The time of websites being a luxury has long past. An innovative site is now more important than ever – and this trend doesn’t seem to be losing steam anytime soon.
Most businesses aren’t corporate giants so how exactly can you build a quality website without breaking the bank? These tools make it quick and convenient for web development novices to create and maintain a quality website.
You should be careful when choosing a website builder.There are a plethora of tools available and many have basic technical issues – even giants like Squarespace and Wix. Learn why your brand deserves better than these two builders below.
Squarespace’s Shortcomings
Squarespace is one of the more expensive website builders offering a library of innovative, high-quality templates for the website’s design,but don’t be fooled by the fancy wrapping paper – a quality design includes more than a visually appealing website. Here are the top issues with Squarespace.
Apps and Extensions
Unlike other website builders – or most CMS systems like WordPress – Squarespace lacks the ability to integrate third-party applications and extensions.
On the surface level, this makes sense and easily ensures that everything in the builder works just fine. However, Squarespace doesn’t offer any kind of regulated ecosystem for apps and extensions, which can seriously hinder the website’s effectiveness by preventing necessary features from being implemented.
So how do you integrate different features with your site? Only Squarespace can create new features for their builder, so either wait for them to roll out the new feature or have a developer use the Code Injection tool. Neither option is realistic for those looking to stay away from developers.
Advanced Marketing Tools
People won’t find your website if it’s not optimized to be found. Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to visitors organically finding your site via search engines, which can then lead to more sales and a wider reach.
SEO options in Squarespace are fairly difficult to work with and need to be worked around to have the right metadata in place. A/B testing isn’t supported and to top it off, Google Analytics, Search Console, Facebook retargeting and other integrations are hidden deep in the Advanced Settings menu – which have to be implemented by a developer using the Code Injection tool.
Some SEO functionalities are present in Squarespace, such as “Share” buttons and URL redirect options, but all in all, the SEO options are few and far between. The emphasis on design and lack of SEO features paint the picture of Squarespace being a design-first website builder, which can’t be beneficial if the site isn’t primed to be found online via SEO.
Backend Use Functionality
Although Squarespace prevents you from having to edit CSS or HTML code, that doesn’t mean it’s seamless. Simple tasks, such as adding or editing content, editing templates, incorporating blog functionality or opening new pages are incredibly difficult to find correlating touch options.
This may not seem like a major problem but it can be. Not finding necessary options can prolong the simplest of tasks, eating away at value time and money. This can also be especially frustrating when coupled with the beautifully designed builder. For something so uniform, it sure is hard to find what you need.
E-commerce
If your business depends on e-commerce, Squarespace probably isn’t the choice for you. The e-commerce functionality is very basic. It’s really only a shopping cart that can accept payments. However, payment options are severely limited as only Stripe can be integrated as a payment option.
Pricing
Much like anything else, you get what you pay for with a website builder. However, some tools simply don’t deliver enough value for the intended price. This can be the case with Squarespace.
Many features that Squarespace offers aren’t unique to this particular platform and can be implemented on a variety of other website builders. The pricing ultimately boils down to their unique selling point – quality templates. Squarespace is largely a design-first website tool and provides quality templates that exceed the offerings of competitors, but template choices are extremely limited.
With Squarespace’s other shortcomings in mind, is a small library of well-made templates really worth the steep price?
What about Wix?
Wix is also another popular website builder, but like Squarespace, the hype can hide some of the inefficiencies. Here are some of the biggest issues users encounter with Wix.
Templates
Wix has plenty of templates to choose from but a painstakingly frustrating way of implementing them. Once a particular template has been selected, there is absolutely no way of changing that template without reinserting every single piece of content, The website will need to basically be rebuilt in order to change the template.
The challenges this process poses may not be a deal-breaker for smaller websites with less content, but can pose a serious problem for larger sites.
Advertisements
Advertisements may be annoying, but they’re the price you pay if you want to use a free website builder. Wix’s ads are hard to be overlooked though, as they are displayed prominently on the sidebars as well as the site footer. These ads can make your site look unappealing – or cheap at the very least – and can only be removed by upgrading to their Combo package
E-commerce
The e-commerce tools provided by Wix are better than some of the similar tools competitors offer but they are in no way efficient. Necessary functions such as automated confirmation emails, shipping cost and tax configuration aren’t offered and require manual actions to complete.
As you can imagine, manually completing these tasks can be extremely time consuming and inefficient for websites that prioritize e-commerce.
Domain
Not necessarily a functionality problem, but another issue Wix users face is the lack of a custom domain. Any website that’s created using Wix will have “.wix” in the domain name, which can make your site appear less professional, or cheap.
Storage and Bandwidth
Storage and bandwidth are necessary to your site’s performance but – unfortunately – Wix limits both. Ample storage is needed to store any and all files on the site, so a limited storage capacity can hinder future updates.
Limited bandwidth is even more harmful. Wix actually limits the amount of visitors allowed on your website each month, directly affecting your digital marketing efforts. You’re creating a website to increase your brand awareness and reach, how can you do that with limited traffic?
Website builders are meant to help those without web development skills create and manage a quality website, but technical issues may do more harm than good.
You get what you pay for, so have Comit Developers build a quality site from the ground up instead of risking your success on a free builder. Our expert developers will provide an excellent theme, forms and plugins to keep your site running smoothly. In the long run, hiring a professional saves money because it is done correctly the first time.
