Category: Business

Why getting a professional website done by a website designer is better than a DIY website!

Introduction

Thanks to the internet and the world wide web, there is a wide variety of resource available to help an individual to undertake most tasks themselves, simply by watching a YouTube tutorial or reading some online blog which provides steps to accomplish a particular task.  This of course also applies to those wishing to build their own DIY website rather than go through a website designer or a design agency. Website building tools and are in abundance these days. Sites such as Wix, Squarespace, Weebly etc offer a decent service and a number of easy to use tools to build a website.

WordPress is the best platform to use in our opinion and here at Ingenuous this is our number one tool of choice simply because of the enormous support and community that exists for the platform. It does require a bit of a learning curve and comes either as a standalone builder or a as tool provided by hosting companies which needs to be installed.

For the more complex sites that require bespoke development, we at Ingenuous use Adobe ColdFusion as our preferred programming language of choice. Why ColdFusion?  Simply because the technology allows for sheer rapid application development, is powerful and easy to use. ColdFusion has been around since 1995 and is now owned by Adobe. Is it therefore safe to assume that anyone looking to design their own website can utilise these resources and develop their own DIY website? You would have to conclude that this absolutely is the case! Of course it is!

Building your website is much more than just the design!

However, there is more to designing and building a website than you may think, even with the online website builder tools that they provide! Where the complexity comes in is understanding the entire process from start to finish and the additional configurations and tasks that are all part and parcel of designing a website. Basically, it is more than designing just the site itself! Ideally being a little tech savvy will no doubt help you on your journey.

As with anything, research must be conducted to choose a reputable, reliable, and trustworthy hosting company or online website design tool. This could be challenging and time consuming, looking for reviews and testimonials to find the best in the business to best suit your needs and that also fits within your budget. Although you will have the overhead costs of paying the website design agency or the web designer, you will still have to pay for hosting, in some case cases SSL  Certificates, email accounts, domain names etc, depending on the package you chose that suits you. We use Siteground for all our  hosting here at Ingenuous.  

Once you have made your choice, you will need to do a moderate amount of configuration such as set up a domain name for your website or transfer an existing domain and setup email accounts as well as get your head around the site builder tools. There will of course be a certain learning curve to negotiate before you get too excited and start building that dream website of yours! 

The Finishing Touches

You will also have to ensure that you make the site Search Engine Friendly. This will help Google find and index your site. This, however, this is a fine art in itself. This technique is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short.  Don’t forget too, that its of paramount importance to ensure that your website is mobile responsive!  It will need to work and display correctly on a variety of devices such as Apple iPhone, Android devices, tablets, laptops etc. As well as making sure that the site is mobile responsive, you will also have to ensure that it is cross browser compatible (i.e., displays correctly and works in very web browser such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Microsoft Edge!). Finally, but not least, there is the issue of supporting it, managing updates and new content. This can be extremely frustrating if you are time time poor!

Summary

There is no definitive easy answer, but we recommend you consider hiring a professional website designer if:

• You are time poor
• Possess little technical knowledge
• Have no patience or willingness to learn technology
• Want to focus on what you do best as a business
• Offload IT services

To sum this topic up further we have put together some Pros and Cons when thinking of whether you should hire a website designer or if you are considering doing it yourself to ponder over and help you decide what would work best for you:

Pros

• A website designer understands the market and the design process from start to finish.
• You can concentrate on your day job or what ever else occupies your time.
• No need to spend extra hours during or after a busy day to learn the skills you need to design your website.
• All the hosting and email configuration for your website will be done by the web designer.
• The web designer has access to huge resource pools and exposure to community groups.
• All websites are designed with mobile device friendly and responsive and cross browser compatible.
• Faster delivery of your website.
• After sales support (This is provided free of charge in the first year with Ingenuous with some  of our price packages).

Cons

• Can be stressful looking for a reliable hosting company and decent website building tool.
• Steep learning curve if you have no knowledge of website design or web technologies.
• If you get stuck then it may take longer to find a solution.
• Might take you longer to deliver the website.
• You may face compatibility issues such as browser compatibility and mobile device responsiveness.
• No support or website management should things go wrong.