Get Started

Way to get it done

OVERVIEW

There are a wide range of options available when building and designing a website. All of which vary in terms of the price, quality of the design and require different levels of involvement during the process. They’re best described in terms of a scale; the higher the cost, the better the quality and less time consuming for the client and vice versa.

Looking at the lower end of the scale, a website builder is a template-based tool that requires the individual to build the entire site themselves without having to do the manual coding. Ideal for someone just starting out with very minimal knowledge of website design, who can dedicate their time and needs to keep costs down. However, you won’t necessarily achieve a high quality, bespoke site at the end of it. Those with more of a budget might look to hiring a freelancer either in Australia or offshore, who for an hourly fee will design and build the site for them. Offshore freelancers tend to cost less than those in the Australia due to exchange rates.

Moving to the top end of the scale are established design agencies who build and design your website completely bespoke to your specification. Thus, requiring much less of your time, but you pay a premium for their service because they have a wide range of skilled employees such as a project manager, content writers, designers, developers and so on. This option is possibly more suited to those where the opportunity cost of building a site themselves is not worth it.

We’ll now go on to expand on each of the options previously mentioned.

Free, but time consuming

WEBSITE BUILDERS

Pros:

• This is the cheapest option available. You are solely designing and building the site yourself, so other than the fee that the tool you choose charges, the only other cost is your time. This greatly reduces start-up costs for businesses which for some is fundamental as not everyone has a large budget to spend when starting out.
• Agile – If you need to edit your content and make changes, you can easily do this yourself at no extra cost, you have instant access to your site and no one else to go through, such as a designer or agencies, in order to get these changes done.
• The standard and quality of website builders has increased, and there is also a much wider range of templates now available to users in terms of design, fonts, colours and so on. Thus making it possible to produce an attractive website very quickly these days using something like Squarespace, for example.
• Simplicity. Most tools utilise drag and drop technology, enabling users to upload pictures and alter text with an easy click and drag of your mouse. This is a very ‘hands on’ approach, which is perfect for individuals who want total control and to be completely involved. This easy user interface reduces the technical side of website building, as there is no need to write the code itself. This is the beauty of a template; all the coding is pre-written. So, users do not need to be qualified in design or development. Anyone can use a website builder.
  
  

Cons:

• Building a website yourself can be very time consuming. There’s no one else to give you advice, make changes, proof your content, or run your business at the same time. The opportunity cost really needs to be considered, is your time better of spent running your business or trying to build your companies website?
• Rigidity – Site builders are template based and with templates come limitations. Those that don’t know html/css coding can come up against a brick wall when there’s a change/layout/style you want, but can’t achieve due to restrictions of a template layout. This can mean that users are forced to go to a agency/freelancer, in order to acheive the change they originally wanted, somewhat negating the cost benefits.
• Hidden Costs – There are often monthly, somewhat hidden costs. For example, a website builder may offer the first 2 pages of your site for free but then after that there is a cost per page, then a monthly fee for hosting your site for only so many sessions, or a monthly fee to use a piece of functionality. So, what on the offset appears to be a free/low-cost can in fact be more expensive over time than other options.
• SEO optimisation – It can be much harder to optimise a website builder for SEO purposes because of the rigid functionality. There’s less scope to add things like schema, amend and change meta, perform technical optimisation as you need it to optimise code and ensure the site runs quickly. The more rigid it is, the less ability there is to SEO optimise it. As an example, historically, some site builders page loads were perfromed by AJAX transitions, therefore when GOOGLE comes to crawl it, it can’t effectively crawl the site and index all pages.
• Lack of Ownability – You never own the website. This is often overlooked because of the attractive pricing. But in effect, you are renting the use of the website you are building. This could be argued as acceptable because you can have it as long as you need, however you are missing an opportunity to create a valuable asset to your business. A company that pays an agency or freelancer to design a website for them ultimately owns the code to that website which has a value, a tangible asset that then adds to your company’s value. So, should you come to sell at any point this can be taken into account as an asset or investment.

Outsourced

OFFSHORE

This is a step up from using a website builder where you’re doing everything yourself. It involves hiring someone abroad, for example in India or Poland, to build the site for you at a much-reduced cost.

