They tried WIX, then tried Hart Design

WIX and the many other players in the “build it for free” web design space all share the same problems. They all have attractive websites and promote how easy they are to use; no coding necessary. While that’s true, unless you have a genuine skill for web design, you will always struggle to make your website look as good as their showcase.

Most businesses are something other than web designers. This puts them on the back foot already. You’re perfectly capable of producing a functioning website using any one of the free tools on the market. But can you make it look truly professional and add value to your marketing arsenal? Do you fancy learning how to?

To be fair; this problem extends to WordPress – our preferred web design platform. There are many examples out there where even professional website designers don’t have that nebulous design skill necessary for conjuring a stunning website design.

Consider this analogy: We *could* do our own accounts. But we have neither the time nor the inclination to have our heads buried in spreadsheets all day. So we contract out the heavy lifting to a bookkeeping professional. They’ll do a better job, and we’re free to work on things that we’re passionate about. That’s just good business.

WIX (and many of its competitors) has a terrible reputation for SEO. For WIX, most of that stems from some historical limitations in its coding. Up until recently, WIX has fallen short on some of the SEO fundamentals that are critical for strong search engine rankings.

While there is evidence that they’ve upped their game, the problem is the same as with the design challenges above: search engine optimisation is a skill that’s learned and maintained over time. It’s not something that happens on its own. Unless you know how to leverage your chosen website platform, your SEO will only tread water.

That was true for Home Design Company. Despite their previous WIX website being a relatively recent build, their website was nowhere to be found. And the majority of their traffic was acquired through pay per click campaigns.

Good design, SEO fundamentals and quality content form a “golden triangle” of successful website design. Let’s look at content…

Part of our review of the old Home Design Company website identified a lack of content, and what was there lacked punch. We produced entirely new wording for five core pages.

The new copy was written with our SEO hats on. And the content was presented on each page with our creative website design skills.

You’ll have noticed a common thread running through each section: the DIY approach to web design will take you only so far.

Sure, it saves you a buck, but is the end result worth it?

Consider the time that you spend on making a build-it-yourself website, such as WIX. If it doesn’t hit the mark, you’ll need to add however long you’re prepared to run with that end result. If you don’t get your DIY website right, you may as well set on fire that combined time.

Let’s circle back to our bookkeeping analogy above. We’ve left the numbers to the experts, and we’re better off for it, despite the extra monthly cost. This allows us to spend our time and energy on more exciting – and profitable – endeavours.

Search for home design and build company in Google. At the time of writing, you’ll find their website as the first organic search result on page 1.

How did we achieve this?

Hart Design rebuilt the Home Design Company website in WordPress, providing the following services and inclusions:

• Creative, responsive design
• Content writing
• SEO fundamentals
• Home Design & Build Cost Calculator

The content writing service was critical. Without quality content on your page, how will Google’s robot understand your business when it comes to crawl your site? Our content writers honed in on the most relevant keyphrase – home design and build company – and the result speaks for itself.

The Calculator is inspired by an emerging web design technique designed to improve visitor engagement: tools. By offering a free tool, you’re providing a reason for users to stay on your website a little longer. They’ll learn something they didn’t know before and in doing so, gain a little more trust for your company. Plus, as the site owner, you gain another opportunity to capture a new lead from your website. When you give away information, you are increasing your chances of the buyer choosing you when they come to make their sales enquiry.