The Pros and Cons of Building a Website

DIY Website Builder Pro’s

• Good For Small Budgets
  DIY sites are often free or carry a very low-cost, making them ideal for extremely tight budgets.
• Get it Done ASAP
  These sites give you the ability to get a web presence up and make changes quickly and anytime, day or night.
• Only What You Need
  A website builder is great if you don’t need a marketing strategy or flexibility in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• Easy to Use
  Their software is usually user-friendly.
• Create at Will
  They allow you to easily create and add basic functionalities, including contact forms, social feeds, newsletters, and other features.

DIY Website Builder Cons

• Stuck with Us
  Moving to a new hosting provider can be extremely difficult.
• Functionality
  You are limited to the specific applications they offer. If you want something more unique, you are out of luck.
• Limited to a Template
  Templates offer some flexibility, however, you are confined to the template, limiting your creative control. This also means that your site can only be so unique as hundreds of others have the same template.
• Limiting SEO
  DIY website builders can limit your ability to create many pages and data types, furthering limiting your SEO efforts.
• Less Legitimacy for Your Business
  If you use their hosting, (Example: yoursite.diywebbuilder.com) you seem to be less legitimate as a business and lose out on branding potential.
• Lack of Customer Service
  Support is usually limited to general troubleshooting and technical assistance.
• Trouble with Tools
  DIY Website builders often have trouble integrating Webmaster Tools (Google, Bing) and other analytics (Google, Bing, Yahoo) tools that will help you grow your business.

What Is a Freelancer?

A freelancer is a person who has a skill set and either works for different companies as a contractor or has clients and is self-employed or working with a very small company.

Freelancer Pros

• No need to Repeat Yourself
  If you are working with a designer, you are communicating with the top creative on the job, so the project specifications don’t need to be relayed multiple times before action is taken.
• Stop Playing Telephone
  There are no account managers, senior creatives or junior designers, each with differing interpretations of the design brief.
• You Get What You See
  When hiring a freelance designer, you know by looking at their portfolio what kind of final product you should expect.
• Less Expensive
  Most freelancers work from home, meaning they can offer lower prices than agencies through a lack of low overhead costs.
• Quick Turn Around
  Depending on the design revisions can frequently be made almost immediately after the request.

Freelancer Cons

• Less Control
  You can hire a freelancer to do a job for you, such as design a Web page or write a brochure, but you can’t dictate how they complete the task or even when they do the work. You can set a final deadline and give guidelines for the result you want, but it’s up to the freelancer to do the job in his own time and way.
• Unknown Reliability
  If you hire a freelancer you’ve never worked with before, you don’t know if they will meet your deadlines or delivery what you ask.
• Lack of Loyalty
  Even if they’ve worked for you many times before, if another, better-paying or more interesting assignment comes along, they may not be available when you need them.
• Finding The Right Freelancer Is Time-Consuming And Tricky
  Until you’ve worked one-on-one with someone, you don’t know if he is a good fit for your business and if you need someone to do a job that requires specialized skills, your choices may be even more limited.
• Limited Expertise
  Freelancers usually specialize in one element of website creation such as design, development, or copywriting.

What Is a Web Design Agency?

A Web Design Agency utilizes a flexible team approach, incorporating designers, copywriters, developers, SEO experts and Inbound Marketing professionals as needed for each Client’s unique web development requirements.

Agency Pros

• Multiple People Working on Your Project
  This means work gets done quickly and efficiently.
• Varying Skill Sets
  Working with a website development agency gives you access to a variety of different skill sets.
• Reliable Customer Service
  With an agency, your project will be assigned a project manager whose sole job is to communicate with you. This means that customer service is often good and response time is prompt.
• Less Work for You
  You won’t have to write all your own text and struggle with H1 tags and Meta tags. This allows you to focus on the large picture of your business.
• More for Your Money
  At Comrade Digital Marketing, we are more concerned with getting results than simply doing what we can in the number of hours listed in the contract in order to conform to the budget.

Agency Cons

• Offers More Than The Necessities
  Compared with one- and two-person shops, a Web Design Agency may offer too comprehensive a service for a client’s needs, and thereby be too costly.
• Layers of Communication
  Working with an agency means you are working with a team; one of the biggest problems with that is the number of times information has to be passed on from person to person. Ever play the game telephone? Yeah, sometimes it ends up like that.
• Lack of Flexibility
  A successful agency typically has many clients at once. This means that, due to the need for scheduling resources’ hours, days and weeks in advance, the ability to change direction at the drop of a pin is no longer available.
• Urban Centralized
  Digital Ad Agencies tend to be concentrated in urban areas. This means that there is limited accessibility to clients that live in smaller cities, villages, rural areas, etc.

Why Do You Need a Professional Website for Your Local Business?

