Full Transcript
Lauren: So my friend started making her own website like... three months ago. She's using Weebly because it seemed easy and cheap. And she's still not done. Like, every time I ask her about it, she's like, I'll finish it this weekend... and then she doesn't.
Honor: Welcome to the 805 Web Minute with Lauren and Honor... We make interwebs and website stuff make sense... Let's get into it.
Honor: Yeah, that's incredibly common. The DIY website trap is real. And there's a reason it keeps happening.
Lauren: Okay, but I mean... Weebly is supposed to be drag and drop, right? Super easy?
Honor: That's what they tell you. But here's what nobody mentions... Building a website yourself, even with a quote-unquote easy builder like Weebly? Takes 40 to 60 hours. Minimum.
Lauren: Wait... 40 to 60 hours? That's like a full work week!
Honor: At minimum! And that's if you already kind of know what you're doing. Factor in the learning curve, picking the right template, writing all your content, finding images, figuring out why something looks weird on mobile... you're looking at closer to 60 to 80 hours total.
Lauren: Oh! So that's why she's still not done. She probably started thinking it would take a weekend.
Honor: Exactly. And then life gets busy. Work gets crazy. And the website just sits there at 80 percent done.
Lauren: That's like... buying all the ingredients to cook a fancy dinner, realizing halfway through you don't have the right pan, and then just ordering pizza and leaving the groceries on the counter for three months.
Honor: Ha! Yes. And the groceries are slowly going bad the whole time. Because here's the thing... that half-finished website? It's not helping her business. If anything, it might be hurting it.
Lauren: How would a website hurt her business?
Honor: So there's this stat that I think about a lot. DIY websites convert visitors into customers at about half a percent to one percent. Professional websites? Two to three percent.
Lauren: Okay, that doesn't sound like a huge difference...
Honor: Let me put it this way. Say you get a thousand people visiting your site in a year. With a DIY site? Maybe 5 to 10 of them become customers. With a professional site? 20 to 30.
Lauren: Oh! That's like triple the customers!
Honor: Exactly. So while your friend is spending months not finishing her Weebly site... she's potentially losing half her customers to competitors who have professional sites that actually work.
Lauren: That's like... setting up a lemonade stand but only putting up half the sign. People walk by, can't tell what you're selling, and just go to the kid down the street who has their act together.
Honor: Exactly! And the kid down the street didn't spend 60 hours making their sign. They just asked someone to help.
Lauren: Okay, but what about after the site is done? She still has to maintain it, right?
Honor: Yeah, and this is the other thing people don't think about. Website maintenance... updates, backups, security stuff, changing content... that runs about 2 to 4 hours per week. Every week.
Lauren: Every week?!
Honor: Over 100 hours per year. And if she's billing her time at even 50 bucks an hour, that's thousands of dollars in time spent on something that still looks like a DIY project.
Lauren: Okay, so the moral of the story is... DIY sounds cheap, but when you add up all the time, it's actually way more expensive than just having someone else do it?
Honor: That's it. The real question to ask yourself is... is your website helping your business or hurting it? And if it's been sitting half-finished for months, you probably already know the answer.
Lauren: So if you're tired of staring at that unfinished Weebly site... give YouGrow a call!
Honor: Yeah, we do 79 dollars a month. Month to month, cancel anytime. No dashboard to learn, no weekends spent tweaking layouts. You tell me what you need changed, I handle it. Most updates happen within a day. And I'm local... I'm in Arroyo Grande... I actually pick up the phone.
Lauren: So instead of spending 60 hours and still not being done... you could just have a real website in a few days.
Honor: Exactly.
Lauren: Alright, this has been 805 Web Minute. Thanks for listening.