Full Transcript
[0:00]
Welcome to the 805 Web Minute. And today we're talking about the hidden costs of your good enough DIY website. We're gonna dig into why that website you built a few years ago, the one that seems to be working just fine might actually be costing you customers and a lot of valuable time right now. Yeah, this is such a big one for so many business owners, especially right here in SLO County. I mean, so many of you are smart, you're capable, you went out, you used something like Wix and you got your business online. Right, and that's a win, we totally get that. Absolutely. So this isn't about tearing that down. It's more about uncovering the problems that sort of creep in over time. The things you don't see on the surface, because that cheap, easy start can, well, it can turn into a real liability, costing you time and more importantly, actual customers. Precisely. And to get it, we have to look behind the curtain a little bit. So let's start with maybe the most brutal costs, the one that hits you instantly, the speed problem. Okay, so let's unpack this because when I log into my builder, it feels snappy. Yeah. I move a picture, I change some text, and it's fast for me. Right. Why is it so different for a customer, especially one here on the central coast, who might be on like a spotty cell connection? It all comes down to how those sites are built. They're designed for flexibility for you, the owner, not for speed for the user. They rely on, well, what a really heavy code. Tons of JavaScript, for example. And what does that mean, really? JavaScript. Think of it like a little computer program your phone has to download and run before it can even show the page. So instead of just getting the picture and the text, your phone gets this long instruction manual first. So it's like, okay, first load this script, then run this widget, then you can show the hours. Exactly. And that manual often has to pull in dozens of different files. It all just adds up, and it costs you and customer patience. You hear about the three second rule, and the stats are pretty shocking. Okay, hit me with them. We found that 53% of mobile visitors.
[2:01]
So more than half, we'll just leave a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Over half gone in three seconds. Gone, they just hit the back button. So you're already fighting for less than half the market if your page is even a little bit slow. Wow. And it gets worse because a delay of just two more seconds, so five seconds total causes the bounce rate, that's people leaving immediately, to increase by 103%. So it more than doubled your chances of losing it. It more than doubles it. For a local business in say, San Luis Vizpo, relying on someone finding you while they're walking downtown, that's not just a technical issue. That is a hole in your revenue. You're just handing customers to a faster competitor. And that leads right into the next point. Doesn't it? This whole idea of a good enough trap. It really does, because a site that looked fine, even great back in 2020, now in 2026, it just looks dated and slow. So what's driving that? It's not like this site just rots away. What's changing around it? It's really three big things happening all at once. First, the obvious one, your competitors upgrade. They adopt these modern super fast designs. A customer pulls up two sites. One is sleek and one is clunky. And the clunky one loses the trust battle before it even starts. You just assume the business itself is a bit neglected. Exactly. The second shift is way more powerful. Google changes. Google is constantly raising the bar for what it considers a good website that heavy JavaScript we mentioned. Google actively penalizes sites for that now. Right, because Google wants to give its users a fast experience. I hear about things like core web vitals. Is that what this is? That's the heart of it. Yeah. Google is now measuring things like how fast your main image appears or how quickly you can click on a button. And these older DIY platforms, they just struggle with those metrics because of all that heavy code. So Google basically hides you. You get hit twice. First, you get pushed down the search results. And then the few people who do find you get impatient and leave anyway. It's a double whammy.
