Building your own website? What you need to consider.

Most business owners today know that having a website is an essential component of marketing. In the past, the choices were to hire a professional web designer, hire a local teenager to create a site for pocket-money, or learn to do it yourself. Often the last two options, which were the least expensive, were how small businesses had to go. The results were and are often not what businesses need to grow, reach, and impress potential customers.

If you own or manage a business, you surely are aware of the increase in e-commerce taking place today. Many businesses find themselves searching for the best way to increase their exposure on the internet, and for most a website is their first course of action. As most small businesses operate on extremely tight budgets, finding cost effective solutions is usually one of the first considerations when looking to make new purchases. When it comes to creating a website there are many affordable software programs that can produce professional results. Business software should be capable of handling your needs today and in the future.

Businesses are always changing, adding new products, changing or removing old products, offering specials, having sales, etc. By choosing a DIY business website platform over a professional web designer/manager you will be able to make changes to your website whenever you want to. Another benefit is that you will be avoiding the high costs associated with developing the website and costs for making any necessary changes. Having said that, you will need to factor in the costs of your valuable time when calculating the cost of doing it yourself, to determine if that time could be better spent on other facets of your business. And what value do you put on your time?

As more and more people are starting their own small or home-based businesses many are finding that having a website is an important factor to consider. When one starts to consider building a website, especially the novice, many questions arise including “can I create a website myself or should I hire a professional?”

Hiring a professional is a great way to go if you can afford to. Although there are several things to keep in mind: how much will it cost; how much will ongoing maintenance cost; what will changes cost; how long will changes take, etc. As a result, many people opt to build their own website and begin searching for software that can easily help them.

As you start searching for an easy to use website platform, there are some factors that you should take into account so that your new software will serve you now and the future.

One of the first things to consider is your computer literacy. If you despise computers and software and find them confusing and frustrating then building your own website is probably not for you. However, if you enjoy working with computers and learning new things or if you just have the patience (and free time…. a rare commodity for a small business owner) to stick with it, then building a website is within you. If you still feel that you want to build your own site you should choose software that is easy to use and user friendly.

There is quite a variety of easy website building software on the market today. Some of the software packages available today is not inexpensive (eg Dreamweaver) and are geared more for the professional web designer. Learning such systems takes considerable time.

A very important factor to consider, one that will vastly improve the ease of the program, is whether or not it includes a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG stands for "what you see is what you get" and if you purchase a product with this feature (eg WordPress) you will be creating your website in an environment similar to a word processor – so if you are comfortable using a word processor creating a website shouldn’t be too much for you.

The options for small businesses to get a website developed have changed dramatically over recent years. There are now sophisticated "site builder" tools available to small business owners, bundled with many web hosting packages. By using templates, and a content management system to manage updates to the site, it is becoming easier to set up and maintain a website, and many development companies have canned this functionality, for a fee. Hosting providers are increasingly offering tools to automate the website building process, and with good reason. This new option has many benefits, as long as you recognise that there are trade-offs and limitations to getting a website this way.

One of the biggest attractions for developing your own site using DIY website platforms is the cost. It won't necessarily cost less to develop and maintain your site this way (after you calculate in your time), but it does provide a way to spread the cost over time.

Many people are concerned about building their own website, fearing boring designs and complexity. But there are many custom website platforms on the market (some free) that promise dynamic layouts, professional templates, and user friendly web design tools. Most website platforms today are very robust, making it simple to add forms, searching, maps, guest books, calendars, and a whole variety of elements to a web site. Even better, the hosting company sometimes offers an entire suite of services - the website platform, email marketing, search engine optimization and statistics, all in one package along with the hosting.

So, why would anyone hire a professional web developer?

