Call it “shiny object syndrome,” and I’ll whole-heartedly agree with you— I’ve had a lot of different websites and blogs, and I’ve hosted them in a lot of different places. But once I started working with Kartra and offering it as my primary service for so long, it made practical sense to build my website there.

Or, did it?

Taken in by the allure of an “all-in-one” platform, I settled for the features that Kartra provided. I— like many others that even I myself have taught— believed that selling products online was all about two things: sales, and marketing. And while those are two very important (and very distinct, might I add) aspects to selling products online, they are but two pieces of an entire pie.

Another critical piece of your online business website is functionality.

• Does it load quickly and properly?
• Is it mobile responsive?
• Is it glitchy or prone to a disruption in services?
• Does it need frequent (or any updates) to work?

While these seem like obvious questions that all website building platforms + hosts will claim to do, they are mission critical when it comes to having a dependable and converting website.

So, what does Kartra and ShowIt have to do with all of this? Unfortunately… I found the above non-negotiable to be something that Kartra wanted to negotiate on… and frequently. 

Kartra does an exceedingly great job at both marketing and sales. 

If your business is centred around those 2, and can spare the obvious design flaws, above-average page loading speeds, and general glitchiness, then Kartra will undoubtably work just fine for you. That isn’t to be tongue-in-cheek, for this is true for so many businesses selling products online.

In the case of my own business— one very much centred upon quality design, fine details, and client experience— I couldn’t ignore the increasing interest in ShowIt as my business pivoted away from a Kartra agency, and into a website + sales page design studio.

The perfect web design platform might not be “all-in-one”

I came to this realisation while frustrated over Kartra’s lacking capabilities where branding + design came in to play. I needed to demonstrate to my own clients that I understand what branding is, what good design is, and what cross-device functionality looks like. I just couldn’t reliably build that in Kartra, and decided to play around with ShowIt.

ShowIt made it easy for my design dreams to come true.

With simple drag and drop features allowing you to move your elements anywhere on the page without sacrificing responsiveness, ShowIt hits the ball out of the park in terms of impressive website design. But, as always— there’s a catch.

If you don’t know how to build a website, or your new to building them, you might find yourself trapped in “shiny object syndrome,” too. Among ShowIt’s native features include many transition effects, multiple different Canvas views to display or hide information based on user interaction, and extremely fast loading speeds, even for high-resolution images. This makes it very easy to build a website that’s just a little— or a lot— “too much,” repelling your potential customer entirely.

This is why I absolutely recommend working with an expert on your website. Just because you can do something on your page, doesn’t mean that you should. Building a high-converting website means paying very close attention to the things you should— and shouldn’t— do on your pages.

Moving the Blog onto WordPress, ShowIt’s blogging partner, made sense for multiple reasons

First of all, Kartra does not offer a blogging function. In order to blog in Kartra, you need to either:

• Connect a subdomain for your blog and host it elsewhere (like WordPress)
• Create a blogging “page” where you manually update each and every link, recent post, and navigation in your Kartra pages (a huge mess)
• Use a service such as DropInBlog to host your blog properly within a Kartra page

For my previous blog, I’d chosen the later. (If you’re interested, I still do really like DropInBlog and would recommend them. I have a video explaining their SEO analyser on Youtube if you want to see what DropInBlog is like).

WordPress is the blogging champion and more easily favoured by Google. After comparing pricing, I realised that moving my blog onto ShowIt’s WordPress integration made much more sense than looping in a separate platform. 

Should you move from Kartra to ShowIt?

Despite everything I’ve explained here, I don’t recommend carte blanche that everyone ditch their Kartra websites and move onto ShowIt. In fact, I’m still building websites for clients within Kartra.

What works for you and your business is entirely separate from mine, or from most others you’ll read about on blogs such as this. And while I understand that’s a very frustrating answer to a complex question— I’ll give you a few ways for you to tell whether your business is one that belongs on Kartra or ShowIt:

1. Budget is a concern: Kartra is already expensive for new business owners, so the ability to host your website holds considerable appeal. If you are new to online business and are already on Kartra, then I don’t recommend adding ShowIt or putting too much energy into your website until you are firmly established with functioning sales funnels.
2. Your brand is more “simple,” and does’t need all the bells and whistles: It’s easy to get swept up in fun animations (some of which, Kartra also does). But does your website actually need that? Does it make sense or will it throw your audience off? You might think that having a super fancy website is going to impress your lead’s to buy instantly. That’s nice when it happens, but it isn’t the norm. 
3. You don’t have a website (or much of one), and simply need to build landing pages + sales pages: If this is you, then you don’t need ShowIt. Kartra is both capable + appropriate for these page types. You absolutely want to focus on sales + marketing on these pages, and often this means a much simpler, straight-forward design.

If you’re looking to build a website that not only looks amazing, but is also an amazing experience for your leads in the alternative wellness space, then hop on over to my Contact page and drop a line. I’m always interested in hearing about breakthrough businesses making major impact, and I want to partner with you.

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