In the increasingly techy world, your company website is the new face of your business. So it is very important how your customers (or visitors in general) see you, and feel about you. Presenting your ideas like we are back in the 90’s and interacting with your visitors in the same way, can have worse effect than not having a website at all.
The point is, if it’s worth doing it, it’s worth doing it right. Now, it’s most certainly worth doing it, no question about it. People got rich beyond belief investing their time, effort and money into complete internet marketing, so why wouldn’t you?
There are many ways on how to get your self a new website, but choosing the right one is the dilemma. In the following lines we will explain all those ways, as well as their pros and cons.
There are two ways to go with: Build it your self, or that someone builds it for you.
However, to build one yourself, you could try from the ground up, but that requires extensive knowledge of programing, coding, multimedia, latest trends in design and background of the internet in general. If you are a master of all those skills, the chances are you are doing this sort of thing for a living. The good thing about this is that you can create exactly what you want, how you want, and the only loss is your time. But, to achieve this level of skills it takes a quite a lot of time, a lot more money on the best software in the industry, and some more money if you are taking classes on how tu use them. Basically, this is a rubbish way to create only one website just for your self. So, for that goal only, this is useless!
If you are, on the other hand, a rookie in these areas, there is still hope for you. There are numerous online websites that offer you a chance to build your website using their framework as a sort of scaffolding. You can choose different styles of pages, and cramp them up with different modules. One for header, the other for text and images, then one for testimonial, calendar, youtube video etc. You get the point. The good thing about this is that you can sort of build what you had in your mind, and in some cases it won’t charge you anything for that. The bad thing is that you can create what you had in your mind, but only what it lets you to. So forget about your special touches. If there isn’t an option for such a thing, you simply can’t create it. The other thing is that it isn’t free in all cases. Google Sites won’t charge you a penny, but the creative options are very slim. Some providers like Wix.com will offer you only the basic options for free, and charge you for the optional ones, and some are priced right form the get-go. The rule “the more expensive the better quality” can be applied here. So expect more options and better design the more you are willing to pay. More problems can struck you if you need to register a domain or choose the right kind of hosting. So if you are familiar with how the internet works, but lack the finesse of a designer and skills of a programmer, this is a very appealing concept. Choose wisely with the providers and their pricing, give in some effort in editing and organizing the modules and you can have a very good website, by any standards.
I should also mention that there are many softwares, both free and priced, that can help you get to the same goal. Ranging from completely newb friendly Microsoft Office Frontpage (that has been such a success that it has been scraped from the latest version of the MS Office) all the way through a number of WYSIWYG (What you see is that you get) solutions to the Royalty – Adobe’s latest Dreamweaver. The problem is, the Dreamweaver is a professional tool, used by professionals, with years of experience. So, unless you are one of them, the only thing you can create is your headache. Going the other way, towards the MS Frontpage, you will need less skills, but the result will be significantly less astonishing. Also, keep in mind that you will, most certainly, need to register a domain and choose a hosting solution, unlike when it’s the case of online “do it yourself” providers. So this falls in-between the two previously mentioned ways on how to get yourself a quality website.
And that concludes the “Build it yourself” section. Next up, handing it over to the experts. One fo the simplest ways to get your website is to contact a company specialized in making ones. You hand them over your ideas and retire into your sanctum of peace, or whatever it is that you do, when you have nothing else to do, while your website is being made. Brilliant, except that it can cost you quite a lot.
To get around this problem, you can hire a freelancer. They have all the skills, and to stand out of the crowd, the quality will be top-notch, whilst still keeping acceptable prices. Think of the guy from the beginning of this essay – the one that does this sort of things for a living. Well, that is your guy! Surely, not everyone is equally creative, hardworking or has the same prices, but the generally, the more they ask for it, the better you can expect. Crucial thing is to go over their portfolio. Right there you can catch the glimpse of their creativity and skills, so next to pricing, this is the most important thing to keep an eye on. Sounds excellent, but here are some faults. There is no guarantee over anything, including support, additional programing and designing, or even that you could get back into contact. It’s tempting, but be alert and very thorough when choosing the right person. And don’t forget to register domain and buy a hosting!
The last to mention are subscription based services. It’s a very new concept and quite rare, introduced by companies like Web.com and Loyalbear. Basically, you hand them over your information and in just a few days you get your brand new website, with registered domain, hosted, optimized and ready to go. All you have to do is pay monthly/yearly fee to extend the service. Included in the price is tech support so you have no worries whatsoever as long as you are subscribing. Now, Loyalbear and Web.com have gone their separate ways in creating your website. One uses top of the class premade template websites so you can broadly choose how you next website will look like, whereas Web.com creates one form the scratch, that does not necessarily look so top-notch. My choice would be Loyalbear. Better quality, lower price, more services included in what they call Websting – All in one web service. Faults? Well, you gotta ask your self, how long until all my subscriptions pass the price I would initially pay for all the service the traditional way.
To conclude, there are two winners. If you have a big budget or your website is part of a huge project, go for companies specialized in making the websites. On the other hand, if don’t want to spend a couple of grands, all at once, go for subscription based service, specifically Loyalbear. Simple as that!