The other day I got asked about a small business marketing company called Hibu. Would I recommend Hibu for their online marketing?
Here is my short Hibu Website review.
Our company Ignited Biz is a small business web design/marketing company. Reviewing another “web design” company’s merchandise is not always my favorite thing to do.
I will show you using a nonpartial website on my thoughts on how well Hibu websites are. This review is based on statistics provided by none other than Google itself.
I was NOT writing this Hibu site review to bring in business (I am crazy busy today). There’ll be NO calls to action on this page, as I figure if you’re interested in my web design services, you may click on the link or give me a call.
3 Reasons to save your money:
Cost is not one of the factors I checked out. In fact, no matter the cost, I would never buy a website from Hibu.
Number 1 reason!
Speed – in today’s mobile society, you need a fast site. People want your site to load quickly, with most searches coming from mobile devices.
Here is a screenshot of a Hibu site:
I was blown away at how slow it is. As you can see, Google estimates its visitor loss on this site at 35%! The second pic shows how well it ranks in its Industry Comparison.
That is horrible. first, if you could even make a site like this rank, 35% of the people give up due to the Slow load.
Not to mention how much you lose if you use their paid-for traffic. I know I have clicked on Facebook ads, Adsense ads, and others that were so slow I clicked out. Slow loading sites cost small business owners $1000’s of dollars each month.
Here is a comparison of how Ignited Biz sites. This one we just built. This is what you want. We take great pride in providing top-notch small business websites.
Without a fast-loading site, you shouldn’t even waste your money on a website.
#2 Reason – It’s obvious they don’t provide HTTPS to their customers. I won’t go into the long and boring explanation on HTTPS, but to put it simply, Google now uses it as a ranking factor, and it protects your potential clients. I know I don’t use any company’s site now that doesn’t have HTTPS. (Updated: I believe Hibu uses HTTPS as of checking on 07/28/2022. This shows you how long these other website builders take to catch up to WordPress)
#3 Their so Called SEO Service
Hibu seems to like to brag on their site, but in all honesty, I don’t see how they are helping their customers in the long run. The system seems to be more geared for the small business owner to pay for traffic. Again a slow site has a horrible ROI for paid ads.
ROI on Slow Websites
On top of that, the many websites I reviewed from Hibu seem to have very, very generic content. A few of the sites they built have duplicate names, wrong H1’s (heading tags), and multiple H1 tags; the list continues on and on. This will ruin local businesses’ chances of getting ranked.
These are just the three quickest things spotted in my review of Hibu websites.
There are probably many more good reasons why you should not pay Hibu to get a site. This article is getting a bit wordy already. I promised you a short Hibu review.
I’d really like to hear from you. Even if you completely disagree with me or in case you’ve got a site you think is good — don’t hesitate to post it.
2022 Hibu Reviews update. A picture says a thousand words. This is their homepage.
2022 Review Update
That looks like a lot of money down the drain if they can’t even make their own website perform. Take a look at the page speed above. Two screenshots, one showing the mobile speed and the other the desktop speed. The desktop speed was in the Yellow warning! That is poor performance and just unbelievable they are selling these low-quality sites to local businesses.