by The Computing Australia Group | Don’t Build Your
Website Yourself
For many business owners, building your own website feels like the ultimate money saver.
With so many drag-and-drop builders, free templates and “launch your site in an hour” promises, it’s tempting to roll up your sleeves and have a go yourself. After all, how hard can it really be?
Why Your Website Matters More Than You Think
Before we dive into the reasons, it’s worth underlining why this decision matters so much.
- Your website is often the first interaction someone has with your brand.
- It works for you 24/7, even when you’re not in the office.
- It influences whether people trust you, enquire, buy or hit the back button.
In other words, your website is not a nice-to-have brochure-it’s a core business asset. Treating it like a side hobby or weekend project usually ends badly.
1. Time Is Money – and DIY Websites Eat Both
The glossy marketing for website builders makes it sound like you can have a polished website up in an evening. You pick a template, drop in a logo, swap some colours and you’re done… right?
Reality looks very different.
The hidden time cost of “simple” website builders
Even the most basic DIY website usually involves:
- Researching and comparing different platforms
- Registering domains and setting up hosting (if not included)
- Learning how the builder works
- Choosing and customising a template
- Sourcing and editing images
- Writing and rewriting your content
- Testing forms, buttons and links
- Checking the site on mobile and different browsers
Every hour you spend battling layouts or fixing broken pages is an hour you’re not:
- Talking to customers
- Improving your products or services
- Closing deals
- Training staff or refining processes
If your time is worth $100/hour (and for most owners it’s more), it doesn’t take long for those “free” hours to become frighteningly expensive.
The ongoing time sink
Websites are not “set and forget”. To stay effective, they need:
- Content updates
- Security patches
- Design tweaks as your brand evolves
- New features as your business grows
With DIY, every one of these turns into another late night or weekend lost to troubleshooting. A professional team, on the other hand, already has the systems, tools and processes to handle these tasks efficiently.
2. It Takes Experience to Build an Effective Website (Not Just a Pretty One)
A modern website is much more than a few nice images and a contact form. It’s a carefully planned system designed to:
- Attract the right visitors
- Guide them through your content
- Build trust
- Convert them into enquiries, bookings or sales
That level of strategy and execution comes from experience.
Templates can only take you so far
Most DIY platforms (like Wix, Squarespace or basic WordPress builders) offer attractive templates. You can absolutely create something that looks decent on the surface.
But looks alone don’t guarantee:
- Clear, intuitive navigation
- Compelling calls-to-action
- Logical page hierarchies
- Easy readability and accessibility
- A conversion-focused layout
Experienced web designers and developers understand user behaviour, UX best practice, design psychology and conversion optimisation. They know what should go above the fold, how to structure information, and how to quietly guide visitors towards taking action.
Real-world example: one “amazing” plugin, one broken site
Here’s a very common scenario:
- A professional WordPress site is built and tested.
- The client finds a flashy plugin that promises a cool feature – a slider, pop-up, chat widget, you name it.
- They install it themselves without checking compatibility.
- The plugin conflicts with existing functionality and breaks the site.
In the best case, the fix is simple. In the worst case, the site needs to be rolled back to an earlier backup, losing hours of updates and content changes.
Professionals know how to:
- Evaluate plugins and tools
- Check compatibility and performance
- Keep backups and staging environments
- Troubleshoot and resolve issues quickly
Without that experience, every change you make is a bit of a gamble.
3. DIY Websites Often End Up More Expensive Than Professional Builds
Cost is the main reason most people attempt a DIY website. The logic is simple: “Why pay a few thousand dollars when this builder is free or $20/month?”
The problem is that you’re only seeing the visible costs.
The real price of “free” website builders
Those free or low-cost plans usually come with serious limitations:
- Forced platform branding (“Powered by…” all over your site)
- Limited storage and bandwidth
- No access to advanced features (like ecommerce, bookings or memberships)
- No or limited access to custom code
- Restrictions on SEO tools and analytics
As your business grows and you need more functionality, you’re quickly pushed into higher-tier monthly subscriptions, each layering on more cost.
On top of that, you may still need to pay separately for:
- Premium templates
- Custom fonts or icons
- Additional plugins or apps
- Professional email
- Stock photos or video assets
When you compare three to five years of DIY platform fees, plugin subscriptions, one-off fixes and your own time, the “cheap” solution usually ends up more expensive than a professional, scalable website.
Emergency fixes and lost opportunities
There’s also the cost you don’t see on an invoice:
- Leads lost because your forms weren’t working properly
- Sales lost because your checkout was confusing or slow
- Brand damage from an unprofessional or broken site
- Ranking drops from technical or security issues
A well-built site by professionals is an investment designed to generate returns. A DIY site is often a never-ending list of unexpected expenses and missed opportunities.
4. Limited Customisation and Scaling Options
Most DIY website builders are designed for simplicity, not flexibility. That’s fine for a personal blog, but not for a growing business.
You’re stuck inside a template box
On free or lower-tier plans, you’re usually limited to:
- A fixed set of layouts and modules
- Limited styling options (fonts, colours, spacing)
- Restricted control over headers, footers and navigation
- Predefined blog or product layouts that can’t be changed much
If your brand has specific design requirements or you want truly unique layouts, you’ll quickly hit the walls of what your template allows.
Every new feature becomes a puzzle (or a cost)
Want to add:
- Online bookings?
- Membership or client portal?
- Multi-language support?
- Custom forms and workflows?
- Integrations with your CRM or accounting tools?
