There are a whole range of good website builders, but here at Canberra Web we know which ones are the best.

Open Source: WordPress and Joomla

Open source platforms such as WordPress and Joomla offer our clients the best opportunity to create the exact website that they desire. Open source platform means that there are loads of great themes and plug-ins that we can apply to your website. Your website can be fully customisable so that it suits your exact requirements.

WordPress is also always concerned with maintenance and security and updates its platform several times a year, which means that you will also need to update your own WordPress website. This is great, as it means that any rogue bugs are fixed quickly and you can be confident that the latest security measures are in place. Canberra Web can also help you keep your WordPress website up-to-date.

Because of its open source platform, WordPress can be more complicated for the inexperienced website builder. In order to make full use of WordPress, a knowledge of modifying codes really comes in handy. This is where Canberra Web can really help you to get the most out of all the amazing things WordPress has to offer.

Joomla is great because it places plug-ins and extensions as its core features, which increases the performance and flexibility of your website.

Closed Source: Wix

Not all website builders use this open source platform. Wix is a closed source platform, so only their private development team can develop and produce its website building tools, giving you less choice and fewer advanced features compared with WordPress and Joomla. Similarly, if you want something that the Wix App store doesn't have (and these Apps in themselves are often problematic) then adding additional code to the site is extremely difficult. Another big problem is that there is also no way to export your data if you do want to move platforms

Open source platforms like Joomla and WordPress allow Canberra Web to meet all their clients website building needs, ensuring that everyone is happy with the outcome.

Many people aspire to start their websites, but in the hustle and excitement, they forget to carry out market research for the best web design and publishing solutions. In their quest for quick solutions to have their websites up and running, they sign up for free services, which they think are the cheapest way to have their sites built. Most of them end up using the services of free website builders like Weebly, Wix, and Yola; a decision that is marked with some disadvantages. Most of these free services are not as free as they claim, and this is how they make their money from unsuspecting web masters.

Advertisements

Once you choose to have these free website companies build one for you, they will place ads on your site without your control. The uncontrolled ads strip your site of its professional look, depending on the type of ads running. If you opt out of the free ads, the website builders will be willing to remove them, but at a fee hidden in the premium upgrade option.

Domain name

Once you sign up for free web design services, you also must be prepared to use their domain name within your own domain name, for example, yourdomain.weebly.com. Unfortunately, the formats will not do you any good with Google rankings, and worse still, they do not look very professional. Google does not take free sites seriously, and it might take longer to rank favourably in the search engines.

Design transferability

Once you have built your site and feel you need to take it to the next level, the bad news is that the service providers will not allow you to do so. Your site belongs to them, and for you to upgrade to your independent domain name, you will have to create one from scratch and forget about the hosted one.

A free website is not free after all; you cannot have any custom programming, host a blog, track customers, or sell products on it. To avoid all these disappointments and be the master of your own website, why not have a professional build one for you? Contact us today at Canberra Web and we will give you a favourable quote for web design in Canberra.

4 Reasons DIY Web Builders Aren't Worth The Effort

DIY web builders appear to offer a complete package, but, once you look beyond the surface, there are a whole host of problems with them which mean they just aren't worth the time and effort you need to put in to get the most out of them.

Here are four issues with DIY web builders:

1. Dedicated apps beat mobile sites 
   
   It's true that DIY web builders like Wix can offer the tools needed for you to optimise your site for mobile viewers. However, once you've got past the clunky and time-consuming editing of every single page of your site to make sure they all respond perfectly on mobiles and tablets, you might still find that this isn’t enough.
   
   Apps are at the heart of digital marketing for many companies, and they offer a host of benefits a simple mobile site can’t: push and in-app notifications sent direct to the user, more personalisation and user customisation, user engagement data, the ability to use the device’s features, and adding to brand identity and presence. What’s more, research shows that people prefer using apps to mobile sites, so without an app, you're missing out.
   
   
2. Nice design can't hide bad content
   
   Having a site that looks pretty is just the first hurdle to get over — DIY website builders don’t help you when it comes to content. The appearance of the site is, of course, important, particularly for a user's first impressions. But to get people to click through to your site in the first place, you need good rankings on search engines. A DIY web builder's template might look nice, but it's not going to give you the optimised content you need to get onto page one every time.
   
   Unless you already have a team of talented copywriters at your disposal, you’re going to need to craft well-written, original copy that is engaging and grammatically correct. If you’re a business person, not a writer, this is likely be a painful and time-consuming endeavour.
   
