December 3, 2007 Comments (15)
Having bumped heads with Homestead.com twice now in the past year, I think it's time to speak up. Homestead is one of the best known template-website-builder companies out there. They offer website design and hosting, have a pleasant user interface and convincing testimonials. Companies like Homestead.com appeal to small business owners because of their promise that you can build a professional website in just minutes (a debatable claim) and their modest pricing. Yet, there is something about signing up with Homestead that must be located somewhere in fine print but appears to be escaping the notice of small business owners...until it's too late.
In both of my encounters with Homestead, a potential client came to us because they had signed up with this company, attempted to build a professional website in minutes, and found th ey could not get the WYSIWYG to do what they wanted. In one of the cases, the owner then paid Homestead's pool of professional designers to try to accomplish her wishes. I've noticed that most template-website-builder companies do offer this type of service, despite the fact that it casts a shadow of doubt over claims that anyone can use their templates to build a professional website, unaided, without a moment's training in web design, usability or SEO. This client could not get Homestead's professional designer to understand what she wanted, ended up feeling frustrated and that she had wasted her money and months of time.
In the second instance, the client had struggled valiantly with the WYSIWYG but was disappointed with the unpolished end result and then came to the conclusion that they really didn't know what to do with the website once it was built. Did they need to submit it to Google? How would anyone find their website? What were keywords? The client found themselves alone and puzzled about how search engines work and came to me with a request that I redesign the site so that it would reflect professionally on their company, and then teach them about SEO and marketing.
Then came the surprise.
As it turned out, neither of these clients owned the domain names that they had purchased through Homestead.com. Unless the client was willing to use Homestead's templates or Homestead's 'professional' designers, they were not allowed to use the domain and hosting they had purchased. Frankly, I was shocked when the first client came to me with this tidbit of information and I immediately phone Homestead for verification. The rep confirmed that Homestead will not allow you to custom build a site on a domain purchased and hosted with Homestead. If you won't use their products, no domain name for you!
I'd never encountered such a bizarre practice before. Shared hosting is a pretty generic commodity. You can get it from any number of decent providers and your small business website will do just fine. But your domain is another matter. Finding out that you don't own it and can't take it wherever you want it to go is a little bit like being told you don't own your own first name and that you have to behave a certain way if you want the right to introduce yourself as you. I was certainly unfavorably impressed by Homestead when I discovered this weird policy and my two clients were furious.
Our only option, at that point, was to get Homestead to unlock the domain so we could transfer to a different registrar. Transferring hosting is a piece of cake...but transferring domain name registrars is a big pain in the neck. And, of course, this process only further delayed the launch date for these clients who had given their money to Homestead, dreaming that they'd be doing business in just minutes on the web.
One of my main gripes with the template-website-monster-companies is that they profit off creating unrealistic public expectations. Suggesting that you can have a truly professional website without someone on the project having some education about designing for the web, for humans and for search engines is a little bit like saying your dentist can fix your car. Maybe he can tinker with your car. Maybe he's creative and can even paint your car a pretty color. But in the end, he's a professional dentist...not a professional auto mechanic and this would likely become obvious to you the moment you started up your engine. I would estimate that at least 70% of the website redesign work my firm has done over the years has come from clients who bought into the instant-website-for-cheap idea and then spent several years wondering why they couldn't rank in Google. A template is just some code and pictures. It's not a web designer or an SEO consultant. It's no t an education.
It is, however, cheap. In general, small business owners have small business budgets, and while I'd rather see a small business owner who can't hire a pro invest in Dreamweaver and the SEOBook and spend part of every day learning about how search engines work, I know the big marketing efforts of companies like Homestead will continue to draw many, many people into their net. My hope is that people researching Homestead will read this article and realize that having a domain name held hostage is a deal-breaker. Look elsewhere if you're determined to try doing-it-yourself with a template.
Arm yourself with the following 12 questions and get clear, written answers from any template-website-builder company before forking over a dime.
I have yet to come across a template company that meets all of the above criteria, and as these are 12 of the things I would consider vital parts of any truly professional website, the lack of any of them is eventually going to be felt by the business owner. While budget often means we have to make due with what we can afford, at the very least, I urge you not to purchase a domain through a company like Homestead, with their strings-attached policy. Your plan is to put in the work to make your small business succeed, and even if you can't afford a professional website design now, y ou will be hoping to be able to at some point. Your domain name is one of the most important purchases you will ever make for your small business, and you need to be able to take it with you as you rise to greater heights in the business world.
Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.
You say:
"I'd rather see a small business owner who can't hire a pro invest in Dreamweaver and the SEOBook and spend part of every day learning about how search engines work".
This isn't realistic. Small business owners are too busy running their small businesses to have the time to learn design and SEO.
However, the offshore web design industry and companies like Homestead create an unrealistic expection among SMBs about the cost of quality website design.
After all, if large firms like Homestead are suggesting that you can have a professional website for the cost of a couple of beers, then serious web design agencies are going to look like rip-off artists for quoting prices in the $1000s range.
We speak to small UK companies every day who think they can get a tailor made ecommerce site for 500 notes and it just isn't possible.
I used Homestead for one Ecommerce site & left them because of their limited, unworkable "template" orientation. They don't even allow/provide a way to put seperate meta tags (titles, descriptions) on seperate pages - all pages contain the home page tags! How's that for search engine optimization... plus other functionality problems. So we took our site elsewhere & had to start over with the site. Fortunately we owned our own domain name. So if you're serious about Internet business, stay away from Homestead!
