Should you lease or should you buy your website?
Leasing has its perks after all. It’s fast. It’s easy. And it’s relatively light on your budget.
HOWEVER, let’s state the obvious. If you lease your website from another company and they go belly up, disappear, stop responding, board the alien mothership, etc., you’re never going to see your pretty little website again.
Poof! All your content, images and graphics gone forever.
Besides losing access to your website through circumstances outside your control, you typically don’t have permission to keep the copy, images and other graphic design elements should you wish to terminate your relationship with your website company.
What’s worse is that you’ll have no recourse or ability to transfer it to another party.
Basically, if you ever decide to walk away, you’ll have to leave it all behind…
Furthermore, websites-for-lease tend to be generic and contain low-quality copy (or syndicated/duplicate copy) that others in your industry, even your competitors, are using. And as we’ve mentioned before Google bots frown upon duplicate copy on the internet. (Read what Matt Cutts, former member of Google’s search team, says about spammy, duplicate copy)
Like a car, a website is better owned than leased about 99.9% of the time.
How buying your website will save you headaches and money in the long run.
When you buy and own your own website, you also own the content, the images (or at least access to them) and the graphic design elements.
And you SHOULD own all this content! It’s part of your intellectual property and important to your growth!
This means that you can use these assets repeatedly to get more mileage out of them. You could use your website copy and images on your email campaign or on a blog. You could use some of the graphic design elements such as icons in your other marketing collateral.
The best way to maintain complete control over your website is to use an open-source content management system (CMS) like WordPress. This way you can bring your website design in-house or work with a contractor and still retain ownership of your site.
In addition, by buying your website, you’ll wind up with a unique design that makes it easier for your prospects to distinguish your company’s strengths and services from that of your competitors. You’ll also come across as way more professional by doing so.
In the end, buying and owning your own website is better than leasing.
As I’ve said before and will say again, your sales and marketing dollars should be working harder for you to produce tangible, revenue-generating ROI.
Stay tuned for more knowledge and tools that will help your business grow.
Lastly, if you’re trying to improve your website and aren’t getting any visible ROI, please contact me for an audit.
I truly want you to be spending your sales and marketing dollars in a way that increases your revenue.
Want your IT business to grow, using tactics like these and others? Look no further. Fill out the form on this page to get started.
Based in Minneapolis, MN, and Fargo, ND.