Even if you’ve thought twice in the past about personally renovating your home rather than simply leaving the job to tradespeople, you could be tempted to forgo approaching professional web designers in favour of using free online tools to design your website.
However, though the former route can certainly incur less financial outlay from the start, the costs could start stacking up in the long run if you fall foul of any of the risks detailed below.
Choosing the wrong CMS platform
The acronym stands for Content Management System, and refers to an interface you could use to post new content to your website as well as, if and when necessary, edit content already there. However, CMS platforms are not all strictly equal in ease of use.
For this reason, our team here at Webahead use the open-source WordPress platform when creating CMS websites for clients. We’ve already researched the various benefits of this platform to spare clients that potential onerous task.
Leaving holes in your site’s cybersecurity
In March, the UK Government reported that, in the previous 12 months, 39% of UK businesses had identified a cyber attack. Furthermore, the percentage of UK companies having actually been hit by a cyber attack during the period could be much higher than this.
So, you shouldn’t neglect your website’s defences — but you could do so inadvertently if you aren’t familiar with how even minor flaws in these can potentially be exploited by hackers.
An inability to recover quickly from website downtime
If your website is suddenly and unexpectedly taken offline, you could struggle to figure out of your own accord exactly how this has come about. Even if you do successfully ascertain the culprit, attempting to get your website back up could be time-draining in itself.
The culprit in question doesn’t necessarily have to be a malicious hacker, either. You could accidentally damage or delete a file crucial to your website — and leave yourself wondering how to either restore it or implement a ‘make-do’ fix.
A lack of flexibility in your website’s design
Yes, online, there’s no shortage of readymade templates you could use as the basis of your website’s design. However, ideally, it would be possible for you to evolve this design as your business and its industry changes — and a template-based design might not easily allow for this.
Our web designers can craft your web design like a Lego set; in other words, from multiple small, interlocking pieces you would be able to swiftly replace, remove or swap out as times change.
Failing to sufficiently optimise your website
Once you have finally stitched together the disparate pieces of a DIY web design, you would still — in the interests of your company’s competitiveness — need to optimise this design.
This would include streamlining it where possible to rein in loading times, while the design should also be tested with various web browsers and operating systems. Here at Webahead, we would be able to carefully hone your design through such means before your site goes live.
