Getting a small business website built for you needn’t break the bank and should pay for itself through the new sales it generates. You might be thinking about building your own website but unsure where to start. Consider the following. Firstly, do you have the time to spend creating a website? secondly, what do you wish to gain from your new website?
You can work out how to design and build a basic website for yourself. I by no means intend to suggest that web design isn’t an enormously in depth topic or that it doesn’t require a lot of study and skill but at a basic level and with a bit of applied learning you can achieve some pretty good results.
For you to be successful in building your own website you will need to be confident in your ability to pick up new things easily and good at understanding the way to find your way around new systems. You will need to acquire a few essential skills before you start off, including CSS, HTML and basic web design and layout.
We return now to our first question. Do you have the time to learn these skills?
Possibly you are fed up of working for others and plan on creating your own business, so you are happy to put time into this project. Spend a bit of time online looking at some tutorial sites. Find and purchase an up to date ‘Build Your Own Website’ book through Amazon. You will find many learning avenues to direct you.
Maybe however your circumstances are different. You may currently own or run a business and find it difficult to find the time to handle your normal workload. Trying to find time to create your own business website in this situation is not a good option for you, as not only will your work life balance be put under increased strain, you will be unlikely to build a website that will do your business justice if it is not possible to fully focus on working on it.
Second question to ask yourself. What is it that you want your new website to accomplish for 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 are a small business such as a plumber, a landscape gardener, an electrician, or anybody that just wishes to set up a web presence so that people in your local area searching online for your type of services can find your contact details and give you a call then a very small site showing up in the search engine results may be enough for you. A basic website to fulfil this need is altogether achievable.
Your Business type may fall in to what is thought to be a more professional category such as accounting, law or finance. If this is the case then a basic looking site might not portray a suitable impression of your business that you want potential clients to see. Do some research online. Look at the level of competition and look at the quality of their websites. Be realistic, if you feel the standard is higher than you are going to be able to reach yourself, you would probably be better off hiring a professional web designer.
To conclude the above; If you have the time to learn to build your website and you think that you can achieve a high enough standard then give it a go, if not then hire a professional. One last thing to note is that creating your website is just stage one, if no one can find it on Google then you have wasted your time. For your website to be productive and useful to your business, you need it to reach high in the search engine rankings.
Don’t miss out on crucial clients and revenue due to your lack of presence on the web. You can create your own website for your business, but you need to carefully consider whether you think the results you could achieve would generate more sales and decide whether you realistically have the time to teach yourself how to do it.
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.
