Who doesn’t like free? Free is great! But what are you actually getting for free? You get what you pay for, and with a free site builder, that saying could not be truer. If you are a business owner and thinking about whether to skimp on a website or to spend the money, listed below are the benefits of spending some money on a custom website.

• Your custom site will rank well in search engines.

Custom websites are designed to be search engine friendly, and because of this, will climb further in the search ranking than a common free site will. Search engines will rank a site higher the more people click on your site and link to it. For every day that you have a generic free site, your competitor who built a custom site will continue to gain a higher rank because their site will be clicked on more frequently. Essentially, it is better to choose the custom site from the get go in order to capture your audience.

• Ability to manipulate your site.

There are online marketing techniques that require the ability to manipulate a website. Unfortunately, with a free site, a SEO specialist will not be able to perform many of those techniques. A custom site allows an SEO specialist to be able to manipulate the site, to update it with ease and to change tactics quickly if needed.

• Quality and the consumer perception.

Let’s face it, it is easy to tell a free website from a custom website. A free website conveys poor quality, and consumers tend to correlate a poor quality website with poor quality product. A poor website encourages people to get off of the site and look for another, which is bad for search engine rankings. With a professional website, you can show customers that you are serious about your business, and care about the quality of their experience. This is likely to make people stay on your site for a longer period of time, which is great for search engine rankings.

Overall, a custom site design is tailored to your businesses branding and lets your unique style shine through. It helps to build brand recognition and works to gain the trust of your customer base by giving them a seamless transition from the website to the store to the product. Not to mention, a custom site will allow your site to soar to the top of the search rankings, helping customers find you. While it might be a large upfront cost, the benefits of building a custom site will pay off in the end.