First, the custom website development platforms, though increasingly robust, often lack in design and layout flexibility. For example, they might depend on a standard layout that has a banner across the top, menu down the side. If you want to have your navigation across the top and perhaps a sub banner under it, you might not have that option. Many businesses have already outgrown their first or second site, and want something customised to their business. Since all platforms differ, it is possible that you could want features and functionality within your site that are not available within the system. Some platforms include e commerce, but they do not all do it the same way. A few utilise PayPal® - but not credit cards. Some use a proprietary payment processing service and won't accommodate anything else. The bottom line is that it is important to look at sites that were built using the platform you're considering and research all of the features that are included; to be sure that everything you want to do is possible.

There is also a possibility that the service will require you to keep some branding on the site telling people that you used their tool. This is more common with the free website platforms - which pay for themselves by putting ads on your site. If your goal is to build a business website, it's really not worth sacrificing your professional image by getting something free, which screams cheap.

A tool can make things happen - but if you don't know what to make happen, it is either a useless tool or a dangerous one. There is a learning curve to knowing how to present information online (called information architecture in the profession), as well as for using the platform. In other words, the more features available in the tool; the more there is to learn. If you aren't familiar with color theory, use of typography, information architecture, navigation and interface design, page layout and design, you can potentially build a website that will hurt your business more than help it. So, unless you are already computer and web savvy, figuring out all the features within your web hosting and site building package can be time consuming and frustrating.

Fortunately, there are ways that a small business can take advantage of these new options and still create a functional and professional web site. One way is simply to take the time to research the available tools, and find the one that has the most features and flexibility, meeting your functional requirements. In other words, spend the time to learn the things a seasoned pro would bring to the table. The internet is a massive library of "how to" information, where you can literally teach yourself anything - and with enough time spent, you could potentially learn how to layout information, what colors and fonts work well together, how to conduct your marketing online and optimize the site for search engines. ]

Another approach would be to hire a professional web designer simply to get you "off the ground" by handling the administrative set up of your new site package, creating the look of the site and developing the initial structure. That person could also teach you how to manage the content and make changes by yourself going forward. This middle ground approach ensures that your site benefits your business and makes a good impression. Depending on whether you use an editing tool or a site builder, you may still be able to take advantage of "pay as you go" pricing and the easy content management features of a custom website platform. The first step for a small business owner thinking about having a web site needs to be an honest assessment of how much time, money, talent, patience and computer savvy he or she has, with a clear understanding of the available options. Once this is determined, any small business which needs to be online can be.

I want to build my own. Which platform should I choose?

If you are creating a new website or giving your existing website a facelift or adding functionality, you have a lot of options for what type of platform to choose. If your goal is to achieve high rankings in the search engines then you need a platform built for SEO (search engine optimization).
Get Found Now has tested many content management systems to ascertain which is best suited for SEO. They looked at Joomla, ModX, Drupal, TypePad, PHP Nuke and WordPress. Each system has its good points and its bad points. They all support RSS, video and discussion. For advanced news type sites Joomla and WordPress were the clear winners. For blogging we liked WordPress the best. For overall functionality ModX had the most advanced back-end, but overall was a little hard to customise. They all have templates or themes, but WordPress was the most supported and had the most options for overall support and customization.

What Is The Best CMS For SEO?

Of all the systems they tested WordPress was the leader in the majority of important categories like SEO and usability. The problem with WordPress is its self-titled moniker “just another wordpress weblog”. They sell themselves short by calling themselves a weblog or blog. It is much more advanced than a simple blog. WordPress is a powerful SEO tool, built to succeed in the search engines. It is easy to use and easy to customize. Their themes are laid out to get the most out of your content and notify the search engines whenever you add or modify content.

Why WordPress Does So Well In The SERPS The reason WordPress dominates the search engines the way it does is because of the communication that happens at the most base levels. Through sitemaps the search engines and directories are notified immediately when you create a new post or page. This is a powerful function. Once Google has identified the topics that your site has authority for, your site will get spidered as often as your content is created. The most important part of search engine optimization is the content. Writing quality content will get other sites to link to your site and motivate your visitors to leave comments and discuss your topics.

By Rodney Ringler – Buzzle.com