Have you ever been seduced by a beautiful gallery and a smooth interface promising you a quick and easy way to make a free website? Only to sign up and waste hours before you realize it's a lot harder than it looks, the promised functionality is lacking and you aren't a talented enough designer to keep your site from looking like a stinking pile of discarded Excel files?
Here are the top five problems you'll encounter with cheap website services.
- Advertise our Hot Widget Sauce. If you blog about widgets, you'll start seeing ads for your competitors widgets appearing directly on your site.
- Combo Meal #3 Please. The functionality is very limited, and there's no ordering off the menu. If your business needs things to work a special way... "go fish."
- Little Boxes Made of Ticky-Tacky. You will have a website... just like millions of other businesses. And they'll all look just the same. You want to have a custom design, that supports your brand? Don't be silly.
- I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up! If you get stuck, because you aren't an expert at everything, you'll really want to know that you can get devoted phone time with the top talent. Too bad, the service is cheap because it's designed to be automated and scalable. You are on your own.
- You Get What You Pay for. If you want your website to bring your business real value, your ROI will be proportional to how much you invest. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money, but you must be willing to at least get help planning your goals, and commit to developing good content and services that appeal to your visitors over the long run.