Full Transcript
[0:00]
Welcome to the 805 Web Minute. And today we're talking about why that cheap and easy website builder might actually be costing you half your potential customers. Yeah, that's really the core of it, isn't it? For so many small business owners here on the central coast, I mean, whether you're in Paso or down in AG, that promise of a DIY site is just it's so tempting. It is. But this deep dive is really about looking past that marketing, and getting to the reality of it for your business. We're going to look at the hitting costs of platforms like webly and why good enough can actually stop you from growing. And I totally get the appeal. I mean, when you're just trying to run your business, the idea of a huge web design fee. Yeah, it feels like too much. Of course. So weably comes along and says, hey, it's drag and drop. It's simple. And you can start for free. It sounds perfect. It sounds like the perfect solution. But that promises, well, it's often the first hitting cost, the frustration. What the data shows is that the quick weekend project. Yeah. It never is. Never a weekend project. No, it just morphs into this month's long grind. You start out excited. And then you hit the limits of a template. And you're spending hours on YouTube trying to make a box fit. And the research points at something really interesting about that. A lot of local business owners right here in our area, they start one of these sites, get maybe 80% finished, and then they just walk away. Exactly. Because they're actual business, the thing that makes the money takes over. It has to. They hit a wall trying to figure out some technical glitch and realize, you know, my time is better spent literally anywhere else. So you're left with this half finished site that does nothing for you. Absolutely nothing. And let's say you do manage to push through and get it done. That free price tag, it disappears the second you want to look professional here in SL County. That's so true. The free plan just isn't an option for a real business. No way. It forces their branding all over your website. Think about it. It's like putting up a sign on your store front that says, I use the cheapest option available.
[2:00]
It just kills your credibility from the get go. Right. So to get rid of the ads and get your own domain name like your business.com, you have to upgrade. And that's when the monthly fees start. It's maybe $10, $13 a month. Not a huge amount. But it's a first sign that this isn't as simple or free as you thought. And even after you pay, you're often working with a platform that feels a little dated. That's putting it mildly. The research is really clear that we believe templates and just the whole platform feel kind of stagnant. Why is that? I mean, if they're still selling it, shouldn't they be updating it? You'd think so. But you have to look at the history. Square bought we believe way back in 2018. And since then, major updates have really slowed to a crawl. The core technology just hasn't kept up with what makes a site fast and modern today. So you're basically starting out with a five-year-old disadvantage. You are. You're at a technological disadvantage from day one. OK, so that makes sense. We've got the small monthly cost, the initial frustration. Let's dig into the biggest hidden cost, the one that really matters, the owner's time. This is everything. The opportunity cost is just enormous. If you're running a shop in SLO, every single hour you spend fighting with a website builder is an hour you are not making money. We have to stop looking at the $13 fee and start looking at the cost of those lost hours. So let's put some real numbers on this from the source material. Even if you're a little bit technical, it takes a minimum of 30 to 60 hours to build a site from scratch. Minimum. But you add in the learning curve, figuring out their system. You're really looking closer to 60 or even 80 hours for that first build. That's two full work weeks. Two full weeks of your life that you could have spent serving customers. Or for a contractor in a taskadero bidding on a big job, it's a huge time-sync. And what really surprised me is that it doesn't stop once you hit publish. Not even close. Because you have to do everything yourself. They update the security, changing a photo, updating your hours.
[4:04]
That ongoing work takes about two to four hours every single week. Wow, two to four hours a week. That adds up over a year that's more than 100 hours. It's over 100 hours. That's more than two full work weeks every year just on maintenance. OK, so let's connect that back to money. Because this is where the whole DIY idea kind of falls apart. It really does. Let's just say your time is worth a conservative $100 an hour. That initial 60 to 80 hour build just cost you $6 to $8,000 of your own time. That free website just cost you thousands. Exactly. You've spent thousands of dollars of your high value time doing low value work that frankly, you probably don't enjoy. It's an expensive hobby, not a business strategy. So the real cost isn't $13 a month. It's the thousands in lost revenue and time. Precisely. And all that time you invested means nothing if the website itself actively pushes customers away, which brings us to performance. The slow speed of these sites is another huge penalty. OK, let's keep this simple because performance can sound technical. Why are these DIY sites so slow? It really boils down to this. To make it drag and drop easy for you, the builder has to load every single possible option in the background, every button style, every layout, every animation. Even if you don't use them. Even if you only use three things. So your simple five page site is carrying all this extra unnecessary code. All that weight just slows everything down. And speed is critical now. It's not a nice to have. It is a non-negotiable. The stats are just brutal. Research shows that a delay of just two seconds in page load time can increase cart abandonment by up to 87%. 87%. So a two second lag and almost nine out of 10 potential customers are just gone. They're gone. And what's worse is they don't blame their internet. They blame you. They see your business as unprofessional or outdated. And 88% of users say they won't come back after one bad website experience. So that person who was looking for your bakery in Aroio Grande
[6:04]
or your farm stand in AG, they're not just gone for now. They're gone forever. Gone forever. And they've probably already clicked over to your competitor who's site loaded instantly. So it's a double whammy. You lose the customer. And search engines like Google see that people are leaving your site instantly so they rank you lower. Which is the perfect lead in to the most important metric of all conversions. The conversion cliff. This is where we see if a website is making you money or costing you money. Right. And for a local business here on the central coast, a conversion is simple. It's someone filling out your contact form or picking up the phone to call you. OK, so that's the goal. What's the actual difference in the results? Well, the research is pretty definitive on this. DIY websites. Because they're generic, they're slow, they convert visitors at a really low rate. We're talking 0.5% to maybe 1%. And a professional site that's built to actually sell. Those are converting it 2% to 3%. Sometimes higher. Because they're built with one goal in mind to guide that visitor to take an action. Let's make that real. Samu Landscaper in SLO. And I get 1,000 visitors to my site in a year. What does that look like? With your DIY site, at that 1% to 1% rate, you're getting 5% to 10 new leads for the whole year. 5% to 10. OK. And if I have that professionally optimized site, at 2% to 3%. Now you're getting 20% to 30 solid leads from the exact same 1,000 visitors. You didn't spend one extra dime on ads. So just by changing the website, my business gets 2 to 4 times more customers, you're literally losing half of your potential business. At least half. It's impossible to argue that the DIY site was cheaper when it's costing you 20 new customers every single year. So after all that, the time drain, the slow speed, the lost conversions, is there ever a time when a DIY site like Weebly actually makes sense for a business owner? You know, there are a couple of very, very narrow cases. If you have absolutely zero budget
[8:05]
and you just need an online placeholder, maybe, or if you're a hobbyist who genuinely enjoys tinkering for hundreds of hours. But for a serious business in SLO County, the hitting costs just don't add up. It'll cost you more in the long run. And that's really where the UGRO.Pro solution comes in. Our team, right here in AG, designed this service to be the answer to this exact problem. Exactly. We don't just give you a template and wish you luck. Our whole focus is building a custom, fast loading site that's designed from the ground up to get you leads. And because we handle all the technical stuff, we can get you live in just a matter of days, not months. And we completely eliminate that time cost we talked about. It's a true white glove service. If you need something changed, a new photo, different hours, you just call or email our team here in AG. And most of those updates are done within a business day. So no more wasting your weekends fighting of a dashboard. We handle all of it, the security, the backups, every single update forever. And to make sure your site never looks outdated, we have the EverFresh guarantee. Every three years, you get a complimentary design refresh. Your site will always look modern and competitive, which is something a DIY builder just can't promise. 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 mockups for your business, completely free, no strings attached. Thanks for listening, and keep growing.