Why hire a developer when I can build a website on Wix or Squarespace?
Written by: Matthew Wright
Updated: Mon Feb 12 2024
I am a creative person, why hire a developer when I can build a website on Wix or Squarespace?
Many small business owners and creatives create amazing looking websites using web builders. The issues with these websites usually lie not in the design, but in the underlying code or development aspects. Something I commonly do is have clients send me websites that they like. I use these resources in order to pull inspiration and to get a better understanding of features they may also need for their business. While looking at these websites, I tend to notice a few common issues though. In this post I would like to break down those issues. My goal is to help you understand how a good experienced web developer can benefit your website as well as helping you create a better user experience yourself.
My website is mobile friendly…right?
Mobile friendly design is the idea that your website should scale and alter its formatting based on the size of screens that users are most likely to use. Today, search engines like Google, prioritize mobile friendly design when determining the ranking of your website on their platform. Something I often notice with drag-and-drop websites, is that mobile responsiveness only accounts for a small screen size and larger screen size. These websites will look great on certain smart phones and laptop computers, but if a user is using a tablet, a large external screen or resizes the window for their browser the websites formatting will fall apart. On tablets and custom sized screens, text and images start to overlap each other or they start to migrate off the screen making the website nearly impossible to navigate and read. On larger screens, elements scale to the max size becoming almost overwhelming and making the user have to physically turn their head in order to see certain elements leading to an uncomfortable viewing experience. According to Statcounter.com, this lack of mobile responsiveness could be impacting up to ten percent of your potential client base.
An experienced web developer will easily be able to modify code in order for the mobile responsiveness of your website to cover ever screen size scenario. By using things called break points, a developer can resize elements for a specific set of sizes and even display a completely different layout for certain screens. This allows the website to feel like it was truly designed with mobile, tablet and all screen sizes in mind. This attention to detail not only creates a better user experience, but also shows potential clients your brands bar when it comes to quality.
Loading…
Another common “feature” I see with drag-and-drop designed websites is an initial loading or splash screen before the website is actually viewable. Per a Digital.com survey, “Nineteen percent of respondents say, on average, they will abandon a web page that takes longer than 2-3 seconds to load, while 8% will leave after one second. “. This makes a lot of sense, especially if your business is in a competitive market. Take for example a Voice Over artist who’s website acts as their digital portfolio. An agent or potential client receives 10s if not 100s of auditions and portfolios, so why would they wait 1-3 seconds before they can even start navigating your website? Not only does this impact clients, but Google also looks at a websites speed index in order to determine placement.
In order to fix this, the website should be created without using a loader. Instead, a web developer would focus creating performant code that is loaded in a timely fashion. In order to do this, they can do a few simple things. They can display properly sized and compressed images for each screen size, they can load content and images only when a user navigates to the them instead of preloading everything upfront and they can use frameworks and other technical solutions that allow for quicker load times.
What is SEO?
The last benefits of an experienced web developer that I would like to call out is around SEO. What is SEO? SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of making improvements to your website that increase the visibility of your brand on search engines like Google, Bing, etc.
Speed and mobile responsiveness, which we just spoke about, impact SEO greatly but there are other things an experienced web developer can do in order to help improve your websites visibility. These techniques involve inserting special code on each page to help search engines understand your content and shows them how the pages on your site are connected. An experienced web developer may also have ideas on how to better structure and display data on your webpage in order to increase SEO even further.
What have we learned?
Modern low code web builder and drag-and-drop solutions can be leveraged to create beautiful websites. The problem with trying to create a website without leaning on an experienced web developer is that you could be creating a bad user experience on specific devices, loaders and slow loading speeds might be causing users to abandon your site before even viewing content and a lack of SEO is potentially limiting the visibility of your website to potential clients. These topics are worth looking into if a web developer is not in the cards for you, but I recommend trying to leverage an experienced web developer to ensure you are getting the most out of your website.
– Matthew Wright
Looking to learn more about how you can turn your creative vision into a digital masterpiece? Visit us at Wright Angle Media for bespoke web development services that breathe life into your ideas. Let’s build something amazing together.
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