Patrick Dillon, CEO & Founder of WISE Digital Partners
Patrick Dillon, CEO & Founder of WISE Digital Partners
If you’re a business owner, you can look to popular platforms like Wix, Squarespace, or even WordPress for a theme or template to build your website in-house, or hire someone to build it from scratch.
After all, it looks like you’re saving money by not hiring a developer. And these website builders seem easy to use. It actually looks like you could see a nice looking website up and running quickly.
But as enticing as these platforms are, they have inherent flaws that often lead to struggles, if not outright failures.
The problem with fast website builders
Website building platforms like Wix and Squarespace make it easy to design a website. Using these tools, anyone can create a simple website by selecting different templates, entering information and pressing publish.
It’s not that hard. But this comes with a number of problems.
You might think that a quick website builder is a great solution if all you need is a barebones website with a home page, a contact page, and a few product pages. But what happens when you decide you need more features? That’s where the limitations of the website builder start to cause problems for the business.
Suddenly, you find yourself limited by limited templates and unable to customize your website to meet your goals. It’s a bottleneck that quickly cancels out any early-on gains.
Website builders often lag behind their competitors in terms of SEO functionality as well. An experienced SEO expert may not be able to do everything that could and should be done with the template and tools available. As a result, customers may struggle to find you online and you may receive fewer leads. And that’s not good for business.
Website builders like Wix and Squarespace lack good analytics tools, making it difficult to get the data you need to make smart business decisions.
WordPress may be popular, but it also has its problems
WordPress advertises itself as a complete solution for business websites. While it’s true that the platform offers many more features than Wix or Squarespace, it also comes with risks and can lead to frustration. Here’s where it can fail your business:
WordPress plugins are designed to enhance and customize your website, but they are notorious for causing performance issues. Here’s why:
● They need to be constantly updated
● They are deprecated and unsupported
● They have compatibility issues
● They end up not working properly
Why Themes & Templates are not optimal
WordPress themes and templates seem right in theory. However, they are usually not kept up to date and are so bloated that they slow down your website.
Choosing the right platform for your website is not only important, but also crucial for your business
Also, many themes and templates are not optimized for mobile (BIG mistake when most people use smartphones to find information quickly). And many WordPress templates are not coded with SEO in mind (i.e. header tags are used in a weird way for styling rather than clarifying content structure for search engines and users).
Security issues leave you vulnerable
With over 40 percent of the world’s websites built on WordPress, a WordPress website is a prime target for malicious hackers due to its popularity. Plugins and themes from untrusted sources can also make your business website vulnerable.
Additionally, your WordPress login screen may be susceptible to “brute force attacks” where bots enter multiple username and password combinations to gain access. Even if the bot doesn’t find the right login combination, the attack can slow down or even crash your website.
WordPress launched in 2003, making it almost 20 years old now. It was developed before the first Apple iPhone was introduced, before Google went public, and before YouTube existed.
WordPress was created when “digital” was in its infancy. Although it has been modified over the years to stay relevant and useful, it still has an older platform at its heart. And today it is in decline after years of steady growth.
NEST™ may not be as recognizable as the more well-known tools mentioned, but since its launch in 2019, it has quickly made a name for itself. It is a proprietary website platform and all-in-one digital marketing solution developed and supported by San Diego-based WISE Digital Partners.
WISE developers have worked extensively with WordPress and are familiar with other popular tools such as Wix and Squarespace. They are well aware of the drawbacks, which is why they created NEST™, a solution that solves the problems businesses face when using popular but flawed website platforms. Here’s how NEST™ is different:
● NEST™ websites are FAST and mobile optimized
● They are not under constant repair
● Analytics includes data collected from advertising platforms, keyword ranking solutions and more
● They support various business functions like lead tracking, listings and reviews
NEST™ has clear advantages over WordPress, and businesses also save money as development time is reduced by 60 percent when a website is built on NEST™.
By relying on NEST™, you have more time to focus on creating real value for your business through SEO strategy, UI/UX design, and creating great content that engages audiences and generates leads.
A component library provides flexibility
A strong library of modular components (compared to problematic plugins, themes and templates) makes NEST™ very flexible. Therefore, businesses can create a unique look and feel through custom design, copy and aesthetics.
