Are You Using a Drag & Drop Website Builder? There’s a flaming campaign out at the moment about websites in Australia. I’m not gonna go into detail about what it is, but it sounds like something you’d use on a candle, like a wick. Well, if you had multiple candles maybe you’d call them wicks. Yeah, let’s call them wicks, like from candles. Ah, and I tell you what, candles smell good, but some of these websites that can be made are flaming terrible. Flaming, flaming, flaming, flaming rubber snake. What the hell is going on? Why You Stay Away From Website Builders? That’s right! Mediocre websites get mediocre results. Don’t fall victim. You sit there for hours, they advertise to you having a wine in your hand and it’s dragging and dropping stuff, and you’re filling out My Business—just brilliant. I am a web designer, and that’s great. If you are a web designer, kudos to you. But if you’re not, don’t do it. It might look great, but it’s gonna rank terribly. No one that has these automatic websites gets any traffic of value. It’s keep paying for it, paying lots for it. It’s not just a once-off payment thing. You have to continue to pay to get these people there. And these websites, should you have a candle of a website, it’s gonna burn up. They're what I call “my dog websites.” My dog websites are great. You get to put photos of your dog and share it with your friends on Facebook, but it’s terrible for business. They need to be all burnt and gone up in flames like the wicks got out of control. Invest in a Quality Website for Your Business Continue to make sure you’re having a good quality website made. If you go to GTmetrics.com, type in your website and click Analyze. Have a look at how you grade if you go to page speed by Google, you’ll be able to have a look at how you grade there as well. If you grade poorly, your websites are doing a poor job. If you load slowly—slowly means anything above 3 seconds—your websites are doing a poor job. If you go to Google Analytics and you’ve got X amount of customers and you’re not converting at least 0.5% of them, your websites are doing a poor job. Ugh! You’re paying Google AdWords for nothing. We’re gonna come there, then you leave. We’re gonna come, you’re gonna leave. And you probably spend a lot of money on Google AdWords, waste money, if your website is terrible. Are Landing Pages Worth It? So you tell me, “But Josh, I’ve got landing pages, and landing pages means my customers get the information they want.” You might be right. You may have landing pages. Landing pages are made to have engaging content that answers someone’s question that lets them come to your site. So, landing pages are gonna cost you a lot of money per month—80 dollars or more just for a static web page—which is totally worth it by the way. We use landing pages, but you need to make sure the content is engaging still. If the content is not engaging, you’re not going to be having the conversions that you want and you’re still spending lots of money. If you’re spending lots of money, you need to charge your clients more. If you’re charging your clients more just to give it the money away, why are you going for a service that’s gonna burn up in flames? Be in Control of Your Business Website Move away from the candles. Jump onto something commercial. I’m not saying go with us. You know that there are lots of different websites out there that you can get your hosting through that give you quality commercial business hosting, which is what you want. And you want a quality commercial business website that you can control. You’re not locked into their handcuffs of these building websites where you have to conform with it exactly the way they want things to work, and you have to have things placed where they are, and your message gets watered down. Does Your Business Show Up in Google Search? Google looks at those websites and they go, “Hmmm…This candle looks exactly like this candle. All these templates look the same! Yeah! Therefore, they are kind of the same. Let’s just drop it down in the ranking.” You don’t want that. You don’t want to be spending all your hard-earned money on a crappy, crappy website. Get a good website. Get a good developer you can sit down and talk to. Even if you’ve made it in one of these engines already, you can show them your dream and how you want to look using those tools, but know that it’s not going to convert in business. The Final Word There are several situations that I’d say these websites are fine for. If you’re in the industry where you never need any online traffic whatsoever and it’s just there as a portfolio, such as you’re an actress or an actor and you’ve got someone who’s booking you jobs and they’re finding you the jobs and you don’t need to use it for marketing and you don’t need to use it for any online presence, that’s cool. That’s perfectly fine. Continue with those candle websites. You won’t have a problem. But if you want to be found in Google, if you want to be paying less for AdWords, and you want to be getting great results, get a custom-made website. Always, always, always customer. Stay good. To learn more about websites and online marketing , go to our blog https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/it-solutions/ or subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/DorksDelivered/.