In today’s world of constant advertising and amazing deals that seem all too good to be true, it can be tempting to lean towards the cheapest option with little thought to what you may be passing up. After all, if your favourite celebrity appears on TV and groggily proclaims that you can build your own website, it’s understandable that you might want to forego design agencies and test the waters yourself.
For some, this might be a perfectly acceptable way to take things online, especially if you’re a one-man-band with an interest in design or a student looking to start a portfolio. For business owners who understand the scale of the online market and its importance moving forward however, the reasons to sit and actually ‘make your own website’ start to become few and far between. Below we list some of the best reasons to avoid building your own site as well as why good design agencies come out on top in the end.
You’ll be creating your way, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.
One of the best things about hiring a good design firm is that they tend to come packed with years of experience, not just in web design or development, but also in terms of user experience and customer focus. They know exactly how to build a site on a professional level that your visitors will find welcoming and easy to use. More complex areas will be thoroughly tested, such as mobile and tablet responsiveness, as well as how sites perform in other internet browsers – remember, not everyone uses Chrome, Firefox or whichever browser you favour.
Beyond this, by creating your own website you’re missing out on the insights that design agencies usually pride themselves on. You might have a creative eye or really like a competitor that you wish to use as inspiration, but a solid design team could likely build something much more elegant and user-friendly, and even point out what your competitor gets wrong. They’ll be familiar with how to build an online store and can explain the ecommerce fees in simple terms, which can be a lot to take in even at the best of times.
Making your own website will result in a loss of time, and probably more than you think.
It’s a little-known fact that websites are like living, breathing things that need frequent care and attention. Letting a website grow old, stagnant and bereft of new content is one of the top ways to lose a decent ranking on Google, so it’s important to keep things fresh.
Whenever you create a new product, change an email address or phone number, or simply wish to replace an image with something a little nicer, this is all time that you could otherwise spend on other things, such as growing your business or dealing with customers.
You might even find that just getting started takes much longer than anticipated, and without someone waiting in the wings to finish the job, spending even more time on your website would prove inefficient. There are only a finite amount of hours in the day, and should frustration begin to set in, you might just find yourself cursing the time you’ve spent trying to get things done.
You’ll be on your own if and when problems arise.
Even the best web designers are familiar with the dreaded ‘white screen of death’ and ‘500 internal server error’ codes, so it stands to reason that at some point your website might experience some form of glitch. As mentioned before, websites need regular attention and this becomes especially true when the technology updates (often with a few more bugs than it should). It’s at this point that a crack team of web specialists will prove indispensable, as they can save you a whole lot of panic and hassle should you be faced with a major issue. Remember, the odds are they’ve dealt with that very same technical issue before and know how best to approach it.
You don’t always need to be an ace coding master to be able to make your own website, but it certainly helps to have someone with the know-how and, perhaps more to the point, created your site in the first place and understands its inner workings from top to bottom. Should issues arise, building your own website means you might still have to contact a development team regardless.
Building your own site can feel restrictive.
When we mentioned earlier that you’ll be able to design your own website your way, we didn’t cover the limitations to this. Each web builder typically features basic templates (which, to be fair can look very nice) that as a newcomer you probably won’t want to deviate from, that is until you hit a roadblock after much of the work is done.
This can happen when dealing with premium WordPress themes too, but a professional designer would have considered your needs when the job was being outlined. Basic web builders tend to sell themselves on high-res imagery that’s pleasing to the eye, positioning themselves towards a market that’s quite content to settle for less. Again, this is fine for certain situations, but not when planning a major build where your livelihood is at stake. The creation of a sleek storefront is probably best left to actual web designers as briefed at the beginning of a job, who can find the best solution and won’t have to play ball with the basic builders and what little functionality they toss at consumers. This brings us to the final reason not to build your own website…
They might not be as cheap or as easy as you think they are.
‘Make your own website’ companies are very good at advertising with impossibly low rates and keeping the true cost quiet until later down the line. It’s quite unfeasible to run a successful business offering a web platform for just a few pounds long term. After all, you probably wouldn’t sell your services short unless you knew you’d rake in much more once the rates went up.
With a design agency, a new build will be quoted before any work begins, and while the price may not immediately thrill you with the idea of a bargain, it will prove cost-effective in the long run as actual people are hired to take ownership of the project.
Contact us at Reactive Graphics if you’re thinking of a new website and would like it handled with care.
We’ve spoken to a number of clients who attempted to build their own websites and gave up due to lack of control, confusing terms or technical problems. We believe that while a self-produced site can look nice with some top-tier imagery and concise text, there’s no substitute for a professional service that treats you like a human being with regular updates, taking the pain out of web production.
Call us at Reactive Graphics today for a quotation – we can’t wait to hear from you!
