For years there’s been an abundance of website builders: Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy Website Builder and Weebly, to name a few of the biggest. Together they host millions of user-created websites, and plans range from free to a few dozen dollars a month. They’ve spent years refining their interfaces so you can drag and drop sections, media and widgets onto a page, and adding images, text and pages is effortless. Today, many even offer AI tools that generate a starter website in minutes.

So, with an easy interface and an affordable price, why hire a professional web designer?

Here are 3 compelling reasons:

  1. SEO. This is the #1 disadvantage of website builders, and the main reason small businesses who used them ended up hiring us. Builders focus on an easy interface, but the code behind the finished website is often bloated and slow, which makes it harder for search engines like Google to read. Google publishes clear guidance on building fast, well-structured, crawlable websites, and we follow it closely on our custom and WordPress websites, along with well-organized content that AI tools can easily understand and cite. When businesses move from a website builder to one of our sites, their search rankings typically improve.
  2. Time. Even with an easy builder (or an AI-generated starting point), you still have to devote many precious hours to designing, writing and polishing your website. Most small business owners don’t have the time, or don’t want to spend it this way; it’s easier to hire a professional. A dedicated web design company perfects your website while you grow your business. Some people get frustrated building their own website; we, on the other hand, love these projects.
  3. Quality design. Squarespace has gorgeous templates that look good right out of the box, but it’s more the exception than the rule; many builder themes still feel cookie-cutter. And even with an attractive template, design choices remain: photo placement, color scheme, logo design and more. A professional web design firm, like Pioneer Media in Knoxville, TN, is trained to make smart design decisions for an attractive website built to turn visitors into customers.

There you have it! If a website builder isn’t for you, or you’ve outgrown yours, contact Pioneer Media for a professional, custom-designed website tailored to your needs. (See also: 5 things to do before hiring a website designer.)

Leighton Smith, Pioneer Media

About the author

Leighton Smith is Pioneer Media’s website designer, web developer and webmaster, based in East Tennessee. As a solopreneur, he is each client’s one point of contact and has built hundreds of websites since learning to code in 2006.

See my website design work