Website Builder Guide

The 5 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make When Choosing a Website Builder

This Is How You Avoid Making the Biggest Mistakes When Choosing a Website Builder and Consequently Save a Lot of Time and Money

There are many providers of website building tools. The offers vary in many points and are therefore difficult to compare.

Once you have settled for a provider, you are bound to your choice for a longer period of time. You will invest time in the creation of your website and get to know the providers system. Switching provider therefore makes little sense.

In order to make a good decision that you will be happy with in the long run, you should therefore aim to avoid the biggest pitfalls when choosing the provider. In the following you can find out how to do so:

Mistake # 1: You Don't Know Your Requirements

If you don't know your requirements for the main areas of your website, you will not be able to find a provider that suits your needs.

That's why you should clearly define your needs in writing before starting. To do so answer the following questions:

What goals am I chasing with my website? How much am I willing to spend on a provider? How much am I willing to learn the technicalities? How important is good ranking?

If for example Google ranking is important to you, but you choose a provider that does not offer a good solution for this, you will find it hard to achieve this goal.

The same is valid for other concerns. It is better to know the qualities of a provider before, rather than noticing a shortcoming when it's too late.

Mistake # 2: You Categorically Exclude Offers You Have to Pay For

Even supposedly free web page building tools will make you pay in some way or form. Often you pay, because the process is unpleasant or time consuming. The following formats are typical for this:

The tool is financed through adverts on the web pages. This might bother you sooner or later.

The provider economises on support. When you find yourself spending hours on the first bigger problem, you may start wishing you had chosen a better offer.

The provider doesn't invest in up to date templates. The result is that you create a website that looks old-fashioned. In that case, it's not only cheap, but also looks like it is.

That's why you need to keep an eye on the fact that costs don't only apply in the form of usage fees for the website building tool.

If you categorically exclude offers with costs, you may end up spending more time and effort overall than if you had chosen to pay a small monthly amount.

Mistake # 3: You Choose a Provider with Poor Usability

A poorly conceived user interface makes working with a website building tool unnecessarily difficult.

In the worst case scenario you might stop working on your website, because you don't feel like struggling with the programme anymore. Any time and effort invested so far will have been for nothing.

Therefore carefully choose a provider that makes usage easy. Website building tools vary to a large degree on this.

An easy user interface is simple, clear and allows you to do what you want intuitively. If you are clueless at some point, a good user interface should always have help and guide documents available for you.

Mistake # 4: You Choose a Provider with Poor Mobile Templates

Smartphones and tablets are commonplace nowadays. More and more users will visit your website from a mobile device.

That is why your website must enable a smartphone optimised display. This is not automatically possible, but rather has to be created specially. Mobile templates are a great help for this.

These are templates that help you create a good display option for mobile devices.

If you choose a provider without mobile display templates, your website will not be easily viewable from mobile devices.

To avoid this mistake, choose a provider from the start that supports the creation of mobile device enabled templates.

Mistake # 5: You Choose a Provider with Poor Help Documentation

If you brave into the new territory of building your own website, sooner or later you will encounter an issue that you will need help with.

This help can take the form of providing resources for you to help yourself, or via personal support. Both have their place and should be offered to you.

Resources for you to help yourself will consist of documentation and tutorials.

Personal support can take place through a number of channels, for example by email, forum or online chat.

Usually you will first consult the help documentation. The wider this documentation is and the clearer it is structured, the easier you will find answers to your questions. A good search function would be ideal.

In difficult cases you may not solve the issue alone. At that point it is important to have a personal support point of contact. This person should answer quickly and competently, so you need not wait too long for an answer to your question.

The ideal solution is an online chat. Provided availability and competence are good, you will receive an immediate answer to your questions.

Conclusion

Know your own core requirements. Don't categorically exclude offers with costs attached. Check for truly good usability.

Choose a provider with good mobile templates and excellent support.

If you take these points seriously you have already avoided the 5 biggest mistakes that you can commit when selecting a website building tool.