Pros:

• One of the main advantages of this option is that it can be extremely good value for money. If you find a good developer at a cost-effective price, you are likely to receive a good quality website for a reasonable price. You haven’t had to compromise on quality and you’ve also saved on cost.
• Another advantage is the time it saves on your part. When using a website builder, it’s all on your shoulders and requires 100% of your involvement. Hiring an offshore freelancer greatly reduces the time required from you, as they are doing the majority of the work. It’s also a much cheaper option than hiring a freelance website designer in Sydney Australia.

Cons:

• The greatest disadvantage here lies in communication, language barriers. Communicating exactly what you want for your website may not always run smoothly, and you are presented with something that isn’t quite what you asked for. This leads to things needing to be repeated, re-worked multiple times in order to achieve your specification, which adds time onto the project and therefore increases your costs, which is frustrating. There is inevitably a time difference working with someone from another country, which can delay waiting on responses from them and vice versa.
• There is an element of risk involved here too, as you will never fully know the quality of a freelancer’s work until you start to use them. Sometimes they may cut corners and do things incorrectly because they are working on multiple sites, not just yours, and want to make more money. It’s important to look at a portfolio of theirs if you can, to get an idea of the quality of their design and development, but also to ensure they are who they say they are and not out to scam people for money. So, in summary, offshore freelancers save you money but there are risks involved that should be carefully considered.

One Man Band

FREELANCERS

Pros:

• Cost. Compared to hiring an agency, this option has a lower price tag.
• Availability. Freelancers often have a high level of availability, often you can be connected with a freelancer in a matter of hours using one of the many freelancer sites.
• Relationship. Because freelancers are 1:1 with you, you can form a good working relationship with them, as they are very involved and hands on with the job.
• Flexible/Responsive – They tend to make a real effort because they rely on the work, and want to keep the client happy. You have a direct line to them, so often it means reponse times are much faster.

Cons:

• Limited scope of skills – For example, a designer often will not have backend development skills, or if they do they their skill might be limited compared to a specialist. Often you’ll usually need to hire a designer and a developer. Your role can then become project management and clients often migrate to agencies for this reason, to have everything managed under one roof.
• Some Australian freelancers are expensive – hourly rates can often be the same price if not more than agency costs for the more “boutique” freelancers.
• Risk – Finding the right freelancer involves risk. As mentioned previously, its hard to know the standard of their work until you use them. You can end up wasting time and money. Often freelances can oversubscribe their work, to maximise income and then struggle with time management and deadlines, with rushed work the quality often also suffers.
• Availability – As well as being a pro this is also a con. You may have found yourself a good freelancer to use regularly for work, but there is no guarantee that they will be available when you need them to be. They are their own boss and therefore can take time off whenever suits them, regardless of what work you offer them. Then you’re back to square one, finding someone else to pick up the job.

Freelancers bridge the gap between offshore and agencies. They do away with some of the offshore issues, and you can meet with them locally face to face and discuss specifications. But you still come up against some of the same risks involved in using offshore. It’s a good middle ground if you can’t take the next step in using an agency.

Specialists

AGENCIES

Pros:

• Multi-diverse set of skills in each area. You’ll have a project manager to deal directly with you and effectively manage your project, a designer who knows best trends and designs for your demographic, developers to create clean lightweight and fast code, an SEO specialist to consider the SEO optimisation of your site, and copywriters to proof the content.
• Time saving for you – Once initial discovery has been carried out by the agency, involvement can be as little as signing off designs and key areas4 in the project, freeing up your time.
• High quality end product – The skill set, and resources of an agency almost certainly guarantees a good level of service and high-quality results. View their portfolios to pick one with the right design style for you.
• Ongoing support – In most instances, agencies will offer a warranty or ongoing care once a project is complete, providing ongoing advice and support post-project in order to resolve any issues or to carry out updates as required.
• Availability – Due to having a large workforce/team, agencies can almost always take on the work ensuring you can have things done in the given deadlines.
• Reassurance – Agencies will have security policies to protect you or your client’s information, including ISO and GDPR compliance. If you run a site such as an ecommerce store you will need to carry out due diligence, which often an agency can reassure.

Cons:

• There is one main disadvantage: they’re expensive. Highly skilled specialists working together to create the best possible end-product based on a given brief comes with a price. Do factor into this the time saving, reduced risk and high quality. Agencies can work in a very hands-off manner, with a project manager overseeing your project, ensuring a quality end product with multiple team members working to limit risk and to deliver within given timeframes.
• Timescales – Often the turnaround times are longer as creating a bespoke, high quality end product takes time, even for multiple team members.