Why should I build my own website?

There are a great number of reasons why a business owner may choose to build their own website instead of paying a designer to build the site for them. Lets discuss the pros and cons in doing so?

Knowledge

The technology behind a website can be daunting for the uninitiated and this often complicated by the plethora of jargon that goes with building a website.

One of the great things about the web is that there are a great number of designers out there who regularly write about the subject in a clear, easy to understand manner which can make the learning curve a little easier.

The benefits of learning this yourself, is that if you choose to hire a designer in the future you have a good grasp of the terminology that a designer may use. There is a good case for simplifying the way designers discuss their trade, but this can cause confusion. Can you imagine going to a garage with your car, to tell a mechanic that the problem is with the dirty thing under the bonnet or hood? I only imagine the blank looks you may receive?

You may also find that knowing how a website works will also simplifying the process of managing a website in the future.

I can’t afford to hire a designer

I can honestly say that cost is probably the biggest reason that a website owner may decide to go it alone on a website build. In the design industry there is often no fixed price for a website, in the same way you might buy a car or a house. This can cause confusion as a potential customer, who is given a quote who will not know if this expensive or not.

Hiring a professional can often provide a higher quality website, as a good designer should know how a website should be built, but unfortunately there is a low barrier to entry in the web design industry and it can be relatively easy to set up as a web designer. The web design industry has no form of regulation so anybody with a computer, an internet connection and a certain amount of knowledge can become a web designer?

So why pay for a service when with a bit of study you can do this yourself?

I am not necessarily saying that you shouldn’t hire a designer as this can go a long way to improving the quality of the website, but this should be considered if there is a sufficient budget to build a good quality website.

Time

Having the time to manage a website as well as a business, can be a struggle. An argument I often hear is that I don’t have the time to manage my website as I am managing my sales and customers. If a large amount of your customers come through your website and you are not managing these correctly then you may be missing out on those valuable sales. You wouldn’t neglect customer walking through your door so why would you neglect them walking through your virtual shopfront.

So knowing how your website is attracting customers can be the same as putting an advert in your shop window. How do you know that the money you are spending on the website is generating the sales in the same way that traditional advertising may be generating? Knowing how your website works can help this.

A good way find time to manage your website is to allocate a set amount of time on a daily or weekly basis as you would with other forms of marketing.

You may be surprised that spending a little more time on your site may generate more sales to your business or more readers to your blog.

I hope that this has given you a little food for thought and maybe made the decision to manage your website a little less daunting. Here at I Can Build a website, there will be posts and tutorials to help guide you through the process. Don’t forget to add your thoughts or any ideas for tutorials that you like to see in the comments below?