Designing Your Website Yourself Vs Hiring A Webmaster

As a business owner, you will need a website, the quintessential platform for your company that promotes your products and services, helps you connect and foster trust with your customers as well as build credibility and professionalism. The thing is that as a business owner, you may not necessarily know how to or have the time to invest to design your own website  — you have a whole business to run after all! While building your own website typically means that you would need to know how to code,  in recent years, there are now many more options and tools that can make it easier for you to design your own website. Still, building a website at all will be either a huge time and/ or money investment, and whichever option you decide, at the end of the day, it is non-negotiable that you will need one for your business.

So, the question is should you try to design your website yourself or should you hire a designated web pro to take the reins and the burden off your back, entirely? In today’s article, we will explore the ins and outs of building a website yourself vs hiring a web professional, and will see that the answer is not that simple and depends on a variety of factors. 

Building Your Own Website 

Traditionally, building a website is a heavy, highly technical and complicated undertaking, as well as requires a huge investment of your time. It also requires a certain level of digital and coding savvy and in order to build the layout of the website yourself, you would need to learn various coding languages such as HTML and CSS. 

WYSIWYG Editors 

While knowing how to create and implement code will grant you full control over your website build, fortunately it is not necessary as there are many tools available that you can use to still design your own website, while foregoing most of the coding yourself. For instance you can use WYSiWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors, such as Dreamweaver or Net Objects Fusions amongst others which can help you create your website with minimal coding or web programming ability or experience. A WYSIWYG editor is a display-generated tool with a user interface that allows the user to see the finished results of the website as it is being built, and the coding is completed on the backend without the user’s involvement. 

However, these types of tools may be better suited for a personal website rather than a company or brand, as they are more basic and lack certain advanced functionalities. While you can still create a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing website using one of these tools, you will still need to have some experience in coding or web programming to build other functionalities typically needed for effective customer management such as various shopping cart features, etc. 

Using a Site Builder 

Maybe, you’re not design-oriented and would rather work with ready-made templates to help you build your website. Site builders such as GoDaddy’s Website + Marketing,  Squarespace. Weebly or Wix are fantastic options that come pre-built with various template designs in which you can drag and drop, and plug and play with different tools features to easily create your website. Site builders that come with templates, such as these can be incredibly helpful as they offer a foundation or a starting point to use from which you can continue to build and flesh out your website. The key to remember when using site builders is that you are not necessarily stuck with the content it comes with and you should think about how you can make the templates fit your brand, and how you can manipulate the content to  align with your business’s particular brand identity. 

Plus, site builders typically come bundled with hosting , technical and security support which makes it an attractive package option to everything you need for your website in one. 

Content Management Systems 

While site builders are easy and user-friendly and can help you build a basic website quickly, they lack features and options to help you customize its layout. If you want to design a more custom website with more control over the final layout, content management systems like WordPress (great option for most businesses) and Shopify (ideal for ecommerce businesses with features that facilitate effective product management) are great happy mediums. These tools give you more creative freedom to design a website that fits better with your particular brand without needing to know complicated coding languages. 

However, it is important to keep in mind that WordPress comes with various plugins and themes and Shopify has its own ad-ins and themes, so there can be a learning curve to keep up with these additional features and functionalities. Also, when it comes to content management systems. You’d have to purchase your own hosting, technical support and SSL security. When it comes to WordPress hosting, you can choose between Managed WordPress in which the host will manage the backend of the website for you and ensure its programming is always up to date or if you want more control and are IT savvy, cPanel would be the option for you as t enables you to control your site’s updates. 

While content management systems like WordPress are a wonderful option for helping you design a custom layout for your site, they can lack in certain advanced functionalities and features that you may still want for your website and if you lack digital savvy, you may therefore, still need to seek out further support to help you code these additional features for your site. 

Outsourcing Your Website Build

Hiring a Freelance Webmaster or Using an Agency 

If you would rather not invest the time and effort needed to design your own website, and your budget allows it, you can choose to outsource your website build and hire a professional webmaster or leverage the services of an agency. A freelance web designer will usually cost between $500 and $1500, while an agency can be more expensive, running you anywhere from $2500 to $10 K as an agency has more overhead than an independent freelancer. However, with an agency you can typically expect higher quality, and you can enjoy more security and support as you have the services of the agency to fall back on that you partnered with, while you would have to rely solely on a freelance webmaster if you decided to go that route. Plus, using an agency offers you access to other valuable services and resources that you can potentially bundle together in a package to help you further enhance your site in many other ways, from strengthening SEO and web presence to elevating your content, branding, campaigns and social media marketing strategy. 

At the end of the day, whether it would be best for you to design your website yourself or to rely on the skills and services of web professionals will depend on the particular needs of your website, your business’s operations and budget. You need to ask yourself what it is that you would rather invest in between time and money. Remember not to cut corners when it comes to your website. It is the quintessential calling card for your company, the invaluable platform that gives your website a home, gives your business credibility,  enables your customers to find you and helps you market your products and services which directly add to your bottom line. 

If you have further questions about website build or designing, or would like to enquire about partnering with web masters who will be able to help you carry out your vision for your website, reach out to us experts at Firon Marketing. You can also always view our other awesome content to learn valuable skills, strategies and information like how much it costs to build a website.

Here at Firon Marketing, we’re super passionate about everything to do with digital marketing and happy to help you build the perfect website for your business’s needs and reach and exceed all of your marketing and business objectives like never before.