Hype or Solutions: Do-It-Yourself Website Builders
The best do-it-yourself website builders are those that provide easy to use functionality with a natural human intuitiveness. This concept is no joke as many of these do-it-yourself website builders offer the moon, but deliver nothing more than a flat platform. I have experience using at least 4 different platforms, and I can tell you, most of them will waste your time and money. The latest website builder I came across is SquareSpace.com. It has an innovated look, but looks are not everything, and I decided to test it. SquareSpace.com gives a free 14-day trial, and allows you to build your website, without any strings attached during the trial period. The criteria I have used to help me determine if the website builder program is worth are cost, speed, analytics, mobile version, template designs, colors, ability to brand with logo, fonts, blog, search engine optimization (acronym SEO), domain and a live person providing technical support if needed. Believe it or not these features are basic and are needed to get off the ground, if you want the public to know your business or blog exists.
Let me start with the cost, after the trial period is over, the rate ranges from $12 monthly for a personal website and a commercial website from $18 to $40 per month. These prices are reasonable, but not cheap. If you have a business and want to sell items, you are going to pay for a full year $480. That is high! Remember, just because you posted items for sale, it does not mean people will buy, and your expenses will add up quickly.
The loading speed of a website matters; I have seen people become impatient if a website takes longer than 5 seconds to load. This concept has a straight correlation with Google analytics as it tells you the percentages of bounce rates per month. Analytics is another feature that SquareSpace.com offers to determine if ads are working, who is visiting the website and bounce rate is related to those that exit the website immediately. The completed website seems to load within 5 seconds, but during the building process it took at least 2 to 3 minutes to load 1 photo. I spent about 6 hours building the website and is not even completed. I was very disappointed, because when I used Weebly.com building photo process, upload was faster.
A necessary function is the ability of a website to go from desk top version to a mobile version within seconds. This feature did not disappoint; at every step of the process, icons for mobile, desktop and tablet were present for each of the pages. I learned how important this feature is when I created a website in Wix.com. I spent hours only to find out that the writing was cut off or photos did not fully display in the mobile version. Nowadays, most people view websites on their phones, making this feature indispensable.
Uploading the logo was loaded with surprises and hassles. Even though the logo was formatted to fit a commercial website and created for commercial purposes, it did not upload or was possible to make it fit full bleed on the top header. This was disappointing needless to say. If a company has a logo, this should be allowed to display prominently in the header, but this feature is over looked by many of these do-it-yourself website builders. Buyer beware!
Templates selection was huge, just about for any industry type, with bold colors, modern layouts, and with the ability to customize your own website. I did not expect a built-in palette of colors that had a programed intuition to pick up the colors on key uploaded photos to make a desirable background contrast. This can be an issue, if a logo is not uploaded from the start, as the color variations show up slowly. Overall, I love the clean and modern templates that SquareSpace.com offers.
Font areas were not easy to maneuver and actually a royal pain! These were offered by sections in a page with too many variations that I never heard of such as “rem” (related to size decreasing), weight, spacing, line height and so on. I could have customized the fonts in any part of the website from headings, to buttons, paragraphs, global headings and more, but it was not easy to use. I expected simplicity and familiarity that Microsoft Word offers.
A blog is a must if you are in any type of industry that allows you to express yourself. I love that SquareSpace.com has designed this feature with vibrant ways to displayed photos and layouts. The font is the right size and photos can be uploaded small or large. The designer gets to decide. I have been burned by the lack of photo and print size design features in other web builders like Vista Print.com. Print so small that you need magnifiers to read, and photos that display like a passport picture. Totally ridiculous and unacceptable in a modern web space. A blog can be used as a portfolio, recipes, writing, health topics or sharing many other subjects. SquareSpace.com gives you a thriving platform for your medium, and if you need ideas, they have ready to use templates.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) took me a year to learn to use and to comprehend the value of it. Don’t brush it off. It’s the bit of blurb returned by the search engine that you see when you are searching for something. This small description helps the individual decide if they want to enter the website. The way it works is code that connects the main search engines with an index of topics in the website. SquareSpace.com has done a great job by simplifying this task. It was easy to find and use. Some website builders have this feature hidden and loaded with technical jargon, as I experienced using Wix.com.
The domain gives your site a name that the search engines can find. This service is provided for free, the first year, under all levels sold. After the first year is over, there is an annual fee charged. This is customary and the rates were comparable. If you have an existing domain, and wish to transfer this to SquareSpace.com, they provide this service. The domain can be transferred or re-directed. Some domains cannot be transferred due to how it was setup or because of existing contracts. They suggest you check with your original service provider before switching to SquareSpace.com. Although re-directing is not a bad choice, it just takes few seconds longer to download. I love that SquareSpace.com disclosed this information proving another positive point to make the transition to a new website builder.
My last criterion is technical support, a must if you don’t want to die at an early age of frustration and aggravations. At no point, early in the learning process of building a website, have I been able to escape, asking for help with some of these features. Do not buy a website that does not offer technical support. You will regret it. SquareSpace.com offered 24/7 support with your monthly subscription fees. I did not test this feature, but will take their word for it.
The critical criteria I have set to evaluate the effectiveness and ease of use of a web builder, can be thought as breathing, hydrating and eating, without these elements the human body dies. Hands down, I do recommend SquareSpace.com web builder. Why? Beautiful, seamless integration of premade templates, high quality photographs, SEO friendly, and a fast upload for the consumer, however not the person developing it. Impressive blog designs styles, analytics and mobile friendly which is a must. There is so much more offered by SquareSpace.com that I did not discuss in this evaluation, such as marketing, membership area to sell materials by the month or year, and booking appointments. These features are possible through a partnership with Acuity that charges a fee by the month or year ($14 to $45 per month). The consumer can rest assure that after spending tons of hours building the website with SquareSpace.com, their masterpiece will be view as created, and crawled by the search engines.