Why you should avoid building your own website

When an agency isn’t what it seems

The internet is full of promises about websites from thousands of would-be agencies. Some bolster their existence online by making themselves out to be large established companies when in fact there are probably two people sitting on a bed making Okay, to mediocre to very bad websites. Then there are agencies that happily admit to being tiny, but that they produce world-beating websites. Although I suspect there are some super whizz kids out there that know exactly what they are doing, there is usually something fundamental missing to render that site virtually useless.

Why shouldn’t I use these generic agencies?

The word generic just about sums up what is wrong with ‘build’ your own website’ advertisements online, they are all generic. They offer a limited variety in theme, they are almost always very templated visually. They are quite often built in some spurious CMS when the way of the world these days is almost completely produced in WordPress. Content is usually minimal and is often replaced by large graphics rendering them useless when being indexed by Google. If they are built in WordPress, the same often applies. Missing headers and alt tags, badly written content and missing security, for example, SSL certification to missing privacy and cookie policies and GDPR compliance all of which are mandatory. You probably don’t own the website at the end of all of this, and if you do, it’s probably not going to get you anywhere online whether that be a brochure or an e-commerce site.

So I will build it myself

I can use WordPress! I can choose my favourite theme, I have all my content ready to input and I have lots of graphics to add to my nice shiny new website. I have chosen how many pages I need and it’s all going to work like a dream online. Is it? Almost certainly not. It would probably look ok visually, just like the generic ones above. What would be missing is that all the important things that make a good website work. Why would it be so bad? Because I am not a trained web designer or graphics expert. I would end up with the same bad website as many of those generic ones advertised online, if not worse.

Back to the quality agencies

Any good quality agency is going to put the client first. All aspects of the planned website would be explained in detail. The level of communication between that of the client and the design team should be at the forefront of every individual project. The agency knows exactly what the client’s needs are and will produce a Google-friendly, secure and with all the right legal documents in place, a quality online product. The client owns that website outright and if the agency is worth its salt, will offer safe secure hosting and a level of ongoing support that is good value for money going forward.