I’m sure I’m not the only web designer who breaks into a cold sweat when that 1 and 1 “build your own website” advert comes on the television. After all, they make it look so easy to use. You just drag and drop the text and the images around the page. Right?
Actually, probably wrong. Limited templates, a lack of flexibility within those templates and the fact that another 50 businesses in your industry probably have the same template just with a different logo. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
This post was inspired by a great blog post I read yesterday. The post was on the Startup Scotland site but was written(excellently I may add) by Heather Burns of Idea 51 Web Design.
The premise of Heather’s post was simple. You will always get better results using a professional website designer instead of the multitude of ‘build your own site in 5 minutes’ services or ‘the girl next doors 14 year old web designer boyfriend’. At this point, you are probably thinking “Heather and Mark would say that, they are web designers”. Well, I’d find that hard to disagree, but only because I’ve seen the results of the alternative approaches once too often and it can damage your business quite significantly.
In this post, I wan’t to expand on the points made in Heather’s post, and I also want to look at some other grey areas which make people reluctant to employ a professional and try and provide some clarity.
1. I’ve got someone who’s doing the site for me as a favour
Money talks. At the end of the day, for some businesses every decision comes down to money. This is particularly true of startup companies who don’t necessarily have the funds to pay out big at the outset. As a result, the prospect of someone building you a site ‘as a favour’ is appealling.
A website is a window to your business however. Perception is critical. If your site looks unprofessional or (God forbid) has functionality which doesn’t work then you have a problem. For instance, how do you tell the difference between a contact form which isn’t being used and a contact form which isn’t sending you enquiries because it’s broken?
It’s worth hiring a professional so you can trust that someone who knows what they are doing is building your site. If you need help with the site then you are already in a customer/supplier relationship. You have leverage and the right to good service. Next door’s boyfriend is under no obligation to fix his errors and may lack the technical knowledge to do so.
2. A professional designer is too expensive
The perception of how much a website costs is clouded by two things. First up are wildly varying pricing structures across providers which result in potential clients being completely confused as to what their website should actually cost. Secondly, there is the perception that as this is a virtual product, it shouldn’t be expensive.
The first issue is caused by the upsurge in ‘bedroom web designers’ who quote ridiculously low amounts to build complex websites. These designers and developers are particularly prevalent in freelance marketplace type sites. Someone offering to build you a Facebook clone for £100 may sound good at the time, but 6 months down the line when they still haven’t finished it and aren’t replying to emails, it doesn’t look so clever a decision. At the other end of the scale, large agencies with a lot of staff costs to cover will charge very high amounts for a similar service. That’s not a criticism of these organisations, they service an important area of the business marketplace and I’m not suggesting their prices are unreasonable.
As a result of the two different ends of the spectrum outlined above, clients can be left with huge variations in quotes and totally confused as to what a website should actually cost. I recently received a call from a potential client who had been quoted two amounts which differed by over £6000 for the same site!!
The answer of course for most small to medium businesses is somewhere in the middle. Don’t be surprised to pay a 4 figure sum for a complex website with bespoke functionality, but equally be aware that a small brochureware site won’t cost you much more than getting a painter and decorator to do a couple of rooms in your house.
Funnily enough, you wouldn’t trust next door’s 14 year old boyfriend to paper and paint your living room would you?
3. A web designer will charge me exorbitant amounts every time I want to update my site
This was the case back in the early days of the web. Now though, you should be very wary of any web designer who doesn’t build in a means of allowing you to update your site by yourself. I offer it as standard for all my clients. It doesn’t have to be an expensive, industrial scale content management system which costs a fortune to implement. There are so many freely available, easy to theme CMS’s out there now that it would be utterly astonishing to find a web designer who isn’t offering content management as standard.
Granted, you won’t always be able to edit absolutely everything on the site (nor would you necessarily want to), but page content, photos and latest news items can easily be manipulated using CMS systems such as WordPress or Perch.
Whenever you speak to a potential web designer, this is the first question you should ask and the first thing you should insist on. It will make the cost slightly higher, but the long term cost will actually work out cheaper if you intend to update your site regularly.
Hopefully I’ve managed to further promote the case for using professional web designers. If not, then maybe you could always nip next door I suppose….
