Over my last couple of posts I've discussed how you can make your own website for your trade or property business and in my follow up post about how to get that website
found in search with Search Engine Optimisation So the question is though, should you build your own website for marketing your construction or property business? as there are a number of pros and cons to doing it yourself as there are with using a website designer too.
As a trades person we've all seen DIY electrics, plumbing other building work done badly, and we've seen the same with websites too, I know it's not the same and there is no danger to life but there could be danger to wealth! I've seen some really bad websites where they'd have been better off not having a website at all!
Hopefully though you find my posts here useful in helping you to create your own site and even if you decide to go to a designer you'll know enough to understand what they are talking about.
Here are the good points in building your own website to market your business
- You get some flexibility: Once you've got a bit of knowledge on building your own website you can update your site and add pages when ever you choose which can save a fortune, however the trade off is that it may not look exactly how you'd like it to be as most website building software have limited capacity.
Also if you use a good website design company, they should be busy and that means any changes you need could go into a queue and may take a couple of weeks. - You can save money: This is normally the main reason you'd want to build your own website as adding pages and making changes can and normally does cost (you don't expect them to work for free right) and lots of changes means you can run up a bill.
- A feeling of achievement: It's a nice feeling when a customer says how much they liked your website and even better when you tell them that you built it yourself - of course if customers never say this then you may want to look at going with a website designer.
So there are some good reasons for having a go at building your own website, lets have a look at the reasons you may not want to;
- It could look unprofessional: This is the main reason you shouldn't DIY I've seen some really poor websites and I mean really poor in design and has none of the things I mentioned in the last posts, which means it may never get found by searchers, which could be a good thing if it does look bad!
A bad website is worse than none, you'll get a bad reputation and if you do get traffic to it, it will turn off potential customers, I've been at networking meetings or spoken to other networkers when the subject of someones poor website has come up, it's just like having bad business cards. - It won't work properly: When I was an electrician and called out to fault find I used to be able to find it because of my years of experience, of knowing what to do to eliminate possibilities of what the fault could be, a novice would probably not be able to do this.
The same applies when DIYing a website an image may not display where you want it to, not size properly or display at all. There are things that can go wrong that can create frustrating moments and eat up your time, I've had a fair few of my own in the past. - It may look like many other websites: Most DIY website building sites or sites such as Yell use templates, templates that everyone else has access to and use.
Appearance matters on your site if you look like everyone else it sends a message to potential customers that you don't really care enough about your business to have a unique good looking website and you'll find if someone is looking online for an electrician or cleaning company then they are looking at many websites so are likely to come across those templates! - It’s takes time: Maybe a lot of time, depending on your knowledge and skill, if you're not savvy with basic computing skills then you've got a lot to learn and it could take weeks months or years, not in having to learn the technical stuff such as HTML but good design so it looks good when people read it and also making it look good to search engines for Search Engine Optimisation.
As I said in the earlier post I've been doing websites for a long time, read many books, blogs and been on marketing/ website courses/ seminars and I still only consider myself to have a basic knowledge.
On top of that a website is never finished you need to keep adding to it for those of you that have been following me for a while, know that my site is always changing and having pages added. You need to do this because that's what Google like updated, current sites.
Whatever rout you decide to take, make sure you keep learning how to market your website as online marketing is one of the best ways to get new business now, if you don't take the opportunity then someone else will!
To your website success
Paul Jennings
PS if you want to read more marketing tips check out the top tips here
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