Website Solutions – Pros and Cons of DIY and Professional Service
Want to create your own website? Have you considered all the options? Reading this article will help.
Creating websites today can be done in many ways. There are online solutions that allow you to create a website easily. Hosting services that can setup a fully functional CMS with a single click. So business owners don’t have to know much about web design in order to create the company website. But the question is with all these do it yourself options, why would a business need to hire a professional?
Online Solutions
These services may come cheap and offer you the ability to easily setup a website without the hassle of all the extras, like finding a hosting company, or registering a domain. For small start-up operations it is a no-brainer from a financial and time investment perspective. Just to get started and get your business out there, owners can not find a better option. As time goes on, these services show there limitation.
With online services you can only choose from the design templates that are available. Those same templates are available to everyone else who use the same service. Even with the vast amount of choices there is still that chance that some other business will have a website that has the same design as you. Not only is there the chance you could have the same website as a competitor, there is no chance to modify the existing template itself. Chances are you will have a web address that is yourbusiness.someonlineservice.com. That doesn’t look very professional, but then again you get what you pay for. Some services offer you the ability to purchase or use your registered domain, which is a much better alternative. If you purchase a domain through one of these website services you should make sure you own the address and not the registrar does not.
Hosted Website Builders
A slightly more expensive option is using a website building program provided by a hosting service. It will be more expensive because you have to purchase a hosting package, domain name, and the ability to use the program itself. Depending on the host you go with you may have to understand some HTML.
With hosting services you can be sure you know what you are getting and what you own or not. But it also requires a little more technical knowledge in order to setup. They are more expensive than some of the online solutions out there.
Building your own website
When you build a website yourself there are a few things you need to consider. Knowledge is the most important aspect to consider. There may come a time you may need to do something that is beyond your ability. If that happens are you willing to learn what it takes? Depending on what you need to learn may take hours, that is time away from your other important business work. Crafting content may not be difficult, but do you know how to write your content to be found on search engines? SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is a growing market because getting found on those first couple pages of a search engine is tricky. It largely deals with your content and how it is structured. Being inexperienced can be more of a hindrance in the long-term than the short-term cost of a web professional.
Benefits of a Web Professional
The main benefit that a web professional brings to the table is experience. In that experience, is years of trial and error along with knowledge. A professional designer will be able to save a small business owner time, by using his expertise to quickly create a website that is unique to the business and meets all the requirements the business has. Not only can a professional create a website for the business, they can offer advice and will have recommendations that would benefit the business itself. Often times professionals will offer training to their clients on how manage the websites that were created. Also when a website is created they won’t be far away for technical support for any website needs.
When it comes to going with a professional or doing it yourself, often times the cost scares off the client. Web professionals will be by far more expensive than any of the above solutions, but in return for the cost you can discuss the project with an expert. Most of the time hiring a web professional results in buying the years of experience that he or she has in their field.
Conclusion
Despite all these online website services web professionals still exist. Simply because without them there would be no cheap online service. It may be a choice of budget but when it comes to creating your business website, think about the long-term cost of the one-time design / development fee over the short-term monthly or annual fee that an online service may provide. Web professionals are people and love what they do and want the best for their clients.
Do you use a online service or have you gone with a web professional. What is or was your experience with such a service? Share in the comments below.