Simply put, websites are a great way to generate business, sales, and leads for your business as well as increase your brand’s value. By showcasing their services to targeted audiences, businesses gain credibility in front of customers and can attract new customers.

In many small businesses, particularly new businesses, lean operations are the norm. Spending money is only a necessity when it is needed. There is a common misunderstanding that a small business website is a luxury item that many entrepreneurs cannot afford, so it’s understandable why some of them think it’s unnecessary.

Especially for young small business owners, they might think that they will be able to sell their products from a Facebook page or a sign listing their phone number.

There’s no reason to spend a fortune on a professional website – it’s an essential business tool that is affordable and fundamental to every company. Having a strong online presence is essential for any business, regardless of the industry.

1. Nowadays This Is an Expectation

To make a long story short, your tech-savvy customers expect to find more information about your business on your website. In terms of your website, you can generate business, drive brand recall value, increase customer loyalty, promote goodwill, as well as provide strong marketing messages. You can think of it as your website delivering your marketing message 365 days per year, 24 hours a day! In addition to e-commerce sites, most professional websites aim to educate visitors and solve their problems.

Moreover, your customers look for you online! Quite a few companies invest in search engine optimization (SEO) websites: 97% of people use a search engine to find a local business, and 93 percent of online interactions begin that way. Every day, there are 3.5 billion searches on Google, and right now, someone near you is looking for something specific in your area. Who will they be having a business with? No, not you.

2. Your Website Is Your Digital Portfolio

Prior to choosing a business to work with (especially when working on an expensive or detailed project), many potential customers seek as much information as they can.

A restaurant can show how they cook food or their layout. An easy way to show customers what your business can do is by recording videos or taking photos, then uploading them quickly to your own website.

3. This Is a Good Path for Growth

Building a website for free with WordPress.com is not much money these days, but it offers greater value. An SEO-optimized platform will help you find thousands of more new customers without investing a great deal of money.

With greater exposure, you can advertise your services or products to a larger market. Independent of your sector of business, the quality of your website often influences your purchasing decisions and the retention rate of customers.

4. All Information in One Place

A website should be aimed at customers’ comfort. And what is the most comfortable thing for a client? That’s right – information availability.

B2B companies are especially affected by this. Whenever someone visits your website, they are looking for information or want to take action. Also, the visitors of your site should be able to answer three questions in a matter of seconds after they land on your website: who are you, what do you do/offer and how can they contact you?

Consumers today expect immediate access to the information they need – which means you should make sure your website answers all of the questions above with no need to look for it in some deep dark corner of a site.

The purpose of a company website is similar to a business card: people can find information about the company, the employees, and the services they offer right on the website.

5. Compete With Giants

Web sites aren’t just for international corporations or national companies. This is a misunderstanding that many people have about them. Actually, websites are just as, if not more, beneficial for small businesses.

They offer local businesses an excellent chance to connect with their customers. As an example, if you’re exploring ‘shoe stores near me’, Google won’t provide you with a brand-name result in, let’s say, Toronto (you aren’t there right now though, right?). Your local search will bring up a list of shoe stores in your area.

Having an optimized website can allow you to rank higher and appear at the right time and place. Using the right keywords can boost your website traffic and influence your consumers’ journey, which commonly begins with research, recommendations, and reviews. You can challenge the giants in your industry by having your position prominent on search results pages. So, if you are not on the Internet, you are making it easier for your customers to shop at your competitors.

The majority of customers want to visit a business’ website before making a purchase. This means that a website can make or break whether or not you attract more revenue.

6. It Is Really Not That Expensive

Because they think creating their own website is too expensive or complicated, many small businesses use third-party platforms.

Yet it is now easier and cheaper to build and maintain a website. Using simple web publishing tools, you can now easily build a website even if you are a non-techie or a non-creative.

Those who want to succeed must stop making excuses. Your business will suffer if you put off building a website. Your digital marketing strategy will suffer, your sales will suffer and the customers you lose will suffer too because they will have to go to a less qualified competitor. This brings us to…

7. Your Competitors All Have Websites

Perhaps this sounds strange, but it’s quite logical. Your business is not yours alone. It is common for businesses to have their own websites, and the majority of them offer the same products and services you do.

Based on everything already mentioned in this article, everything seems to be heading in this direction. The market seems to trust them more. They have established their trust from the start, showcase their products/services, and have improved their position on the web through optimization for search engines.

Conclusion

Websites help build brand credibility, showcase your brand, attract qualified leads, and save you time. In today’s world, consider not whether you can afford to have a website, but whether you can afford not to have a website.

Whether you have a site already or you want to start from scratch, lean on our experts at Comrade. We’ll help you grow your business to unimaginable heights. Contact us for a complimentary, no-obligation website audit and business plan.