Are you seeking recommendations for your new business website? If so, you may have reached out to social media to find a provider or web designer and received a plethora of suggestions. This is not surprising nowadays, as it is relatively easy to get a website up and running. However, it is important to remember that not all business website providers are created equal.
While there is excellent value available, and you could even attempt to create the website yourself, it is crucial to recognize that like everything else, this may lead to some frustrations and a rather steep learning curve, particularly when dealing with the web and its constantly evolving technologies. Therefore, being well-prepared would be beneficial.
The free website solution
There are ways to get up and running fairly quickly using third-party free solutions like Weebly, Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.com, some offer really nice intuitive user interfaces but these usually apply the Freemium model where it’s FREE to signup but, as you start to build on your site by adding content and functionality you’ll soon realise payment is required, then you rely heavily on that content for your business, this is usually where the ‘tie-in’ process occurs. As your website and its content is so heavily wrapped up in the service it’s very difficult to take ownership of your content if you need to upgrade or move on to the next stage of building a bespoke site. Not all services are the same but usually in the terms and conditions you’ll read things like “you waiver the right to take ownership of your content” or “the licence agreement gives us the right to remove content” or “termination of the account means the site and its content”. So you see as you build up your content and as it takes on more value to you, need to ask yourself whether you really want to enter into a contract like that…
The low-cost cheap website solution
Some agencies will recycle off the shelf templates which is absolutely fine as long as you accept the limitations of something like a rigid template structure and that your site could look just like another one from the website provider. These solutions can be cost-effective for startups for sure but you will need to accept that you will have very little control of the functionality and in some cases the overall design of a site. With this kind of solution there has been no design process created for user experience or considerations of what’s the best experience for your user/audience as the template has already been designed to be a “one size fits all” solution. They are recycled and rebuilt with new content each time a provider supplies a new website, this is the reason why they are so cheap but equally can be cost-effective. Just make sure you ask questions about ownership of content – also be aware that although they might give you complete ownership of the content the format in which it is saved to a database can be encrypted which potentially makes it useless to other systems at a time you may wish to upgrade or move away.
The medium to high-end bespoke website solution
This is where you’ll probably be introduced to a medium/heavy weight designer/developer who is knowledgeable enough to give you some sound advice, they are usually honest and transparent in their approach telling you where their strengths lay and their weaknesses are but they will have enough experience and resources to refer or pull a team of the right developers and designers together. They should be giving you advice on the above solutions I’ve already spoken about e.g the “free or low-cost solutions” they will probably have a few if not tens of years experience under their belt, know about frontend and backend development but probably only specialise in one area like “Design, User Experience, Project management, CSS, HTML, Javascript, jQuery libraries, API’s, database structure, SEO, Web Security, Comandline, Servers, Hosting” etc.
The spectrum in the medium to high-end is quite wide and it will usually be for a high functionality requirement, either as a website or as a business web application where you might have multiple user accounts or very specific logistic requirements.
Conclusion
While I could elaborate further on this topic, I’ll keep it brief for now. Hopefully, I have provided some useful information to consider when searching for a website provider. It is an exciting time when you are putting your business online for the first time. However, it is essential to remember that not all business website providers are equal. Therefore, it is crucial to ask the right questions and have a good understanding of what you are getting into before deciding which provider to use. Best of luck on your journey!