So you’re ready to get a website for your business or possibly rebuild the one you’ve had and are finally ready to redesign that site from 1999. A lot has changed in the software and website industry and largely for the benefit of small businesses and end users.
Several years ago, if you wanted a website that you could update yourself, you had very few options. You could use a large national website provider with a handful of standard layouts and designs with some very limited capability, or build your site with a professional website designer to build a static website that was not easily changed by the average person. If you had a larger budget to work with ($10k or more), then you could have the website built from scratch with software programming and tailored to your specific requirements and functionality.
Today, however, there are a lot more choices for business owners and individuals wanting to build their own website. Today small businesses can leverage a lot of the same technology that many large companies are using, and for a fraction of the cost if you’re willing to compromise a few things. This includes e-commerce, interaction, uploading/downloading, customer logins or large amounts of content and data for customers to review and search through, community websites, social websites, image sites, blogs, news, events and much more. It goes without saying, you can’t have Amazon.com for anything less than what it cost to build Amazon.com – but you can have an e-commerce website that offers a lot of the same technology and “best practices” to help your site be successful for a few thousand dollars rather than a few million.
So, back to build versus buy – what’s the best choice? Should businesses buy a website technology that already exists or build from scratch to your specifications? And we will take a look at those in the September issue of the Magazine of Santa Clarita.
If you’re a business owner/manager and have questions or need assistance with your website or IT services please call Rob Gardner at 661-799-9100 or email support@eSCV.com .
Part 1 of 2