Your business or organisation is at that point in its evolution that you feel it would benefit from having a website. If you’ve never had your own site before, you might not know what to do next. Essentially, there are two options – build it yourself, or hire someone else to do it. But there’s also a compromise solution that might just be what you’re looking for. Let’s look at why you would choose each type.
Building it yourself
Back in the day (and we’re talking mid-1990s) self-building your website was the only way to do it. You would have to learn HTML to get a basic static site going, and other codes like JavaScript and CSS to add functionality.
However, it wasn’t long before a web development industry sprung up, and the days of self-made sites more or less ended. Nowadays, virtually every professional website has been created by a edicate development agency – it isn’t even too uncommon for developers to outsource the build for their own sites, mainly so they can set goals and deliverables that don’t get bogged down by internal issues.
It’s really only the very large businesses that create and maintain their own sites now. That’s because they can have an in-house team specialising in design, coding, security, optimisation and all the other specialisms that make a site tick.
Outsourcing your web build
Now, we turn to the way most organisations choose, from the local baker to multinational corporations: outsourcing. The reality is that modern web development isn’t even a single specialism – it’s the coming together of a number of distinct specialisms.
An HTML expert might not be too clued up on security; a marketing genius might not know the first thing about payment technology. Yet all these things go into a modern build. Just as DHL doesn’t make its own van tyres, businesses recognise their own limitations and let the experts take over their web builds. So unless you’re a company that’s big enough to have these specialisms in-house, it’s always better to outsource the job – or at least some of it.
Halfway house options
There are ways in which a company can produce a secure, attractive and functional website without either building themselves or hiring a company to do it. Platforms like WordPress and Magento, and services such as Shopify and Wix, provide the basis for a website, and you can then customise it and populate it with your own copy, media and products.
Your end product can be as professional or as (for want of a better word) amateurish as you’re happy with. You might choose to create the basics of the site yourself, and keep it updated with blogs, products and other media, but outsource certain aspects, such as email marketing, CRM or SEO, to a third party. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Every business and organisation is different, with its own capabilities when it comes to time, expertise and budget to devote to their website. Hopefully, this piece will show that there are plenty of options surrounding who actually builds it, and that it doesn’t all have to be done in one place.
