Build website yourself VS Go to web development agency

Introduction 

As Bill Gates said, if your business is not on the internet, then you’re not in the business. Many factors influence the state of your business. But it’s in your power to manage the main activities to make it efficient. In this article, we will touch upon the topic of the importance of having a website. 

You will learn what business segments can make the website by themselves and what businesses should use the help of a web development agency, what the main advantages and disadvantages of these approaches are, and what opportunities you can gain or miss.

First of all, let’s figure out what it means - to create the website by yourself. It means that you can make the website on a builder. Further, you will learn what the top website builders are. 

It’s important to point out that the websites made on the builders are not popular in a commercial sphere because the first builders were far from perfect. There were not enough functions, variations of design, and structures of the sites. Also, it wasn’t possible to make changes in code or appearance of the site. Moreover, there were problems with SEO and speed of work. Now, these issues are not so crucial, but still, you should think twice: do you really want to create the website on the builder?

When it’s appropriate to create a website by yourself?

1. You are a super small business.
   And you don’t have money for web development.
   Some small businesses can be overwhelmed by the prices of website creation.
    

2. You don’t have enough money for Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
   To make sure that you want to invest in your new business idea further, MVP is a great option. But if you don’t have money even on MVP, then the only option is to make the website by yourself.
    

3. If you need some replacement while your main web site is being created.
   Quality website creation takes much time. And you know that time is money, so you don’t want to lose opportunities. You can use a splash page while your main website is being created. The splash page delivers the necessary information to users. You can put there information about your upcoming website and gather some information from customers or provide them with data instead.
    

4. You need a website just for a blog or hobby.
   This is simply because there is no need to make the website for an activity that doesn’t give you an income, at least for now.

Advantages of creating the website by yourself

• The main advantage is a low cost. While creating a website on a builder, you should pay a certain amount of money for a domain and hosting. But be aware, you will spend more if you want to have a unique design because builders have options like free templates and premium paid templates.

• Creating the website on the builder is fast. Almost any user can produce the website in one day.

• You don’t have to know programming, all you have to do is just fill out the forms and upload the pictures and other content you want to use.

• You don’t have to think about the structure of the site. All decisions are made for you.

Disadvantages of creating the website by yourself

• You are not able to customize the design of the template.

• Slow loading speed because of the size of web pages. This can have a bad influence on conversion because many users don’t wait much time uploading the page.
  1 second delay reduces page views by 11% according to hostingtribunal.com

• You won’t be able to edit the code.

• You will have a “one-size-fits-all” structure of the website. It’s a problem for unique businesses.

• There are few opportunities in the promotion of your website. As long as you might not know all specifics of SEO, your chances to right customization of your website extremely decline.

Top 7 website builders

1. Wix – functional, easy to use, suitable for small businesses.

2. SITE123 – is a simple beginner-oriented builder, appropriate for small websites

3. Jimdo – great for a one-page-website, limited template (16 only).

4. Squarespace – has elegant templates, website builder right for creative spheres and blogs.

5. WordPress – is a very popular tool for creating a website. Be aware, this platform needs basic programming skills. The best choice for bloggers having blogs. 

6. Weebly – easy to use and cost-effective. Good for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

7. Shopify - has 100 templates. Right for e-commerce, easy in use.

You can overview these builders and find out the most suitable for creating a website for your business.

When do you need to go to a web development team?

For a better understanding, here we listed some business segments for which a website creation is taking a huge amount of time and resources. 

• Enterprise, small and medium business, B2C: e-commerce, digital service providers, travel and tourism, healthcare.

• Social networks and media: news and entertainment, creative agencies.

• Educational platforms: internal company businesses, educational and e-learning platforms.

• NFP (non-for-profit): governmental sphere, different kinds of campaigns and organizations (charity organizations, Human Rights Campaign, Greenpeace).

All these spheres have particular characteristics, complicated requirements to the structures of websites and include work of a whole development team. 

What reasons can make you contact a development company?

The main reason is that you won’t be able to handle all the tasks that website creation requires to do.

And web agencies have many people to manage your tasks. A significant amount of work is executed by such specialists as project managers, web designers, front-end developers, back-end developers, testers, SEO-specialists, copywriters (writers), content managers and many others. Use the help of professionals to create a professional website.

You need a specific kind of service.

Software development team roles are different and offer both individual services and complex decisions.

Here are services web development agencies may offer:

• Engineering a site or web application (collecting and analyzing requirements, developing technical specifications, designing interfaces)
• Creating a website concept and design
• Creating page layouts
• Creating multimedia elements
• Makeup pages and templates
• Programming (development of functional tools) or integration into a content management system (CMS)
• Site content placement and optimization
• Testing and adjustments
• Publishing a project on a hosting
• Website maintenance.

Development teams simply save your time.

It’s better to handle your problem to experienced specialists who will solve it fast than try to deal with it by yourself, then fail and anyway go to the specialists. Save your time, you don’t need to do everything by yourself.

As you can see, creating a quality website takes many efforts of many specialists and also much time. Let’s review the pros and cons of hiring the development team. 

Advantages of creating the website with the help of the development team

• You don’t need to worry about coding and other stuff website creation requires.

• You save your precious time, therefore, there is an ability to invest this time in your everyday business activity while your development team is creating the website. 

• Your website will comply with your goals. The experienced development team knows how to create a site corresponding to the goal of making a profit or gathering information or altogether.  

• There won’t be any issues with the operation of the website. All buttons and features will work properly.

• The development team usually provides maintenance of the website, which is convenient because you don’t need to seek someone else.

Disadvantages of creating the website with the help of the development team

• A website cost. Sometimes the cost of the website can surprize a business owner. Check our article about the average costs or creating websites. 

• Time. If you have an intention to make a complex website with many specific features, it can take a long period of time, so you need to plan this activity in advance. 

Now you understand when it’s better to create a website by yourself and when to contact a development team. You’ve learned the main advantages and disadvantages of these approaches. To help you choose your way, we suggest you answer the following questions: 

1. For what business or activity do you think you need a website?

2. Do this business or activity assume having a website at all?

3. What goals will it pursue?

4. How much time and money are you ready to invest?

5. Do you need it for a long term or short term period?

6. How to find a development team?

There are no problems with the last question. We are here to support your business to grow on the internet.

Contact us and we will help with the development and design of your future or current website.

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