Thinking about DIY web design or designing your small business website yourself? The process of establishing a website for your small business is a tricky one.  There are three important things that you should consider: time frame, budget and personal knowledge.

How soon you need your small business website to be up and running? Do you want it ASAP, as soon as you get your business running, or in time for when your business cards are done?  Or maybe you have the luxury of time and you can manage to wait a few weeks or months just to be sure it’s done right and proper?

Next, just how much money are you willing to spend on your site? This will decided whether you will be able to hire web designers or you’ll have to do it yourself. Lastly, your knowledge matters the most in this area, just how much do you know about web sites and web design in general. Basic know-how of web design can make it easier for you to communicate what you want to a designer to do or be the basis for you to undertake the web design yourself.

Doing It Yourself Web Design

If you think you’re up to it, then go ahead and try to do the website yourself! If you’re short and time, you can just search for free website design templates and put in the necessary content and files then upload this to your web host. Well this option is fast and easy with tons of templates to choose from, best of all, it’s free. Making it basically, it’s the most cost and time efficient option. But you should remember you’re not the first one to have this idea and others must have used them also. This could mean that among the countless sites online, there may be a site just like yours, and this makes your small business web site stand out even less.

Another do-it-yourself option is for you to do the website yourself from scratch. With this, I’m operating under that assumption that you possess some working knowledge of web design but I still suggest surfing around the net and gathering ideas from other sites. Remember that when you do it yourself, you can do whatever it is you want with your site, because let’s face it, nobody should really know more about what you want with your site than you. Since you made it, you’ll also be the one to maintain the site and ensure that everything runs properly without having to run to another person for updates and maintenance. In the process of doing this, you’re also upgrading your web design skills so you’re learning. More importantly, if you do it, it’s free.

Of course, there’s always another side to this, you need to have either significant knowledge or a really impressive learning curve to be able to make a really good website design. Without these, your site has a tendency to look like a poorly conceptualized amateur project and will end up scaring customers away rather than encouraging them to explore further.

Hire a Web Designer

If you choose to hire a professional the first thing you should know is that it will cost you. The cost of their services varies as much as the quality of their work but regardless, hiring one will eat into your budget. Hiring a professional can make your design options more flexible as these people have significantly more experience in their field and can craft a site that is uniquely yours and which reflects your business. They are also up to date with the newest design software and can advise you on web hosting and other aspects of the web site. Also, after giving your inputs, you can just let them do their job and just tweak their output without you having to work on it yourself.

Keep in mind that hiring professionals requires paying for the professional price and that websites aren’t produced overnight, at least not the really good ones, so be ready to wait as it may take anywhere between a few weeks or a few months to get it done. Also, professionals are willing to maintain and update your site for a fee, so remember that when you choose one as there are some designers or companies who could easily leave their clients after the site is complete, taking with them the codes and other data for the site.

Putting up a website is an important and necessary step for the growth of any small business. In this regard, you should always remember to consider time frame, budget and knowledge in deciding whether you should do it yourself or hire a professional to do it for you.