Your old rust-bucket: a cautionary tale.

Would you show up to an important meeting in this? Well you just met your customers with it via your out-dated website…

Websites are a huge part of our business and business in general. Think about it, is there anyone you deal with who doesn’t have one? (if so send them our way!) Would you ever consult a phone book these days? Never.

Yet as crucial and integral a part of our daily lives they are, there is still a lot of confusion about how to create the perfect one to service your needs.

The key to perfect website design is a blend of form and function and one other key factor: future-proofing.

Not only does it need a beautiful look to reflect your brand and it’s values, but it needs to be easy to use, serve every possible purpose appropriate to your business and be able to cope with the ever-changing parameters of hosts like Google; SEO, Adwords and ever-sophisticated viruses/hackers.

It’s this future-proofing that serves as a stark reality when choosing between template vs bespoke website design. We regularly have clients come to us with a  site that they had made by their Uncle Adrian (who’s “good with computers.”)  They want to add in new pages, update text, imagery and colours to refresh it and we have to sit them down and explain the back end access is locked up, because it’s been hacked with a virus, the code is outdated and there is little we can do except start all over again.

It’s easy to look online and find a great template site that visually meets your needs, but for big business that is likely all it will ever do. As always, you get what you pay for and purchasing a template design for say US$100 will only get you that many dollars worth of investment. It’s like purchasing a car, your $100 car is anything but reliable and can’t be trusted on long road trips…you wouldn’t turn up to a meeting in it because it leaves a poor impression, so you buy the $25,000 car because it’s a sound investment, you’re confident it won’t have any issues and it’ll meet your long term needs.

It’s no different to web design, which serves as the face of your business, and first impressions matter. Templates have their purpose for small business and a basic internet presence which serves some clients well but for more complex needs their code is generally unable to cope with up-to-the-minute host requirements and functionality, they are vulnerable to hackers and in this day an age that costs you customer confidence, money and time.

Bespoke websites are coded from the ground up, adaptable and designed specifically to meet your unique needs, the use of a professional web developer cannot be under-estimated. Yes, it’s not always the cheapest option, but this is an investment in your business that will pay for itself ten-fold.

Essentially free advertising for your brand and values, your unique look and functionality will set you apart from your competitors and give you that necessary edge in a busy, worldwide market. It also allows for your business to change and evolve as it grows, you may need to add in an e-commerce functionality in the future to sell items directly online or expand the functionality to include online job applications or detailed forms, all of which your developer can allow for in the initial build. Bought that template and need to do the same? You’ll need to start from scratch (again) sorry.

For newbies to the game, browsing templates will give you a few ideas of what is possible and may bridge the gap of explaining your needs and wants to your developer but for many businesses bespoke design is the only way to go.

The true value of your site will always be in the content. Dynamic copy writing is key, beautiful imagery a must – even the best coded sites fall flat without inspired content and that’s where we can help.

Contact Devcich today to discuss your individual requirements.

(Image shown, courtesy of Google.)