Having a professional design a small business website for you needn’t be expensive, it will still hit your bottom-line cost but the plan is that your new website will generate more sales and pay for itself. The thought that you could build your own website may have occurred to you but you may not sure if it would be cost effective or not. Ask yourself these questions. Firstly, do you have the time to devote to building a website? and secondly what would you like your new website to do for you?
Teaching yourself to design and build a basic business website isn’t the most difficult thing in the world. Not that I am suggesting web design is a piece of cake.. it is nevertheless an area in which you can obtain surprisingresults with a little applied learning and study.
If you are the type of individual who picks up and learns new skills easily, you could be good at making your own website. Before you can begin, you will need to gain some understanding of CSS, HTML and basic web design and layout. This list nevertheless is not exhaustive.
Lets return now to our first question. Do you really have enough time to realize and apply these skills?
You might feel that you would be glad to put the hours in to learn the fundamentals because you are totally fed up with working for others and want to start up on your own. Have a look online, where you will find a vast array of resources available to help you, purchase an up to date ‘Build Your Own Website’ book, take a look at some tutorial sites. There are plenty of routes for study and just about all of them will lead you in the right direction.
You might however be looking into this option from a entirely different situation. Maybe you are already aware there are not sufficient hours in your day. In this situation, building your own business website is not going to be the best path for you as insufficient input is likely to result in a website that does not do your business any justice.
Second question to ask yourself. What do you hope your new website will gain you? As well as answering this have a think about where you fit in to your market and have a look at the websites owned by your direct competitors.
If you run a small business as a gardener or electrician for instance, a basic website with your contact details enabling people to find you and give you a call may totally meet your needs. Then a simple website fulfilling this demand is a viable goal to accomplish.
Your type of business may come under what is considered to be a more professional category such as accounting, law or finance. Would a basic looking site portray the right impression to your potential customers? Carry out a Google search for some search terms that you would like to have a website ranking for. What is the level of competition in your field? Investigate. You may decide that your competitors sites are of a high standard and the best course of action for your business is to hire a professional to design and build your site.
So, to summarise; If you are confident in your ability to produce a website of a high enough quality and feel you have plenty of time to commit to the task, then do it!. If you are not confident, then you should hire a professional. Don’t forget, building your new site is just the beginning, you will have wasted your time if nobody can find it on Google. To be successful your website needs to be at the top of the search engine rankings above your competitors.
Don’t miss out on important clients and revenue due to your lack of presence on the web. Creating a website for you business may not be impossible to do by yourself but you first need to decide whether you have the time to learn how to do it and whether or not the end product will bring you any more sales.
Web Design Bristol agency Willow Tree Design has created many successful, high ranking websites for small and medium sized businesses. We can give you help and advice on setting up your new business website and offer SEO services to help you make your new site successful. Bristol Web Design.
