Why To Avoid Page Builders (WordPress, Wix, GoDaddy, Etc.)

Let’s face it, you’re not a web designer. You run your own business and the last thing you want to do is get tied down trying to create a website for it. You don’t have the time, you just want it done ASAP and get it online. One of the easiest ways to get online quickly are the modern day page builders. You don’t need to learn to code or anything, you basically just drag and drop what you want on the website. Sure, it may help get your website up quickly but it may actually hurt it in the long run. Let’s dive into why custom-coded websites beat page builders any day of the week.

Lack of Customization

When you go with WordPress or other page builders, you essentially get “themes”. These themes come prebuilt - you have the ability to change the text, pictures, etc. But you are basically limited on what you can do (unless you’re a developer). So what does that mean? It means that your website may lack the design and functionality that you’re hoping for. You’re going to run into problems, be stuck, and not truly satisfied with it. You’re going to spend more time than you want in creating something worth getting online.

With a custom-coded website, the options are endless. Any design or vision can come into fruition as long as the designer is capable. Whatever you envision, they can most likely accomplish. With page-builders, you are limited and have a generic looking site that isn’t eye-catchy. You want to stand out from the competition.

Vulnerabilities & Compatibility

One of the largest issues with page builders, especially WordPress are security vulnerabilities. With WordPress, they require plugins to achieve the functionality you’re hoping for such as sending emails, contact forms, etc. A lot of themes even require plugins and add-ons. Unfortunately, plugins don’t always stay updated and it’s a huge area that hackers will target. They’ll scour for the weak points and attack the area that’s not patched. When they get into your server, the damage can be horrendous and costly. Along with the vulnerabilities, there are also compatibility issues. WordPress is constantly getting updated, but plugins don’t. When there’s a new update, it may end up breaking the functionality or visual display of the website. You have to constantly monitor and check your website for site issues. Otherwise you may encounter problems and turn away possible customers.

With Ridgeline Web Design, we focus on custom, hand-coded websites that aren’t built off of plugins. The sites use static HTML, CSS, and a little Javascript to bring beautiful, secure, and effective designs to stand out in the crowd and really draw in the customers. You’ll never have to worry about sites breaking or compatibility issues. On top of all that, we fully manage the site for you. You don’t have to do anything besides running your business, we’ll take care of the rest.

Load Times

One area where page builders really suffer are their load times. There is so much bloat and unnecessary code that are added to the themes and plugins that really drag down the speed of the site. It takes a while to load up the plugins and themes, because more often than not, they aren’t optimized. Why are load times and speed important? Think about it, when a customer goes to look you up and they click on your website and it’s just sitting there loading (or maybe it won’t load at all), that’s an instant red flag. First impressions are critical when trying to get a new customer. If the site isn’t loading quickly and it takes forever to navigate, you may lose that potential customer. You certainly don’t want or need that.

With our custom-coded sites, our load times are almost instant. That means when a customer clicks on your website, it loads before they have time to turn away. There’s no unnecessary code, everything is optimized, and the server is built for speed. We want that first impression to be meaningful to help you make your business the best it can be.

Accessibility & SEO

Another area that page builders struggle with are accessibility and SEO. What does accessibility and SEO mean? Accessibility with a website is how well individuals with certain disabilities can navigate and use your website. With page builders, this isn’t always a priority. If the color contrast is off or the foundation of your website isn’t developed to handle this, that’s a problem. SEO is search engine optimization and that’s how well your site ranks on search engines such as Google. When someone looks up services you offer in your area, you want to rank as high as you can so you can be found. Page builders struggle with this because not everything on there is formatted, missing tags or attributes, and essentially gives the search engine a hard time to read your site. The plugins and themes can make it a nightmare for ranking on Google.

When it comes to ranking with Google, they are very picky with their way of ranking you. They look for key factors such as if it’s mobile friendly, page speed, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. If these areas aren’t top-notch, they are going to rank you much lower. These scores are based out of 100. The higher the better. At Ridgeline Web Design, we make this a priority. Everything we do will give you a rank of 99-100. We make sure Google gives you no reason to rank you higher. Everything is optimized for the best performance possible. If you already have a website and are curious how it is, head over to here and check it out. https://pagespeed.web.dev They check both mobile and desktop rankings. Your scores may surprise you.

Conclusion

Page builders are everywhere. Their intent is to get you online quickly. But what people fail to see are the behind the scene issues that arise with this. Performance, search engine rankings, customization, and much more will become hindered. Sure, they get you online fast, but you need more than that to stand out in this competitive business world. Your goal should be to dominate your competition and stand out from the rest. Custom-coded websites will beat page builders and day of the week. It’s worth investing into this critical asset of your business.