Professional Website Design, or Free? - Benefits and Drawbacks Explained
Like most things in business, particularly services, you get what you pay for. Free is free, there are no guarantees, no one will take responsibility if something goes wrong, standards and legal requirements are your responsibility.
Web design, SEO and hosting is a vast subject that requires many years of education, experience and constant research to be able to produce successful results; this is what you are paying for with a professional web design service.
Each Aspect of Web Design Function, Performance and Effectiveness is Compared Below.
Cost. - Nil. At first glance a 'free' website or home-made website would appear to incur zero cost. However, you are placing your reputation and online success in the hands (hosting, email, data security etc.) of an organisation that has no incentive to support you (they are not being paid); if something goes wrong, the cost to your business could be very high.
Cost. - £200 to £500. Very effective small business websites can be produced within this price range. Yes, cost is a drawback compared to a 'free' website. However, you are buying support, advice and expertise which will save you far more than the initial costs. Even after a relatively short time, your website will more than pay for itself by generating new business and by helping you to compete more effectively.
Quality. - Free website providers offer limited tools for customisation and design. They often include unwanted links and advertisements which require payment to have removed. Free templated designs tend to look either out-dated or lack identity. Quality is adequate for an amateur website, a personal website or a school project for example. A home-made website (using a CMS or budget design software) can produce better results, but only if the builder has the skills, patience and time to make a proper job of it.
Quality. - Attention to detail, market research, knowledge of visitor expectations, consideration for visitors with disabilities, brand matched colour scheme, unique graphic design, quality images, usability, readability (correct use of text fonts), integrity when zoomed or viewed on mobile devices; these are just a few of the elements that go into a professional website design for a specific client. The result is a high quality product which has impact and identity.
Search engine positioning. - Unless the website builder has carried out considerable research into SEO, search engine listings are likely to be poor or non-existent. There are exceptions; if the builder is an authority or celebrity in a particular field and can obtain a large number of incoming links. Also, if their content material is so compelling that the website becomes successful through viral propagation.
Search engine positioning. - Meta element SEO, page structure, advice on content key word and phrase density, advice on producing good quality SEO & visitor based content, standards compliance, accessible web design, manual search engine submission, market research, an online marketing plan, correct domain name choice, search engine friendly page names. All of these things and more, work together to produce high search engine listings. This knowledge comes from skill, experience and keeping abreast of current developments in online marketing and SEO.
Performance. - A free website will be hosted on a budget server with hundreds (often thousands) of other free websites, all sharing the same resources. Imagine if 500 people were using your PC at the same time, applications would freeze, data would be lost and security would be compromised. The ability of a potential client to view your pages would vary from one minute to the next (acceptable to slow to 'Page cannot be found!') with free hosting. Email attachment size will be limited to around 10Mb, and email security may not be adequate for business purposes (Data Protection Act).
Performance. - Professional hosting provides high security, high performance, small number of clients per server (ideally no more than about 50), email attachment limit of around 100Mb and business level email security and anti-spam filtering.
Time is money. - Setting up a free website takes a considerable amount of time, there are hundreds of decisions to make, and a lot of research has to be carried out in order to produce adequate results. You may be capable of changing the brake pads on your car, but would you? (time, effort, dirt, and never being sure that they are 100% safe). You may be capable of preparing a set of end-of-year-accounts but for peace of mind, you would probably pay your accountant to do it for you, while you get on with running your business.
Time is money. - A professional web design company will do things right, they will make the correct decisions for you, they will do the market research to tune your website design. They will make sure that you comply with international design standards and accessibility requirements. They will advise and help with content material - they will save you a great deal of valuable time. A professionally designed website will produce good results for you and provide peace of mind.
Credibility. - Business credibility is essential if you want potential clients to take you seriously. Though not impossible, it is difficult to project a credible, professional image with a free website design. You only have to look at examples in typical sectors; for example, visit a few guest house websites and it will be obvious which were homemade and which were professionally designed. Then ask yourself honestly, in which guest houses would you have the most initial confidence.
Credibility. - Your successful competitors paid for their website designs in order to build client loyalty and trust, and to project reliability and professionalism. They didn't take any chances with the integrity of their online brand/image. Your potential clients are more sophisticated these days, and they will quickly see the difference between professional and free.
Pride. - People spend a lot of time browsing, comparing services, reading reviews, learning how to spot good and bad service providers. For example, they are advised to look for; Google PageRank, top level domain names and not sub-domains, domain name based email addresses and not @Hotmail/@AOL etc. Standards compliance badges, accessibility statements, privacy/security guarantees etc. Many of these things are impossible to provide using free website services. It's hard to be proud of website with these shortcomings.
Pride. - You are proud of your business, you're working hard to achieve more success, you deserve to have a website that you can be proud of too. When you hand your business card to a potential client, you should have no doubt in your mind that they will be impressed with your website. A professional website design will tick all the boxes that potential clients have learned to look for, it will meet all the required standards and will project the pride you have in your business through to your website visitors.
