Would you wire your own house? Don’t build your own website!
People often ask ‘Why should I pay to get a website developed when I can do it myself?’. Our response is usually something along the lines of ‘You know what, that’s true. I guess it’s sort of like being able wire your own house, instead of using an electrician.’
The reality is that just because you can do something yourself, or do something real cheap, doesn’t mean that you should! This is so true about creating a website for your business. Why would you spend the many many hours and go through the inevitable frustrations to save on something that in today’s world is a vital tool for EVERY business?
To build a proper business website, the following steps (as a minimum) should be thought through:
- What is the purpose of your website?
- How do you wish to use it within your business?
- What message do you want to convey to your visitors?
- What branding requirements need to be taken into consideration?
- Develop your site/link map
- What will your site look like – design each page before you even get close to developing anything
- Have you included conversion prompters?
- What will your back end look like? What will you use? How much flexibility does this give you?
- Create your website to match your site/links map and to look like your design – this is often a frustrating and time intensive exercise
- Where are you sourcing images from?
- How are you going to make the images look professional if they need editing?
- What tools will you build into your website to: generate efficiencies, help you make more money, better connect with customers?
- Add the above tools into your website and integrate them with third party products if required
- If you are creating an e-commerce site: What platform will you use? What payment gateways? How will you integrate these into your site? Have you got your inventory management and your shipping procedures in place and working to your requirements on the website?
- What about content?? Where is this coming from? Is it well written and legible?
- Once you have your site created, you need to review, test, change, review, test, change and review once again!
- Is your site responsive? Have you taken into account SEO requirements?
So as you can see, whilst it is possible for anyone to create a website, if you want it done properly a trained professional with the right team in place (developers, designers and business specialists) will not only be able to get the job done much better than you could, but they can also give you important tips, advice and strategies that will in the end result in a better product and a more professional online image and a structurally sound, secure site.