The DIY craze is everywhere. (DIY stands for do-it-yourself in case you don’t spend much time on Pinterest.)
Sometimes it works great and saves you lots of money.
Like when my husband watched a YouTube video about how to fix the air conditioning in my car, and saved us over $400 by doing the repair himself.
Sometimes it’s a complete failure.
Like when we tried to make cookie bowls for ice cream and other delicious treats by putting cookie dough on an upside down muffin tin.
A do-it-yourself website — one that you build on sites like SquareSpace or Wix — is the same way. It could work great and save you lots of money. But it could be a disaster that leads to an ineffective website, or just one that eats up way to much of your time. Let’s talk about some times you will want to avoid a DIY website, and when it might not be a bad idea.
2 Reasons to Avoid a DIY Website
Reason #1: Your website is crucial to your business.
Think back to my car with the broken air conditioning. While it felt very critical as we approached summer in middle Tennessee, truthfully, the car is just fine without it. So my husband, who is an audio/video engineer and has zero training in cars, motors or anything of the sort (except for watching a lot of Top Gear), took a crack at fixing it himself.
Now, if it had been my brakes or power steering or another critical component that was broken, I would have wanted a trained professional on the task.
See where I’m going with this?
For many businesses, your website is critical. It’s a storefront that generates income. It’s a sales tool that brings in leads. It’s an information source that directs customers.
If it’s not designed, developed and optimized by a trained professional to specifically meet the needs of your business, it can cost you — in the short term, but often even more dramatically in the long term.
On the other side of the coin, if a website is not critical to your businesses, a DIY website may be for you. If your business could function without a website, a DIY option could allow you to have an online presence while saving you some money. But, be careful to take into account reason #2.
Reason #2: You need to spend your time running your business.
It’s pretty obvious that when we tried to make the cookie bowls we had absolutely nothing better to do and could waste time on a few batches of what promised to be our greatest culinary accomplishment.
But I’m willing to bet you have very little time to spare.
And I know from experience that building websites — even on DIY platforms that claim to be easy as pie (not cookie bowls) — is a major time investment.
If you aren’t experienced in building websites, you can easily whittle away hours and hours trying to shape a template into what you need, getting your copy just right, and trying to figure out how to manipulate something with code. The details can be endless and can take away from the time you should be running your business.
On the other hand, if you have time to spare or have a desire to spend time learning how to develop websites, the DIY option may be for you.
