I am often asked by friends and family, and clients of course, can I build them a website?
Of course the answer is yes. Of course I can build a website. I will let you in on a secret, really, anyone can build one. With the abundance of easy to use software and platforms available now like Wix, Weebly and many others, a technologically challenged person can click a few buttons and have a site.
But us that website effective?
This is actually the first question I ask myself each time I begin to build a website, “how can I make this work?”. This is quickly followed by “what will this website actually do?”. Building a website is easy, making an effective one can be super hard.
Following on from my Text and Media = Content blog, which tackled the definition of content, and understanding the point of your website, you really need to work out how a user will interact with your site and how your website will achieve the goal you want. Is your site solely for sharing information? Is it for generating leads? Does it have legislated requirements that you have to include? Do you want people to come back to your site over and over again, or is it just a single visit type of thing?
There are so many questions to ask yourself when you want to “Build a Website”. Not everyone knows firstly the questions to ask, and secondly what an adequate answer to the question is.
I recently had a conversation with a few team members about building websites in which I explained, I am able to code and create CSS, and I can even do a bit of JQuery and other types of programming. I absolutely hate doing it, so purposely block the information from my memory. Every time someone asks me, I actually have to Google the things to trigger the memories. But, that doesn’t stop me from building websites and declaring myself a web developer (if I want to). We were actually discussing adding a new web developer to the team and if we “really need to”. I was adamant it was required, because, although internally we can easily build websites, we were unable to develop them. And so we added a web developer.
What makes ours different?
Building a website is coming up with the plan, the flow, the content, the user experience, making the site achieve the goals the owner has for it. Developing a website is making sure that the site is smooth, fast, compressed, optimised, functional. Something simple like the desktop and mobile page speeds can have a huge effect on Google and other search engine rankings. It’s knowing how to adjust these functions so the page speed is so far beyond the scope of building a website, that you really need to move into your development.
Anyone can attempt to build a website but only DigiGround can develop one so it can achieve its goals and create a win for the owner. Check out our work to find out more information about the websites we have made for our fantastic clients!
