In the year 2020 it is important for businesses to develop a web presence if they hope to keep growing and stay relevant. But making a website is not enough. An online platform can harm a company’s success just as easily as they can boost it, so it is important that their website is attractive to their potential customers. There are many ways to develop a website. You can invest in a web developer or a web development company or you can do it yourself. And it is important to consider the pros and cons of both options.
Pros of Hiring a Web Developer
- A web developer is a professional: Making online platforms is a web developer’s specialty. If you are someone who is not particularly tech savvy, hiring a professional to design your website will ensure that you get a website that is well-made by an expert.
- They can save you time: When you are an entrepreneur, you do not have a lot of time to yourself. It can be useful to relegate your tasks to a professional that can help you to complete a vital step to starting your business while saving you time to do other things.
- They can build a website unique to you: There are a growing number of companies providing D.I.Y. website resources (web page templates, etc.) to people, allowing even tech novices to build their own website, making them attractive to entrepreneurs with limited resources. However, website building and hosting software has its limitations, in terms of how distinct website you can make. A professional web developer or development company has the benefit of being able to code software, meaning they can design an entirely unique website, rather than relying on a preprogrammed template. They can help design a website that is truly representative of you and your brand and caters to the specific customers you are interested in attracting, which can help to increase the popularity of your site.
Cons of Hiring a Web Developer
- It can get expensive: hiring a professional costs money. And for a small business that is just getting off the ground it can be too expensive to invest in a web developer or development company. The average cost of a good web developer can be upwards of over $6,000, including development, content creation, training, and maintenance, all of which are be long-term investments.
- It can take time as well: As much as hiring a web developer to design your website can take time away from you and your business. Many web developers and development companies build your website from scratch, and they often work for several clients at once. It can take them days to weeks to build a fully function website and for start-ups whose priority is launching their website as soon as possible it is faster to use web-building software, which can allow using to develop a website in a matter of hours, rather than to hire a web development company.
Pros of a D.I.Y. Website
- It is cost efficient: If you are a small business that is just starting out, you probably will not have a lot of money to work with, which means you must be keen with what you choose to spend your money. You can save money by making your website yourself, and luckily there exist many online tools that make designing a website easy and accessible. Website software companies like Wix, Square Space, and GoDaddy specialize in providing templates which novice users can utilize to design their own websites with little hassle and at an affordable price.
- Your vision is priority: Though a web developer can help you to create a unique website, they often have their own styles and ideas of how a website can look, and this can create conflict if their vision does not mesh with yours. The benefits of building your own website include the ability to control and maintain the process yourself. It allows you to work on the website at your own time as well as to design a site that is true to how you want it to look.
Cons of a D.I.Y. Website
- It takes your time away: Time is money, and when you run your own business you don’t have a lot of it. Developing a website is a necessary task that can take a long time to design, and every moment spent on making a website is a moment that is not spent on other duties you need to get done for your business. And if you are a small or medium sized business, your time is even more precious and more limited.
- Your website may lack originality: Though there are tools that can allow you to develop a website yourself, they offer a limited range of options you one to use when designing a website, this leads to many websites looking the same, which can hinder one’s sales, as it is important to stand out as a business if you want to be successful. A web developer specializes in building websites from scratch, which allows them more leeway when designating specific functions and content on the site.
When designing a website for your business there are many things to consider, one of the most important of which is whether you should hire a professional to do it or do it yourself. There are positive and negative aspects for either choice and it is important to think about the benefits and the consequences before deciding on the route you take. But with which ever option you take, it is important that your website is clean, modern, and accessible to your customers and reflects the vision of your business that you have in mind.