Own Your Website!

If you have a business, you NEED a website. 

You need a website that you own, an open-source based site that you can move, redesign, scale because you OWN the files.

If you haven’t put much thought into this, let’s deep dive now.  

Your website and email list are the only things that you own.  Facebook, Instagram, other social platforms, they own your data.  While they serve us well in our marketing efforts, we do not control these platforms and they are shut down daily.  If your business’s accounts, pages, or groups were shut down, would you lose everything? Could you still operate your business?

Thus, use these social platforms to drive traffic to your website- one that you OWN.

Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, while easy to use to get your site up and running quickly, they come with a lot of drawbacks.  Most importantly, they own your data! For example, Wix grants you a revocable license upon signing up for its services. So, if Wix goes bankrupt, removes features, functions, or templates, or sells out to another, you have no choice but to move on as Wix has decided for you. 

Perhaps Wix removes their platform altogether, you are left with nowhere to go.  With Wix, you cannot export your data or take your design to another website platform.

Speaking of your design, so many others will have something similar.  With Wix and Squarespace, you lack uniqueness because there are a lot of customers using the same templates.  Your brand’s voice, personality, and visual identity cannot truly shine and you will lose brand recognition. Additionally, is the number of pages you can create limited by your pricing plan?  Engage and sell your customers with an authoritative website that tells your story, promotes your products or services, and displays your content. Search engines love content- the more you have, the better.  

Another drawback of DIY builder websites is that they are not SEO friendly.  Think of SEO as a way to adjust content and code to improve your site’s results in search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo).  If you think building your website is an easy task, then there wouldn’t be thousands of articles on SEO, user experience, and conversion optimization.  You need to consider your content structure, image sizes, page titles, header size, calls to action, and on and off-page SEO. Your website needs Google tools to track its performance and to get insights from your website to drive your marketing decisions.  

If your livelihood depends on your business’s success, invest in a website that you own, that can be scaled, optimized, and changed to suit your needs when you need it to.

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