So you’re starting a new business online and you need a website. Should you be looking at a paid web designer or use DIY websites such as WIX to do it yourself?
We get tagged in various opportunities where people are looking for web designers. Amongst these comments there are always people saying do it yourself, use wix you could save £1000’s! Whilst this might be true to a certain degree there are obviously some sacrifices.
We’re all capable of doing many things, however, it is through experience where we learn to do things quicker and without issues.
Here might be some reasons to consider opting for a paid web designer v DIY website builders:
LEARNING CURVE AND TIME COMMITMENT
If you’ve got plenty of time to spare, you have no money and have plenty of patience then building a website yourself could be a real possibility.
Sounds great, however, usually most people have various commitments such as parenting or other jobs. This could mean that the time it takes to get the site fully finished, could be several months down the line. This could effect your will power to finish the site or even proceed with a new venture all together.
When creating website we often get asked “how long will my site take?”. The bottleneck in nearly all cases is usually the client. This could be requests for information or images, confirming the layout or questions about layout. In most cases this is due to them not having the time to respond. So building a site might not be the ideal thing to do.
IMAGES
On the face of it, it seems a pretty simple task. Find space for image, select image, upload and bam.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
One of the first pitfalls especially when creating a website without any images is obtaining images legally. I’m afraid you simply can’t just grab images from the Internet.
There have been many instances where clients send over images saying use these. However, when we press about the image details they have simply searched for an image on Google and sent it across. This can land you in a lot of trouble!
You need to either use paid stock or commercial free images such as those found on pexels.com or unsplash.
The next issue with images is their size. Small images won’t stretch without becoming blurry, so if you’re trying to use a small image for your homepage banner it’s going to look rubbish! We usually have to reject images based on their quality.
You also need to take into consideration that screen sizes are different and that what looks OK on your current view, might not work on a different sized screen.
Following on from the size, you need to make sure your images are compressed. This will make them load faster, giving visitors a better experience and having positive effects on your website SEO.
ADVANCED FEATURES
Whilst building your website you might quickly find it’s limited in what you want it to achieve. This could be adding shop functionality, adding a booking system or hosting online courses. Some online builders can allow you to add these features with ease.
However, some don’t have this sort of functionality or they charge to add more advanced options.
If you don’t put in the research you might end up building a website at higher cost than using a designer, plus the countless hours reading, learning and putting the site together.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATIONNot all web designers include basic SEO at the start, this will stop your site from attracting visitors naturally.
Meta Data, Meta Title and Meta Descriptions. If you don’t know too much about them it could be another learning curve to undertake before launching your website.
Poor SEO will limit the potential of your website and cause you to miss out on a large amount of free website traffic.
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TESTING
Professional web designers will usually test things before launch, making sure functionality is correct.
They will also test your website across multiple devices such as mobiles and tablets.
If you don’t test your website things such as forms could be failing to deliver leads or shops could stop people from ordering.
HIDDEN COSTS
Some DIY website builders often make it easy and cheap to get started. However, there could be charges that you might not be aware of. Things such renewal fees or high percentage charges per sale. They know that after investing in a large amount of time you’re not going to simply stop using them. This could cause you to end up paying considerable more in the long run.
HOSTING
Websites need to be stored online so users can access them at all times. This is where you need hosting, some website builders include this as standard whilst others require you to have this in place.
Hosting providers can often help you get started, however if costs are an issue, then you are going to be finding the cheapest packages. This might not be ideal, your website could be really slow to design and for users. Making the initial design a lot longer.
CONCLUSION
So should I use a paid web designer v DIY website builders?
We are all human and can learn a variety of tasks if we put our minds to it. However, some tasks take a considerable time and effort to achieve. This might also lead to issues along the way.
If you have plenty of time on your hands and are struggling with budget, building your own site might be worthwhile. However, if you want to get your site up and running quickly, save countless hours of frustration. Please get in touch!
Pug Mug Marketing are a web design and digital marketing agency based in West Bromwich. We provide a range of services including social media marketing and SEO in Wednesbury, Walsall, Sutton Coldfield and throughout the UK.
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