the stipulated deadline.

Freelance web developers often work on multiple projects, so they cannot do justice with any of them.

4. Data security

Data security standards and intellectual property rights are critical assets for an international customer. When you hire a professional web development agency, the project starts only after signing a non-disclosure agreement.

Making a payment to such a vendor is also safer and reliable. With freelancers, however, data security is always questionable. Moreover, a single individual simply does not have the wherewithal for installing the latest data security technology which an established company can easily do.

5. Smooth and hassle-free work process

Working with a company is always easy and hassle-free compared to a freelancer. A dedicated project manager is at your disposal whose primary job is to ensure the project’s success.

You gain the benefit of their technical tools, project management expertise, and high-end infrastructure. Because of their experience of working with a diverse set of clients across industries, they can steer your project successfully.

So you can have a sip of coffee during the project management. But you cannot say this for a freelancer.

6. Superior customer support

Website development projects are often complex and the possibility of things going wrong is always there at any stage. In a web development company, dedicated experts are always at your disposal to provide support even before your project starts, during the project development stage, and, especially post-deployment.

They’re always ready to answer all questions related to the project progress, bug-fixing, or minor improvements in the design of your website.

A freelance web developer cannot match this level of service. Once they deliver your project, you can hardly expect any support from them afterwards.

7. Expert business advice

One of the little known benefits of working with a professional web development firm is that you can get expert business advice that can ensure the success of your digital venture. Such value-added services are rare from a freelance web developer.

Final thoughts

Working with a freelance web developer seems tempting because of their attractive price point. However, as the saying goes: “Buy cheap, buy twice”. And, so, you should also be ready for sub-standard quality. They can never beat the benefits of working with a professional web development company. Ultimately, the long-term cost savings with a web development company are more – and all cost is not monetary. It is also time.

Boost loyalty and engagement

info@engageyourbiz.com (Engage Team) — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 10:51:10 GMT

There are so many good reasons to communicate with site visitors. Tell them about sales and new products or update them with tips and information.

Here are some reasons to make blogging part of your regular routine.

Blogging is an easy way to engage with site visitors

Writing a blog post is easy once you get the hang of it. Posts don’t need to be long or complicated. Just write about what you know, and do your best to write well.

Show customers your personality

When you write a blog post, you can really let your personality shine through. This can be a great tool for showing your distinct personality.

Blogging is a terrific form of communication

Blogs are a great communication tool. They tend to be longer than social media posts, which gives you plenty of space for sharing insights, handy tips and more.

It’s a great way to support and boost SEO

Search engines like sites that regularly post fresh content, and a blog is a great way of doing this. With relevant metadata for every post so search engines can find your content.

Drive traffic to your site

Every time you add a new post, people who have subscribed to it will have a reason to come back to your site. If the post is a good read, they’ll share it with others, bringing even more traffic!

Blogging is free

Maintaining a blog on your site is absolutely free. You can hire bloggers if you like or assign regularly blogging tasks to everyone in your company.

A natural way to build your brand

A blog is a wonderful way to build your brand’s distinct voice. Write about issues that are related to your industry and your customers.