In today’s world, everyone has a website. For businesses, it’s even more important to have an online platform to showcase all their products, services, expertise, and marketing promotions. Despite the appeal of social media, having a website, in addition to a Facebook account, adds credibility, authority, and a more customized experience for the users. Social media can also be limiting in certain areas. According to Forbes, websites are more of a driver of revenue even compared to social media accounts.
If you own or manage a business and you’re interested in starting your own website, here are your options.
Build Your Own Website
Many choose to build their own website from the ground up. This option can give you creative freedom, but it also has some challenges ranging from minor nuisances to more complex and technical issues.
Using a Website Builder
There are several website builders out there. Sites like Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, and others have intuitive user interfaces that allow users to choose from a list of templates. Some website builders offer their services for free at first and you can choose to upgrade to an option of using your own domain down the road.
Although these platforms are relatively easy to use, their limited customization options may leave you wanting something more. Some website builders also have issues when it comes to mobile compatibility in that they aren’t able to translate web pages well into the mobile platform.
Coding a Website
Alternatively, you can build your own website by painstakingly coding it yourself. If you have the expertise, experience, and time to take this project on, it offers significantly more customization options. Basically, you are only limited by your own technical skills. This option also saves money.
Despite the many benefits of coding your own website, the risks and challenges can also be weighty.
If you’re not a professional digital marketer, web developer, and content creator, the final product may be less than ideal. Even if you did save money building the website, if it doesn’t end up performing well, you’ll lose valuable potential leads. Coding also takes a significant amount of time if you want to do it right. Being an owner or manager, you could spend that time working on your business instead.
Outsource the Entire Development
If you don’t have the time, expertise, or interest to take on website-building yourself, you can hire others to do it for you. By doing this, you can either share all your inputs and have them incorporated into the website or you can also let them decide everything. Many web development services also include SEO services in their packages which helps your new website gain a following over time.
The main reason against outsourcing the entire website development is the cost. Different agencies charge different rates, but most are not going to be cheap, particularly if you want to add features to your pages like customer service bots or e-commerce capabilities.
Outsource Parts of the Development
A middle ground between the last two options is hiring professionals to build specific parts of your website. Depending on which parts of the project you are comfortable doing yourself, you can outsource only the parts that will be challenging for you or your team. For example, you can choose to only outsource C# development, content creation, or SEO, while you work on the remaining parts.
This option is ideal if you have some proficiency in web development yourself. It will take a lot of communication, but the savings may just be worth it.
