I need a website. Where do I start?
Many entrepreneurs that aren’t tech savvy have the same dilemma. They need a website and have no idea where to start. This can be a major road block depending on the industry your business is in. I know a lot of people ask this question. And because Woods&Tech started by building both apps and websites, I get this question often. Normally I gave very short and to the point answers because 1. This could be about a 15–30 minute conversation IN PERSON, not truly worth my time and effort to be giving out free 30 minute lectures throughout the week and 2. My best answers decreased my number of potential customers. But I feel that providing value is the best way to attract customers, not holding onto it. What I want to do in this post is spend some time actually answering this question to the best of my ability. So that in the future when I get this question I don’t have to worry about how to compress a 30 minute answer into 5 minutes. I’ll be able to refer people to this post and there will be some mutual benefit. I won’t be burdened with having to pull out a lecture on the spot, pulling from my time, and the person asking won’t have to get a short cut answer that isn’t thorough or complete in any way. Both sides of the table can feel like their time isn’t wasted and I don’t have to seem rude when I don’t have time for the question. So, what I’m going to do is give you 3 ways you can get your website up and running without even having to come get a consulting agency to building your website. These 3 options aren’t exactly 100% free in all cases, but they do get your site going for cheaper than I can charge (in many cases). I list them in order of expensiveness (least to most).
1. Build your own website! For free!!!!!!!! (ish)
So many people want to have a website and end up spending thousands of dollars for a website that is nothing more than a wiki. The page only displays information and pictures while listing links. This is not a good spend of your hard-earned dollars! If all you need is a site that says this is who I am, this is my location, and this is what I do, you can save your money and just build the site yourself with one of the many drag and drop website builders out there on the market. I would say the most popular right now are Wix: www.wix.com and Word Press: wordpress.com.
They both allow you to create a free website that displays all your information and if you take advantage of their pre-made themes, you can create very beautiful sites with a ridiculously low cost and ridiculously high speed.
The cost comes in when you decide you want to have a custom domain, remove ads, or increase the performance of your site. I would say that Wix is simpler to use while WordPress is more full featured. If you are 100% against learning any coding skills I would have to recommend Wix. It is so simple that you are literally dragging pieces of that website around until you find a good fit. But the truth of the matter is that drag and dropping lines and shapes isn’t exactly the best way to come up with a good design (unless you have designer experience of course). With a good template (which is a feature Wix didn’t have when I explored it years ago but does have now) you are be able to create a better design than we non-designers would come up with. Another thing that makes Wix far simpler is the maintenance and cost aspects. Wix maintains its sites and if there is an update to Wix or its tools then you won’t have to worry about it. The update just happens. In the case of WordPress updates can be difficult and you must handle updates yourself. Even though I consider Wix to be the simpler choice, I would also have to advocate that you look at WordPress (which is the industry favorite). Where WordPress shines in my opinion are its customization and templates. Building your site with WordPress allows you to access the code being generated for you. You can then update that to have a higher level of customization than Wix. And there are many pre-made WordPress templates that you can buy that would allow you to mostly short cut the design phase of your site. On the other hand, learning WordPress is no small endeavor. There are tons of different plugins and features that that time to learn how to use. And there are thousands of WordPress tutorials out there which makes it hard to know you’re getting the best information. In the end, you can make your own choice which is better but I would recommend Wix or non-developers.
2. Don’t build a site. Use an existing website that fits most of your needs
As an alternative to getting a site built at all, you can use a prebuilt platform. There are many different sites out there that will allow you to use the site to carry out your business. Some of these sites can be used for free, but also many are for a fee. The examples that quickly come to mind are sites for blogging, vlogging and online stores. In the case of blogging, platforms like Medium: www.medium.com and Blogspot: www.blogspot.com would definitely fit the bill. If you are coming out with a vlog then YouTube, Facebook Watch and LinkedIn Video are options. For e-commerce (internet stores), the sites I hear about the most are Shopify: www.shopify.com and Big Cartel: www.bigcartel.com. Even if your business doesn’t require a blog, vlog or store, I wouldn’t give up on the idea that there could be a platform that fits your needs out there.
Scour google to see if there is platform you can use to get up and running without the need to build yourself or pay someone to build for you.
In the case you do decide to go with using an existing platform instead of creating one, know that some companies outgrow these platforms instead of sticking with them forever. I would say that the main reasons the platforms get outgrown is presentation control and monetization. Because you have to abide by the rules of the platform, the control you have over the presentation of your site is limited. In the case of the blogging platforms, you can’t say whatever you want to say and you can’t change the way the site looks/feels to improve the performance of your post. This is an example of how you have less control in these platforms. As for an example of monetization issues, advertising. The site is built with advertising into it and if you owned the platform you could make money from that or at the least choose what to advertise.
3. Find a freelancer
The most expensive of the three alternatives to getting professional work building your site is finding a freelancer. The reason this is last is because it can be very expensive. I have no doubt there are freelancers out there that cost more than getting Woods&Tech or other software consultancies to build your site. Trust, availability, and quality are the biggest drawbacks of hiring freelancers, so I’ll add more context around these three areas. Freelancers are not companies, so many don’t have a long-standing reputation or huge body of work to make you feel comfortable trusting a freelancer. Many freelancers need to have their schedules worked around and there is no guarantee that they work every day or will be available at any given moment. That finally brings me to quality.
Getting quality work from a freelancer is not impossible at all. The trick is finding the right ones.
Finding quality freelancers can be a difficult task. There are many out there though, places like Freelancer: www.freelancer.com collect freelancers with its platform. You can use this site to find and compare different freelancers. Sometimes the workers you find will have a language barrier you’ll need to work with but this site or fiverr: www.fiverr.com would be my first stops in the case I was looking for freelancers.