   
3. Having complete control is complicated
   
   Only a few of the DIY web builders out there allow you to design your site from scratch, and, of these, only a handful are even worth considering. Wix is possibly the best well known of the design-from-scratch builders, and it does give you a fair amount of control over the look of your site. However, this comes at a price — the user interface is often littered with buttons and boxes. This, in particular, can be very confusing for web design novices.
   
   There is little sense to some of Wix's customisation features — you have to head to two different menus to customise the same feature, for example. Also, there are no global style options — if you change the font for one heading, you have to go through changing all the other headings individually for a cohesive look, which is needlessly time-consuming.
   
   
4. Monolingual in a multilingual world
   
   In Canberra alone, over 30 languages other than English are spoken by people at home, and that’s without considering the international reach that your site might have. Our world is no longer just digital, it is truly global, and that's why it’s incredibly important to have multilingual functionality on your website.
   
   Multilingual capability is something DIY web builders just can’t offer to any kind of standard. Weebly is one of the few that offers this capability, but only through a partner app which is messy and confusing. Voog is decent, but the other aspects of the site let it down. There is no one DIY web builder which offers all-round quality, including multilingualism, meaning you'll have to compromise somewhere if you go down this DIY route.

At Canberra Web, we can offer smart solutions to the problems of DIY builders - for example, we're dedicated to offering you a superior SEO service and provide fully integrated app development Canberra. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help you.

DIY by simmons.kevin4208 licensed under Creative commons 4

With an increase in advertisements for DIY website construction, it might be tempting to launch into the process devoid of realistic expectations and the alternative options. You see the term DIY and you automatically believe you are capable of creating a website with no real effort at all.

Claims of sites being constructed in minutes and with the simple click of a mouse producing visually impressive websites that contain all of the features required are generally unrealistic. They, in fact, paint quite a false picture of the complexity and intricacies that lie behind the construction of a professional and polished website that will attract business and connect with potential clients.

Professional, experienced designers

Engaging a professional Canberra based team to design, build and construct your site might be a more prudent and profitable step in the long-term. Canberra Web design, build and maintain websites in WordPress and Joomla, proven platforms when it comes to building functional sites that work easily for the administrator and the client.

From the early stages of graphic design and app development through to the actual hosting of the site, Canberra Web can oversee the process with a professionalism and attention to detail unrivalled in the Canberra region. Just 10 minutes outside the CBD and with a real face in the digital community, Canberra web design and hosting has never been so accessible, affordable and professional. They can even construct an online shop if your site demands it.

Parlaying the appearance and content of the site into actual clients, interest and profitability is also handled by the team with an impressive array of digital marketing strategies that enable maximum exposure. Optimising the site to ensure it is clearly visible on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and other key players in the market, is a step missed by many in the DIY construction of a website.

When Canberra Web's strategies are combined with the appearance, performance and ease of access to the content and information on the site, it is easy to see why a quick DIY website fix might have its limitations.

Get in touch

Canberra Web can build a website that will grow with your business as it evolves; remaining current and functional no matter what changes occur within the industry. Contact us today for more details.

When starting off your new business website, it can be extremely tempting to use one of the myriad free website builders or blogging sites out there. As well as sites such as Wix and WordPress.com, there’s Blogger and even website builders available from many web hosts.

They can be relatively easy to set up, especially in comparison with something like self-hosted WordPress, where the learning curve can be quite steep. You can even have your site up and running within a few hours even if you know nothing at all about HTML or coding.

So why wouldn’t you want to use one of these website builders, especially as they’re free?

1. Your own domain and email address

You need your own domain name that reflects your business, such as www.yourcompany.com, and www.yourcompany.wix.com or www.yourcompany.wordpress.com doesn’t cut it for a professional company.

With many of these free site builders, you’re either left using their format for your domain name, or you can connect your site to your own URL, but you have to pay extra to do it.

It’s also much more professional to have This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. than to have to use Hotmail, Yahoo or similar because your site builder doesn’t provide you with the option of email addresses at your URL.

2. Your business needs a professional, branded look

Many free site builders are very limited when it comes to design and functionality. You’ll find the same templates over and over again on multiple sites because businesses used a site builder that simply wasn’t as customisable as they needed.

It's far better to use self-hosted WordPress and pay for hosting and an excellent, completely customisable theme so you can have your website fully designed to suit your brand.

3. You need to own your own real estate on the web

If you build your business on a platform you don’t own, such as Blogger or WordPress.com, what happens to your business if they either decide they don’t like your site and wipe it overnight, or if they go out of business next week and your site disappears?

Unless you own your own domain name and host your website yourself, you are extremely vulnerable to the rules and whims of the platform you use, and you simply can’t afford that for your business.

If you’d like to find out more about our services at Canberra web, including responsive, fully brandable web design Canberra, get in touch on 02 6223 2222.