[4:02]
And that leads to the third thing. Customer expectations. People are just used to instant, though. They're on TikTok. They're on Instagram. Everything is immediate. They expect your site to be perfect on their phone. Good enough. Isn't good enough anymore. OK, so that's the money you're losing from lost customers. But what about the cost that hits the business owner directly? I'm talking about the time, the sheer time sink. This is probably the most overlooked cost of all because the builder's all advertised easy. And sure, it's easy that first weekend. But the real work, the real burden, comes in with the maintenance. I hear people say they spend an hour here, there, on it. But isn't really that much? Oh, it's a part-time job you never sign up for. The data we've seen shows small business owners spend on average two to four hours a week just on technical maintenance. Wait, two to four hours every single week. Just keeping it from breaking. That's the cost of just keeping the lights on. You're fixing broken plugins, troubleshooting some weird error after an update, dealing with security alerts, running backups. It's all that stuff under the hood. It's just constant firefighting. You're not doing work that makes you money. You're just wrestling with software. Exactly. And that's before you even do the productive stuff. Add another, say, three to five hours a week for actual content updates, changing your hours, uploading new photos, updating your prices. So you added all up, you could easily be at nine hours a week. Easily. Nine hours. Think about that. Here in a Royal Grande or a Vila Beach, that time could be spent actually serving customers, finding new products, or just having a life. You're trading valuable time for what's basically digital janitor work. And that makes it even harder to leave, which brings us to the next hidden cost. That locked in feeling and the price creep. Okay, let's talk about being locked in. If I realize I'm wasting nine hours a week and my site is slow, why can't I just pack it up and move to something better? Because you can't. These platforms are built on proprietary code. You're just renting space. You can't export your website, the actual code, and move it somewhere else.
[6:05]
So you don't actually own your own site. In a way, no. If you want to leave, you have to rebuild the entire thing from scratch. You're literally sitting there with two browser windows open, copying and pasting every single piece of content. And that's not an accident. It's designed to be painful to leave. So you're kind of trapped. And I bet while you're trapped, you start hitting other limits too. Oh, absolutely. The scalability ceiling. These builders are great for a basic five-page site, home, about contact. But what happens when your business in Esselot County gets serious? You need more, like a real booking system or a client portal. Exactly. Things that need a database, not just a simple page. Or what if you need dozens of pages? Or you really need to compete on SEO for local terms. The platform that was so simple at the start now actively holds you back. And while all this is happening, I'm guessing that cheap price you signed up for starts to creep up. It's inevitable. The intro rate of, say, 20 bucks a month ends. Now it's 35. Then you realize you need a better booking app. Or more storage for your photos. Those are premium add-ons. So suddenly that $20 is 40, 60, maybe more. And you're still doing all the work yourself. Now you're paying $80 a month and you're spending nine hours a week as your own IT department. That is the definition of a hidden cost. Okay. But to be fair, is there ever a time when staying DIY does make sense? Yes. And we have to be honest about that. It's not for everyone to switch. Okay. So who is it for? It's just extremely tight. And your site is super minimal like just a digital business card that you never, ever update. Or if you genuinely enjoy tinkering with the tech and you have a lot of free time, then maybe staying put is the right move for now. But for everybody else, for the business owner who feels that pain, who's tired of fixing things, who knows they're losing business. For them, a switch isn't just an option. It's necessary for growth. And that's where a managed solution comes in. Okay. So let's talk about what that looks like.
[8:06]
Many people here are new website and they just imagine this huge, expensive month-long headache. Right. And that's the old agency model. A managed service like what we do at UGRO is different. Yes, we need to gather your content and pick a new design. But we're talking about a process that takes maybe three to seven days. We're local right here in a regular day. So it can move fast. So the switch itself is quick. But what's the real freedom? What are the things I stopped doing forever? You never log into an editor or a dashboard again. Never. You never wrestle with a template. You never have to troubleshoot a broken plug-in or worry about hosting or security or backups. All of that technical maintenance time we talked about. That two to four hours a week is stress. It's just gone. We handle everything forever. All you have to do is send an email or make a call when you need an update, a new photo, a price change, whatever. Your website goes from being a chore to just being a powerful asset that works for you. That's the quick tip for today. If you want a professional website without the agency price tag or the DIY headache, here is the better way. At UGRO.Pro we build it, we manage it, and we handle every update forever all for just $79 a month. There is zero setup fee, no contract lock-in, and it is strictly month-to-month, so there is zero risk. We're local here in AG and we can have you live in days not months. Want to see what your site could look like? Go to UGRO.Pro right now and we'll design three custom mock-ups for your business, completely free, no strings attached. Thanks for listening and keep growing.