Agency/Freelance professional versus DIY for your web build

April 20, 2022     4 min read

I’m going to put it out there right now ‘Building a website is easy!’
In today’s marketplace with the web building tools available it is easy to put a site together very true.

So why use an agency/freelancer?

Yes, true websites are easy, that is the bit of putting some images and text into a template provided by some online builders.
Great, I hear you say, you’ve just told me it’s easy, so I don’t need an agency/freelancer. Hold on, I said building one was easy, but that’s the tip of the iceberg.
The truth is, doing it well is difficult!
There is a lot more to just putting some images and text together.

Planning

Let’s start with the planning, understanding what you want from your website. Then knowing your customers, how do you want them to use your site?

  • How will you get them to carryout the actions you want?
  • What images will you use?
  • What content is needed?
  • How do I market this site?
  • Where will I host it?
  • What data do I need to collect?
  • Is the site backed up?

Just some questions of which there are a ton of others.

Images
Then there are the images, do you have professional quality images which tell your story, that showcase your business?
Or are you using ones directly from your camera?
Images require some work to get them ready for the web, some systems have a built-in optimiser, allowing for cropping and resizing, but not all things are equal, and some do not do the job to the right level.
What does it matter if you use a camera image on your website?
Have you ever noticed the slow line by line as the image appears, that is due to the size of the image? Also, think of your poor users, all that bandwidth being gobbled up just because you’ve not optimised the images.
Then there is the part were depending on screen size you can swap one image for another and so much more. Why use an agency/freelancer?
Copy/text
Let’s look at your text, your words. You need to tell a story, you need professional copy, to accompany the images. All of this provides a professional appearance for your business. To help make it stand above the competition. Many businesses will not worry about this and write the copy themselves. A few issues with this approach, unless you are dedicated and a lot the time, sitting down and doing what you said, we guarantee something will always come up and stop you doing it.
Analytics
With all that it’s time to make sure you can see what clients do when they arrive on your site. So, you’ll need to load an analytics suite, and understand how to interpret these. What’s this, what should it do, how do I add it?
Understanding the data derived from a website is an art on its own.
If you want to understand what is happening on your website, potentially where the bottlenecks are, what the blockers are for users, then understanding the data is important.
A good agency/freelancer will have someone who looks after this for clients, who works alongside other members of the team.
Marketing
The adage ‘build it and they will come’ no longer holds true, so you need to carry out some marketing to tell people you have a website and how to find it.
Do you want the best results for your business, do you want to make a difference with your marketing.
A good agencies/freelancer will either have someone on their team or a connection who specialises in your industry sector that can help market your business.
Security
A major issue in today’s world, quite often not thought about or if it is, quite often with the, I’m too small it will never happen to me. We could go on here and tell you some stories, but the idea is not to scare you, so we will leave those, suffice to say, take this one seriously. There are many tools available to help you, though knowing what you need and do not need is important, understanding how to configure then another important part.
Speed
When you get a good agency one of the areas they will look at is speed. They will look at how fast your website loads, why is this important? Google figures show that with a site load time of between 3 -5 seconds you will start to lose up to 50% of your visitors. By the time it goes over 7 seconds, your on with the die hard, probably those who got caught up doing something else, so did not realise how slow the site was.

The reality is a slow website is worse than not having a website.

Having you site hosted in the right location with the right company is so important. The website is your portal for the world to see how good you are, for you to showcase yourself and if you website is too slow, guess what, doesn’t matter how nice it looks, no one will see it.

Summary

If you try to do all of this yourself and do a DIY site, will you be doing yourself any favours. Probably not, there are as with all thing’s exceptions to the rule.
So why use an agency/freelancer? It is a choice you make.
Way up the pros and cons of each. Ask yourself if you have the time and expertise you need to make the most of the site, for your business. It’s important as your website is going to showcase your business.
Often, we will do things with the belief we are saving money, but are we. The reason we don’t plaster our own house is not because we can’t (well to be honest we can’t), but more because its not as good as a professional and we’re better off spending time earning money in the business.

These are reasons to use an agency rather than DIY!

Though if you are determined to do it yourself don’t be put off by the above, do the bits you can and bring in people for the bits you can’t.
What ever you choose, think of the impact on your business, what you want from the site and what you budget is.