You Built It Fast. Now It's Slowing You Down.
Launching fast was the right call for a lot of businesses. A builder platform got them online, and it worked.
It may have been the right choice at the time when they made that decision. There's nothing wrong with those if you just have a simple website that's a brochure site for information. But if they're looking to expand and build, and want something like a membership site or an educational learning site with modules and tests and programs, they need a true database site now.
What "Moving Fast" Actually Costs
Many times people build on a builder site, but they have someone do it for them. Then they don't know how to edit it themselves, so they're stuck when they want to add a feature on. For example, maybe they want to have members. The builder they use may not do that well, or easily, or at all. And if it does, it's most likely that they don't own their data, and they may not even own their site. They're probably renting it.
The Signs the Speed Debt Is Due
People sometimes end up using multiple sites or multiple software to accomplish what they're trying to do. This ends up being a hodgepodge, and sometimes it looks that way to their clients. It's also more cumbersome to use and involves more manual work for them.
The Transition Point
They know it's time to move on when they've hit a wall. Whether they can't edit the site themselves, or they want to add on a feature that they can't add on, or can't add on easily, or it's going to cost them a lot more money. Or it's costing them more and more every month for more and more people on their site. Or they can't have editors working on their stuff, they can't permission it right, or they have no workflow. Or they want things they can't have. Or they can't export their data, or they don't own their data, and they're renting their site.
The longer they wait, the harder it could be, the more difficult it could be, and also the more costly it could be to move into what they need.
How Cool Fire Approaches This
The first thing I do if they come to me is evaluate where they're at, what they're using and what they need it to do for them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my website slowing my business down even though it worked fine when we launched?
With growth comes complexity. You may have started off simple, a few pages, some information. But as your site grows, and especially if your site has not been maintained, you're going to end up with the site slowing down. The more functionality you try to bolt on, the worse it's going to be.
How do I know if my platform is the bottleneck or if something else is wrong?
Are the problems with a specific user, and nobody else has the problem? Or are the problems consistent with everybody? If it's the same slowness, the same glitches, the same errors for everybody, then it's the website platform.
Is it expensive to move off a builder platform?
The cost of a migration depends upon how complex the existing site is and what your requirements are for the new site. A straightforward content migration from a well-organized site is typically four to eight weeks, and complex migrations with custom functionality and integrations of course take longer. You want to compare the cost of migration to the cost of not changing anything. That's the technical debt, the issues you're having, the way you're represented to your potential customers, the way your members interact with the site, the things that you want to do that you can't do right now, and the lost revenue.