Website making - a guide

So what are the disadvantages of using these tools to make a website?

1. The website builders are not great at delivering truly responsive design that works as well on a mobile as it does on a desktop and all the screen sizes in between.
2. Although the website builder may initially appear 'easy-to-use' they often present roadblocks in awkward places where the tool doesn't quite fit and you end up having to compromise on what you wanted because the tool can't handle it or it works in a particular way.
3. You are probably going to be restricted to using one of a certain set of templates that can be used with the tool. Not only does this mean that your site is going look very similar to a lot of others but you may find yourself frustrated with the inability to get the template to do what you want it to. In the early days of the Rapidweaver tool that I use to design sites, that was all there was; a set of themes or templates into which I plugged the content. I found that I was frustrated by the constraints I was under. I was constantly buying new themes in the vain hope that somehow I would be able to get around these constraints. Luckily nowadays Rapidweaver has evolved in many ways so now I can start with a blank page and then design a website from scratch.
4. There is often a lot of redundant code that gets loaded into sites made with these tools that slows down the performance of the site. This is not good when it comes to SEO. To perform well in search engines you need a fast site on mobile. The site needs to score well in Google's Lighthouse metrics:
5. If you don't know what you are doing it is very easy to build a site with these tools in complete ignorance of any SEO factors at all. The simplest example is image optimisation. Images need to be correctly sized for each device type and delivered as webp format images but there are many other important facets to SEO optimisation that are learnt through years of experience.

The use of a website-building tool might be a starting point for your business if you are on a tight budget. However, you are probably unlikely to attract a huge volume of customers due to the constraints of the tools with regard to SEO and you may find a lot of similar-looking sites to yours. As your business grows then you should certainly consider a plan to get a well-designed, good performing website with content management tools on board to help you manage the text content and develop a long-term SEO plan.

The benefits of a bespoke site.

If you choose to go with a bespoke site, rather than a template-built site you are more likely to have the following advantages:

1. On-site search engine optimisation forms the core of most web developers' works. I always start with an analysis of what are the best opportunities for keywords for the topic that your site is addressing. From there I can decide what pages to build and what keywords they should be targeted for.
2. I use tools to audit every site once it is built so that I know I have a good chance that the on-page optimisation is effective. There are many metrics that go into this so it is almost inconceivable to build a site without this kind of audit.
3. Speed, on mobile particularly, is crucial to a well-performing site and a bespoke site can be 'tuned' to get the best possible speed consistent with its features.
4. As a client, you have the advantage that if you really like a particular layout or feature that you have seen on another website, there is a reasonable chance that your web designer will be able to replicate that on your site.
5. You should also benefit from being able to consult with your web developer if you experience problems with understanding how the content management system works or the best ways to write blog posts to keep your site fresh and interesting.