I Want a Website, But I Don’t Know Where to Start.

Introducing a week-long series of informative posts about your website including how to overcome some common obstacles.

Today; #1 - I Want a Website, But I Don’t Know Where to Start.

If you really want a website, all you need is an idea and from there, the digital world is quite literally your oyster. If you’ve got a budget in mind, stick to it as it’s possible to spend a great deal of money on a website, but you genuinely get what you pay for. More on this tomorrow.

A website consists of three parts - the domain (I’ll be going into detail about the domain on Friday), the hosting and the files themselves (images and copy). A simple way to think about the hosting is that it's simply a remote computer (server) where the web files are read from.

There are many tools on the market that are known as Page Builders and often fall under the acronym WYSIWYG or What You See Is What You Get, which in layman’s terms means ‘drag & drop’. If you do a quick Google search for website builders, you will be shown an almost never-ending list of drag and drop tools including Wix, Square Space and Weebly; all of which provide you with the domain and hosting. The files you’ll have to create yourself.

Do you want to pay someone to do it all for you or do you have the time and ability to do it yourself? If it’s the latter, the good news is that it’s not too difficult to build the site but you need to think about it as a new pet. The days of just building and leaving it are long gone and it will need to be looked after. Think of it as a long term investment but if it’s for your business, then you will need to commit. This is one of the reasons why it might just be a good idea to pay someone to build and maintain it for you and to let you take care of running the day to day essentials of the business itself. There is also a considerable technical element that is worth knowing and if you really want to do it yourself, you need to be patient to learn about it whilst waiting for the turnaround of support ticket requests.

There are many pros and cons over each platform but the biggest strength that they all share is how you can build a site without any code (I’ll be covering the elements of coding on Thursday).

Of course, there are drawbacks that you absolutely must consider.

The largest consideration is the cost. It’s important to remember that age old cliche - you get what you pay for - and this is something that you will read many times this week. Conversely, the free options of these platforms will provide a website but with very limited editing and SEO (search engine optimisation) options. Additionally, you may not enjoy the benefits of a custom URL and you would probably have to put with onsite platform advertising.

Many of these platforms are very good in what they offer, but they are very limited within their individual remits. For example, if you want a solid SEO platform with a WIX website, you will need to pay for a higher tier account, for example.

Ultimately though, if you’ve got the time and inclination to do it all yourself, you have the potential to end up with exactly what you want. But when it comes to performance, long term maintenance, security, visibility and technical support, will you be able to juggle it all yourself?

Tomorrow, I tackle the subject of cost in the second of this seven part series titled ‘Aren’t Websites Expensive? I’m not Made of Money!’