In a DIY platform, each of these usually means:
- Finding and testing various add-ons
- Paying extra subscription fees
- Manually connecting tools that don’t talk nicely to each other
A custom-built or professionally configured site can be designed from day one with your future needs in mind. It’s like building a house with room to expand, rather than trying to bolt on extra rooms to a shed.
5. SEO Is Complex – and DIY Sites Often Struggle to Rank
Launching a website is not the same as being found online.
For your site to show up in Google and Bing when people search for your products or services, it needs to be search engine friendly – both on the surface and under the hood.
SEO is more than keywords and meta tags
DIY platforms often offer basic SEO fields:
- Page titles
- Meta descriptions
- Image alt text
Those are important, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Effective SEO also involves:
- Proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3…)
- Logical internal linking
- Clean, crawlable code
- Fast, stable page loading
- Mobile-first, responsive design
- Schema markup (structured data)
- Local SEO optimisation (for location-based businesses)
- Content strategy and search intent alignment
SEO best practice also changes regularly. Search engines frequently update their algorithms and ranking signals. Keeping up with these updates is a job in itself, not something most business owners have time for.
Mistakes are easy, penalties are painful
Common DIY SEO issues include:
- Duplicate content across multiple pages
- Thin content with little value
- Over-optimised keywords that look spammy
- Broken links and missing redirects
- Slow, bloated pages with too many visual effects
Any of these can hold your site back in search results, no matter how beautiful your design is.
Working with professionals means your site is built with SEO in mind from day one – and supported with ongoing optimisation rather than one-off guesswork.
6. Performance, Security and User Experience Really Do Matter
Visitors today expect websites to be fast, secure and easy to use on every device. If your site fails on any of these, people won’t stick around to be patient about it.
DIY sites are often:
- Slow to load, especially on mobile
- Bloated with unnecessary scripts and plugins
- Hosted on overcrowded, low-performance servers
Slow sites don’t just frustrate visitors – they also hurt your search rankings. Search engines take page experience into account, and speed is a big part of that.
A professional web team will:
- Optimise images and media
- Minimise and compress code
- Configure caching and content delivery networks (CDNs)
- Choose appropriate hosting for your traffic and needs
Mobile and cross-browser responsiveness
It’s not enough for your site to look okay on your laptop. It needs to work smoothly on:
- Phones and tablets of different sizes
- Various desktop resolutions
- Different browsers (Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox)
DIY templates sometimes claim to be responsive, but once you start customising them, it’s very easy to break that responsiveness and end up with:
- Text running off the screen
- Buttons that are too small to tap
- Overlapping images or content
- Hidden navigation items
Professionals build and test layouts across devices and browsers, so your users get a consistent experience wherever they visit from.
Security and compliance
Security is another area where DIY sites struggle:
- Weak or reused passwords
- Out-of-date plugins and themes
- No SSL/TLS or incorrectly configured certificates
- Poor user access controls
These risks can lead to your site being hacked, defaced or used to distribute malware. That’s not just embarrassing – it can damage your reputation and, in some industries, lead to legal or compliance issues.
Professional developers:
- Implement strong security practices
- Keep software up to date
- Configure backups and monitoring
- Help you comply with privacy and data protection requirements
7. When Things Break, You’re on Your Own
Websites are never truly “finished”. Browsers update, plugins change, APIs are retired, and new devices come onto the market. Any of these can break parts of your site overnight.
With a DIY site, when something stops working:
- You’re trawling through FAQs and support forums
- You’re waiting in live-chat queues for platform support
- You’re trying random settings and hoping something works
- Or you’re calling an IT freelancer at an hourly rate
Meanwhile:
- Your contact form might not be delivering enquiries
- Your booking calendar might be down
- Your homepage might be throwing error messages
The value of ongoing professional support
When you partner with a professional web design/development company, you’re not just buying a build – you’re buying support and peace of mind.
A good agency will typically offer:
- Regular monitoring and uptime checks
- Proactive updates and maintenance
- Security patches and backups
- Quick response when issues appear
- Advice when you want to add new features or campaigns
8. Brand, Content and Strategy Are Easy to Get Wrong Alone
Even if you somehow nail the technical side of a DIY site, there’s still the question of brand and content.
Consistent, professional branding
Your website should match your:
- Logo and colour palette
- Typography and imagery style
- Tone of voice
- Offline materials (signage, brochures, packaging)
Inconsistent or amateur branding:
- Confuses visitors
- Makes you look smaller or less experienced than you are
- Undermines trust
Professional designers know how to translate your brand into a digital experience that feels cohesive, trustworthy and memorable.
Content that actually converts
Writing website content is not the same as writing an email or a brochure. Good web copy needs to:
- Speak directly to your ideal customers
- Address their problems and goals
- Explain your solutions clearly
- Overcome objections
- Guide them towards taking action
On top of that, it has to be structured and formatted for scanners, not just readers.
Agencies often pair designers with copywriters and SEO specialists to create content that looks great, reads naturally and still performs in search engines.
Website building is a pivotal aspect of digital marketing. While a build-your-own website might be a quick solution for the moment, self-built websites do not persist in the long run. There are many reasons not to build your own website, some of which we discussed above. If you have any queries on website building or need assistance creating a new website, we have your back. Contact us or email us at sales@computingaustralia.group. Our experienced team of professionals at Perth will be happy to aid you any time.
Jargon Buster
Web hosting – is an online service that enables you to publish a website by allocating space on a web server for a website to store its files.
Layout shifts – is when a visible element on a webpage changes its position or size.
Plug-ins – is a software add-on that adds a specific feature to an existing program without making any changes to the program itself.
