Why you should not build your own website
Whether you are a business, a school, a charity or some other type of organisation, you will need a website. Companies use websites to help them sell their products; schools need a website to help inform pupils, and charities need a website to help attract supporters. The growing trend towards a digital focus was already well on its way before the pandemic. Following this, even the few stragglers who previously did not prioritise their online presence have changed their approach. The need to have a website is undeniable, but what is the best way to create one?
There are countless different website builders. Some of these are “drag and drop” web builder platforms where you drop elements on a web page yourself, and there are also different pre-made themes that you can customise. You can often pay to use these and start straight away with them. Still, there are some considerations to think through before you start building your own website and why this may not be the right course for your business. There are many reasons why creating your website yourself is detrimental, especially if you don’t fully understand all of the complexities of the task. This article uncovers why you should not build your website and why using a web designer from the start is the best way forward.
Building a website yourself costs you time
Website design and development is a specialist subject. It takes years to learn the knowledge and skills required to create the coding that makes a website function and perform well. Web design is a highly technical discipline. It is not something you can do yourself straight away with no experience and expect to come out with good results. You can imagine this being similar to a tradesperson, such as a plumber. It is likely that if you just had a go at fixing your household pipes without any prior experience, then the results would be poor. Often people attempt to do these complex tasks themselves. When the job goes wrong, or the final result is underwhelming, people then call a professional to come and put it right. Well, this is similar to website design; many people attempt to build their own site, pay a self-build website platform like Wix, spend a significant amount of time in the process, realise the results are not as good as they hoped for and then finally call a professional to build the site, who will have to start from scratch. In most cases, it soon becomes clear that it would have been better to engage a professional website designer straight away, saving both time and money wasted in pursuing the self-build route.
What happens when things go wrong with your self-built website?
Websites are incredibly technical and involve many aspects, from content, coding, hosting to domains. You may build yourself a website and have all of these elements sorted, but what if something goes wrong? Website hacking is sadly a common threat. There are many different ways a hacker can target your site for various reasons. But let’s consider that something more benign goes wrong and your website goes down, but you don’t have the skills or experience required to fix this. Then what happens? Using a website designer means that if things go wrong with your site, you have someone with the knowledge to put it right. If you build your site yourself, you don’t have the luxury of calling someone to correct any issues when things inevitably go wrong. Being aware of this is essential as things going wrong with your site can range from different features not working correctly on a page to a malicious hack. You could even lose your entire website and all of its content in most severe cases. In this case, if you don’t know how to put this right, then all of your efforts and time could be irretrievably lost.
How will you get people to find your site?
Let’s suppose you build a site yourself using a basic drag and drop website builder. Building a website is one thing, but how do you get people to visit it when it goes live? All the time and effort you put into your new website will be no good if nobody knows it exists or sees it. One of the most successful ways to get a steady stream of new people to your website is with SEO, which is search engine optimisation. This process is where you design, build and then adapt your website to be optimised to rank above your competitors and other content on search engines such as Google. If you don’t know how to do this, you risk a situation where you build a site that does not meet SEO best practice techniques and end up with a finished result that will rank poorly on search engines. SEO is a separate discipline to website design, but a website designer will make sure that your site is built using techniques that help your ranking, building websites in a way that Google likes and advising you on the best way forward for your SEO strategy. Website designers also develop your site to include different SEO plugins, which help you understand more about SEO and how well your site is performing.
By using a web designer, your site will be unique
Designing a website yourself using drag and drop platforms or pre-created themes limit the full range of what you can achieve. This is because they are designed either to be generic or, with pre-made themes, intended for a different business altogether. You could be a barber with pre-made themes using what is initially a dentist’s website theme. A website designer will ensure that your site is entirely bespoke and unique to you; they will not use a copy of any other company’s website. This means that a website designer can customise your website based on precisely what you need it for. They can achieve pretty much anything that you want for your website. For example, if your business wants to expand into e-commerce, that is no problem. If you want downloadable content on your site – that is fine too. If you want a website made of mostly videos – that is also easily achievable for a website designer.
By using a self-build website platform, you are limiting what you can achieve. This pathway often leaves you with a website that just does not meet your organisation’s unique and constantly changing needs. Engaging a website designer for your project will enable your site to not only meet your initial requirements, but to grow with you as your organisation changes, giving the flexibility and functionality that designing a website yourself using a pre-made theme or drag and drop website builder cannot provide.
Looking for a website designer? Then let’s talk about what you require
The end result of using a website designer will leave you with a site that you will be proud of, one that can stand up to your competitors and get the attention of your customers. Appointing a professional website designer at the start of your project will save you the time required to build the site. You will also have someone there to help fix things when they go wrong, and you will end up with a finished result that is more SEO friendly and meets your unique needs and expectations.
If you are looking at options for your website plans, get in touch with DCX Design to chat about what you need, you can contact us at: info@dcxdesign.co.uk for more information.
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