If you are ready to build a new website for your business or for personal use, then that’s good news, but bear in mind web design should not be taken lightly. You are ready to create an online presence that will help people connect with you. Websites are the perfect tool for getting the news out there, giving people access to information about you or your business, and for selling services or products. Luckily the World Wide Web has been around for more than 2 decades and as such there are now several options that can help you get a website built using any size budget.
Here are the 3 main options brought to you by a well-known web design company in London.
- Website Builders
There are no so many website builders available that we cannot possibly cover them all in a single article What we can do is tell you what they are and point you in the right direction.
Website builder generally requires no code and most of them are free. You should be able to browse through a number of theme options. You then choose the theme you feel suits your project. All the components such as text boxes, image boxes, logo area, and so on usually drag and drop. You can either use the theme’s layout and just edit the text, video, and image boxes as they are, or you can rearrange them.
All you need to do is drag the relevant boxes into position, and then edit them. You will also be given more granular options such as title boxes, font to use, change the background colour and so on.
With nearly all website builders you do not need to buy a domain name if you don’t want to. For example, Weebly is a website builder. You can choose not to buy a domain and use Weebly’s default domain option. For example, if you are a web design London based business, you can choose webdesign-london.weebly.com as your domain name. You will just be using the domain name of the website builder within your URL.
On the other hand, if you want your own private domain name, then you will need to buy one. Most website builders will allow you to purchase the domain through their interface or through a partner. To be quite frank, this is the most professional option as you don’t want to look cheap.
- WordPress Website
WordPress can be slightly more complicated than a website builder. It is a managed CMS system and there are literally thousands of themes out there. However, be careful with the theme you choose because there are also thousands of themes that are not mobile friendly in the slightest. If you plan on creating an SEO or Pay-Per-Click campaign, then make sure you do your research and get a mobile-friendly theme that passes both the desktop and mobile Google Page Speeds test.
Aside from this, you will probably at some point need to hire the services of a web design agency if you are going to use WordPress. There are so many plugins and there is also a lot of code involved with getting a perfectly designed WordPress website.
- Custom Design
Having a website built using a custom design is the most expensive option of the three mentioned here. However, it is also the most flexible. You can literally ask the web designer to design the site exactly how you envisage it. There is no reason why you cannot ask for a custom designed WordPress theme, or you can just have the website custom designed with a CMS built in. It is your choice entirely.
Custom designed websites are also perfect for companies that need a log in area. I mean there are hundreds of industries out there, so it would be difficult to give an example of every industry that needs a login area, nut the best example I like to use is that of an internet banking website.
When you use your internet banking, you make transactions and the balance changes and the transaction show up in front of you. Furthermore, you also have access to standing orders, bill payments, payees, and so on. Now if your business needs a backend log in area for your clients, then you will need to have a custom backend designed that will possibly use JavaScript.
An example of a front end system using JavaScript would be when you are looking for a quote. Most insurance or travel businesses use JavaScript so people can enter their credentials and what they are looking to achieve. The system then calculates the parameters entered and produces a quote.
These types of websites can cost into the thousands. However, if this is what your business needs to offer an online service that is equal to or beats the competition, then the investment should be worth your while.
Before You Decide What Works Best For Your Business Plan Your Budget
Try not to go over the top on your web design budget if you do not already know that the website is going to increase your business’s bottom line. James Donaghue is a software engineer that specialises in helping businesses with software-based systems that integrate into his client’s websites. You can see James Donaghue’s software engineering profile on the very popular GitHub website.
James says that one of the main issues with some of the projects that he works on is that the clients often go for a high-end system design before they knew that they will get a return on their investment.
If you are a new business just starting out, then a website builder is likely all you need. Many of them are mobile friendly, offer customer support, and if you just need a couple of pages about your business and contact details, then you can easily achieve this with a website builder. You can hire a web design company to help you with your website builder.
Alternatively, if you feel a website builder is too simple for what you need, then don’t dive straight into custom designs until you are sure the investment will be worthwhile. Talk a professional web design company and ask them to quote you for a WordPress theme. Tell them you will need Google Ads as well as SEO, so you would like to see all the WordPress themes that focus on your industry. The themes should all pass Google optimisation tests. The most important of these is the Google Page Speed Insights as well as mobile-friendly tests.
As with any purchase you make, you need to make sure that you do not get carried away. At the same time, you need to make sure that if you do invest heavily in a web design project, then you get a website created that will last a long time. Obviously, other factors that will come into play include the website migrations, how big is your current website, how much content do you need, do you already have a website that is bringing a lot of traffic?
Hopefully, you have found this useful, and your web design project has benefitted from the information provided here. Now all you need to do is keep on researching and find opinions from other blogs such as this one. The more you read these blogs, the more ideas you will have, and the better you will understand the challenges ahead of you.
