 DIY versus Professional Web Design
When providing our IT advice services to businesses, we have come across a number of small business owners who have been tempted to produce their websites on the cheap - either by doing it themselves or by using a relative or 'friend of a friend' who will do it for much less than the rates charged by professional web designers. (We'll refer to this as the 'DIY approach'.) But does the DIY approach actually cost as little as they think? Might they be missing out on advantages to be gained from paying for a professional designer that might make the extra cost worth it? We try to answer some of these questions.
First of all, lets look at some of the advantages often sited for the DIY approach:
- Much lower initial outlay;
- Better control over content;
- Easier to make changes;
- Low cost of maintenance and changes.
Often the comments we come across are that "it is just a website and not of much consequence to our business", or that "we don't really trade or get any leads from the Internet".
What many businesses fail to realise is that these days many of their potential customers will do their initial research for suppliers on the Internet. This applies to both business customers and consumers. Not having a good quality website will create a negative impression of your business. Think of your website as an extension of your premises - a shop window on the Internet. It needs to include all of the normal content that potential customers expect to find on a good website, while failing to keep it up to date is rather like a grocery shop displaying out-of-date food on its shelves. Continuing the simile, poor design and navigation on a website is like peeling paint and dirty floors in a shop.
Even if a DIY site looks good and has the right content which is kept up to date, there are still other pitfalls that non-professional designers may fall into such as:
- Search Engines look at websites very differently from users - much of what they look at is out of sight in the HTML code. A DIY designer would need to know how to optimise their site for Search Engines, otherwise they might only receive poor Search Engine Ranking or in some cases, be ignored by Search Engines altogether.
- There are number of regulatory obligations that need to be met including:
- Disability Discrimination Act.
- The latest Company Regulations
Failure to comply could lead to a fine,although if your website is not easy to find, then it is probably unlikely that anyone will report you to the authorities.
- If trading online then it is also necessary to comply with:
- Distance Selling Regulations
- The eCommerce Directive
- PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)
Failure to comply could lead to legal action or having your merchant account cancelled, preventing you from accepting credit cards in any form - whether online, in store or over the 'phone.
So a DIY approach might lead to higher costs due to legal action, but perhaps more likely and what might be of more immediate concern to a business, is that it is highly likely to lead to loss of potential sales. So the cost of a DIY approach may not just what you pay out, but also the revenue that you might miss out on!
So our advice is that if you are serious about your business, then you need to be serious about the Internet and your website.
Good web designers should be well versed in all of the latest regulations and know how to produce a site that not only looks good, meets the regulatory requirements, but is also optimised for search engines.
These days it is also relatively straight forward for a designer to include a content management facility that enables non-technical staff in your business to update specified areas of a website without any danger of interfering with the overall design or navigation of the site. This can be useful for updating news, product details, or customer testimonials.
We will be covering how to choose a good website designer in a future issue of this newsletter, but in the meantime if you have any questions or would like some advice please contact us.
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For those of you who develop and maintain websites or who are engaged in graphics design, we can supply a number of relevant training courses that will help you to become more proficient at using the tools of the trade.
Best regards,