Every small company in your area has a website and you also might be thinking about creating one. While researching about the benefits of building a business website and how to do that, probably you have heard from your friends or read in some blogs that building a website is not that difficult and anyone can do that with tools available on the web.

Ironically, you are also told that you would need to hire professionals to build a website that would really help you in your business. This might have confused and you are not sure what you should do. You have two choices: building your own website vs outsourcing but you don’t know which one is better for you. This article would help you to make the best decision for you.

A simple answer would be you can build your website by yourself if you have the required skills and time. If you are familiar with building a website you wouldn’t be here. It means you are not pro and so you should hire a professional for you.

Fortunately, several developments in the web and internet industry like the rise of content management systems (CMS) made it possible for anyone to develop websites. You can build elegant and beautiful websites even if you don’t have any knowledge of web development.

 

Why Build Your Website by Yourself

There might be some reasons that prompt to you develop your website including,

• You don’t want to spend money on hiring someone else to do it when you can do it,
• Web design agencies or freelancers are not affordable for you,
• You might be interested in web development or you know it and thinking about doing it by yourself or
• You love learning new things and you want to learn how to develop a website. You can experiment it by creating a website for your company.

These are a few reasons that might have led you to think about developing a website by yourself but you also have to think about what it would cost you if you do it by yourself.  You can find it out easily by considering the following factors.

 

1. Technical Skills

Advanced Knowledge of Web Development

You can definitely build the website by yourself if you have advanced knowledge of web development. You will not be here if you are such a guy and we assume that you are not pro in web design.

Basic Knowledge of CSS and HTML

If you have an intermediate knowledge of CSS and HTML, you can further customize your CMS based website. You can also think about using HTML templates to build your website if you know HTML and CSS. You will also need a basic understanding JavaScript and JQuery.

Little knowledge or Skill in Web Development

You don’t need to know any web language like HTML or CSS to design a beautiful website. Content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Magento are user-friendly.

If you are an internet-savvy, you can build a website in a couple of hours using these CMS platforms and personalize it the way you want. All the platforms mentioned above have easy to use dashboards to build and manage a website.

The dashboards with user-friendly UI, make building a website a lot easier.

Another way to build a website even if you don’t know web languages is using a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver. WYSIWYG editors have a visual editor which allows creating web pages like you would create documents in Microsoft Word.

2. Time to Spend on Web Development

You would have to spend at least 20 hours to build a website if you don’t have any previous experience. Depending on your ability to learn new things, you may be able to finish the website much faster. You should also remember that complex website would take more time. However, CMS platforms made it easier to add advanced functionalities and features to the website by installing plugins or add-ons.

You will also need to update themes and CMS platform to ensure the security of your website and this also would consume your valuable time.

You may not able to invest necessary time into web designing if you have a busy schedule. Then you would have to think about hiring someone else for you.

 

3. Cost

You may not want to spend a fortune by hiring a web design agency to build a website for your small business or startup. It might be the lack of fund to hire an agency.

Then you would have to think about doing it by yourself. All you need to invest are a few hours and a small fee for hosting account and domain name.

 

4. Objectives of Website

Considering the objectives of your website will help you to make a better decision. When it comes to the businesses, the website is supposed to improve the sales and contribute to the success of the company. A website should also help the company to achieve its business goals.

You need to think about the goals or objectives of your website and decide if you can build a website that can achieve the perceived goals. A website has several uses and it may vary from company to company.

You need to list what are the goals of your website or what do you want to achieve with your website. Generally, a website has two functions.

1. An online brochure to
2. A tool to attract prospective customers and sell more

 

Online Brochure

Firstly, a website can work as a business card or brochure of your business. People who already know of your business can access open the website by searching it on search engines if they want any information regarding your website.

 

Attract Target Customers through various media

The second major function of a website is to work as a marketing tool to attract prospective customers towards your company. A website is at the center in inbound marketing and other types of digital marketing. Your prospective customers can find you while searching for the product or information they are interested in search engines. Thus a website helps you to improve your customer reach and visibility. It can help you to reach out target customers anywhere in the world even if they don’t know you.

While some companies care about only one of them, some companies give importance to both functions.

You can think about building your website by yourself when you want to function it like your brochure on online. People can search for your business name on search engines, find your website and get the information they want.

You have to think what good a website does if it functions as a mere online brochure. You can’t expect many people searching for your website and then buy from you. You have to remember that people are not searching with your brand name; they are searching for different websites offering particular product or information.

You need to compete against lots of other websites to be visible for this kind of searchers. Therefore, you would need a website optimized for search engines which would appear for searches related to particular general or common queries.

It needs lots of experience and knowledge of SEO to develop such a website. Most of the time, business owners don’t have such skills and therefore, it is better to outsource or let some professional build the website for you.

 

Final Words

All you need to consider is whether you have the talent and time to build a website that fulfills your goals. If you think you can do, you can build your website by yourself; if not, let the professionals do it for you.