I don't like the domain thing about Homestead, but otherwise I've had good experience with them and don't see why a small business can't build a good site with their templates. Just build the site on their domain, buy your domain name somewhere else, and 'point' it to your Homestead site. For example, you can build a site there like http://mysite.homestead.com, buy a domain mysite.com at Godaddy, and 'point' it to the Homestead site. And yes, search engines will be able to pick it up fine.
For those who are wondering - you can purchase Dreamweaver from Adobe here: http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/ and seobook here: http://seobook.com/
One of my mantras to all my customers is, "Always host your URL with a different outfit than your site host."
This advice has paid off a couple of times, including an incident involving our own website when the fellow who owned a popular host lost his mind, closed down his servers, and left thousands of site owners trying unsuccessfully to get their URL's back.
We just migrated to another host and were up and running within 48 hours (including the time it took for the new IP address to filter through the system).
URL hosting is cheap. For less than $10 a year you can get your URL hosted by stable outfits like myDiscountDomain or GoDaddy.
The sad part is that someone just starting out building a website in house for a small business may never read this article. That's how people end up in situations like that. I am self taught and I've learned a lot of things from articles and forums, but if you don't know where to look how would you ever find out about companies like this? Luckily that never happened to me!
I had the same experience with Stores Online. Are you familiar with them? They do offer robust self-design if you choose, but what got me is you cannot create your own URLs but have to redirect your own domain name to a subdomain on their storesonline.com server. I tried to get a refund, but some idiot called me back offering to tell me how to cancel, which was to pay the company another fee. At that point, I'd already basically lost $6,000 in buying six site licenses and spent another $25 a month for each of three sites I set up, which--no matter what I tried--never produced more than 20 visitors a day and one buyer a year. And I knew how to optimze for title tags, etc. I'm convinced the subdomain URLs were a big part of the problem.
Your comments and cautions about Homestead restrictions and limitations were appreciated and probably necessary.
Couldn't you have gone the extra mile and provided a top Ten list of Hosts who DO meet your minimum qualifications for template-based designs?
I do think that my e-commerce provider, 3D Cart, does meet all of the criteria you mention.
One thing I loooove about them - besides the fact that I have control over title tags, etc. is that I have access to the actual html/css of each page. You wouldn't believe how much tweaking I can do! I think they're the best of both worlds - I didn't have to create the site from scratch, but I can access/tweak anything I want.
I think one of the first things I ever heard when I started to look into having my own e-store was to register the domain separately from the e-commerce provider. I sorta thought that was common knowledge.
WOW! I have been using Homestead for 3 years now, and am so upset about the domain thing. I just finished using a similar application to complete our new store, because the only ecommerce options Homestead offers is Prostores integrated and I HATE prostores and pretty much anything that has to do with eBay. I was just getting ready to get things started on transferring my domain from homestead to the new shop when I found this article.
Up until finding this out I was fairly happy with homestead, although it did take me a few months to get comfortable with their design set up, and using the wysiwig...however you spell that...lol.
I wish I had known all of this from the beginning!
Sheri Jones
old site www.wienertales.com - homestead
new site www.websitesin5.com/shopwienertales
Hello,
I have a rather meager little personal website that I use through homestead. They've been fine so far, but I really don't like the idea of not owning a domain that I bought, albeit through Homestead. Sure, I should have read the fine print, but is there any way for me to get ownership of my domain name? I don't care if it takes all year. I probably wouldnt switch from Homestead for what I need, but I would like to own my domain name.
any info would be appreciated.
thanks
s
I have been a member of Homestead for years now. After this article I was concerned if I owned my domains. I called them and they insured me that I did in fact own my domains. I was free to transfer, point or do what I want with the ones I registered. If you don't have the time to learn HTML they are still one of the better solutions. It appears that this "Designer" is losing business from companies like Homestead.
This article is unfounded. Domains are intellectual property. Do some homework.
I used Homestead for one Ecommerce site,and it work nice.
Try to add the following to your website:
_uacct = "xxxxxxxxxxxx";
urchinTracker();
If you can't, no google analytics for you. I think you can with the java portion of the website, but it is not clear. Homestead is a site for hobbyists, not businesses
$100 in Free TLA's!
Increase your traffic and link popularity.
Zero Click Fraud PPC
Target your ads locally, fraud protected
Top Google Rankings
Learn the art & science of top 10 rankings.
Video blogger Sage Lewis keeps you up to date with what's hot in the world of search engine marketing.
| www.flickr.com |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
Search Engine Guide Blog | Search Engine Marketing | Internet Search Engines | SEM Resources & Consultants | Newsletters | Advertise | About | Site Map
Search marketing information for small business owners.
Fetching the best small business news.
A friendly place to share small business ideas and knowledge.
A different kind of small business marketing conference.
Home of our network.
Copyright © 1998 - 2008 K. Clough, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy
FreeFind Site Search Engine - FreeFind adds a "search this site" feature to your website, making your site easier to use. FreeFind also gives you reports showing what your visitors are searching for, enabling you to improve your site. FreeFind's advanced site search engine and automatic site map technology can be added to your website for free.
(Unpaid placement - FreeFind is a Search Engine Guide partner.)