Creating a Website: Expectations vs. Reality

Every business needs an online presence these days. To stay relevant, individuals turn to social media, email newsletters, but primarily, the business website. A good business website is an online platform where customers or clients can engage with your products and services with ease.

Just like someone walking into a high street store, your business needs to grab your customer’s attention immediately. This usually means engaging content, flashy or super subtle web design, and an understanding of your customer base. But, how easy is it to create a website from scratch that ticks all these boxes, and do you need a website builder or a dedicated web developer?

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The Expectation

Most people think building a website is quick and relatively easy. This is the fault of some slightly underhand marketing techniques by certain website builder companies that show slick websites created in a matter of minutes on their advertisements. Sure, you just pick a template, pop your business information in and, whoosh! A brand new, industry standard website which your customers will flock to in droves.

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The Reality

Of course, it’s never going to be that simple. Before you even think about starting to build your website, you need to purchase a domain. You need to think about a hosting provider. You may need to consider a content management system (CMS). Suddenly, there’s a list full of things that never came up on those flashy website ads. This is going to take time, and in business, time is money.⁠⁠

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Cost

On that note, another consideration is cost. Surely, to build a website from scratch yourself, it must be totally free? Well, there are some website builders that are free, but they rarely link up to your own personal domain, taking away the impact of your business brand. Potential costs associated with the creation of any high-end business website include:

• Purchasing a customized domain name (e.g. HelpMeBuildMyWebsite.com)
• Hiring a web developer or an agency to manage and adapt your website
• Some CMS services charge a subscription for use
• The same for customer relationship management suites which are a part of some business website packages
• Hiring copywriters who understand SEO to attract viewers to your website

Of course, you don’t have to spend any of this money, but most people trying to create their online presence come across these types of cost over and over.

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Limitations⁠

Using a website builder means dealing with the limitations of the templates it provides. A talented web developer will be able to use code to modify those templates to a certain degree, but there are still many limitations and, if you are already paying for a domain name and a web developer, to find yourself stuck with the basics at this point is pretty frustrating.

As well as templates, your website builder will no doubt include plugins which boost the impact of your website by linking out to special events or ticket sales, adding in donation buttons or allowing users to sign up for a newsletter. Newsflash: These plugins aren’t always vetted by the creator of the website builder, leaving your business website vulnerable to crashes, failures, or simply loading up so slowly that potential customers or buyers simply click away to somewhere else.

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How to Make it Simple

There has to be another way, right? Building a website from scratch or even using templates via a website builder seems like it might actually be a lot more hard work than we initially thought. Maybe, what you need is a dedicated online platform to launch your business from. For businesses that run groups, clubs, foundations, communities and committees, there’s a new and exciting platform that’s dedicated to exactly that type of organization.

Member.buzz is a powerful and intuitive platform with functionality you don’t get with other providers. If, as a business, you regularly need to:

• Create, modify, or monitor groups
• Plan and market events effectively
• Sell or distribute tickets for events
• Facilitate membership payments
• Coordinate between organization members
• Send fully customized newsletters
• Collect donations

Then Member.buzz can support your needs. This online platform goes beyond the basic functionality of social media, yet there’s none of the tough stuff we highlighted above that comes with creating your own website from scratch. Just effortless functionality and a toolkit full of features to benefit your business.

As well as being feature rich, Member.buzz is:

• Highly secure, using cutting edge encryption
• Fully customizable to boost your brand image
• Incredibly easy to use with a walkthrough upon first use, intuitive interface, and a dashboard which makes editing a doddle
• Versatile, lending itself to everything from bird-watching clubs to large enterprise groups
• As public or private as you want, with you in control of who can become members of your Space via the online platform

Member.buzz takes away the headache of website design, replacing it with a practical and innovative platform that allows businesses to truly engage with all their members.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping you taking the plunge and creating a website from scratch, either by yourself or with the help of a web developer. Even those who love their existing websites might find something enticing about keeping their groups and events in one Space. You could even link to your Member.buzz Space from your corporate website, perhaps turning it into a cool VIP area or members-only lounge. With this unique online platform, the only limits are your imagination.

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Interested in using Member.buzz for your organization? Click here to create a Free Space