When It Makes Sense to Do It Yourself

There are three basic things that are absolute necessities for EVERY single business: telephone number, email address and website. Decades have passed since a yellow page ad was essential to a business’ success. Most people do not even own a telephone book anymore. EVERY business should have a website today but should you try to do it yourself?

The scale, function and complexity of the website depends on the goals you would like your website to achieve. Using a cheap do-it-yourself design tool could be your best option depending on what your objective is for your website.

• Are you starting a new brick and mortar business?
• Do you have a new product or service that you want to promote?
• Are you hoping to lure customers into your store?
• Does the majority of your new business come from referrals or trade organizations?

Today, I hope to help you make an informed decision about doing it yourself or hiring a professional website design company.

Do-it-yourself website design is fine if you are starting a new business and need a medium for potential clients to access information about your business. Previously, we have referred to this type of informational website as an online or digital brochure. The site can consist of a single page of graphics and text similar to a digital flier or a few pages of text and graphics pages dedicated to;

• about your business,
• products / services,
• map to your location, and maybe
• contact form.

Three Popular Do-It-Yourself Design Tools for Online Brochures:

Web.com – Build it yourself for $22.95 per month. Ongoing website maintenance, hosting, advertising, and other service fees apply. Customer complaints include overcharging and difficulty canceling accounts.[1]

Wix – Build it yourself for $15.95 per month and pay for their premium apps to make your site accessible to search engines. Customers complain about being overcharged after the first year, sites not being SEO friendly and extremely slow loading editor.[2]

GoDaddy Site Builder – Build it yourself for $14.95 per month which includes tools to help you choose keywords, social media branding and sharing. Customers rave about the builder tool and when problems do occur support is friendly and helpful.[3] The one problem that I would have is having GoDaddy’s labeling at the bottom of my business website.

All of these service providers provide a proprietary system to build and host your website and the site design cannot be moved to a different host. You will always be linked to their company and subject to price increases, network performance and bandwidth limits.

If you recently opened a new store or your new business comes from referrals or trade organizations you can probably get by with a Do-It-Yourself website design service provider. However, if your goal is to utilize the Internet to increase revenue, expand service areas or promote a product or service spend appropriately on a professionally designed website.

Your website has the potential for being your hardest working advertising device and highest earning sales tool, essentially a customer representative, sales agent, and support staff that works 24/7, 365 days a year. Do not skimp on such an important investment.

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