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Creating and launching a quality website successfully is no easy task, especially if you have little or no experience with web technologies. Creating a website is not just about HTML coding. It’s more than that and essentially about:

• Understanding it is the central online hub for your business. Your business, promotions and advertising efforts will point your customers to your website.
• Providing exceptional experience to your customers
• Having the site ready for search engines and customers
• Helping customers find what they are looking for
• Having the website project a professional look and feel of your business

When it comes to creating and launching a website, there are three options:

• Do-it yourself,
• Create it using off the shelf product, or
• Hire a professional web design firm

Regardless of what option or options you choose, a business owner has certain responsibilities that go beyond just creating and launching of a website. The following items should be considered independently or with professional technical help when launching a website:

• Acquiring of domain name
• Security issues
• Web hosting service
• Marketing
• Launch date
• Site maintenance and improvements
• Training, if any, for using the web system
• Website monitoring and tracking

Do-it yourself

If you take this route, you really have to know what you are doing. As discussed above, launching and creating a website is a challenging task. It is even more complicated if you want to add advanced features to your website, such as e-commerce, blog, e-newsletters, forums, and so on. If you have the skills and experience, it is worth considering and launching a website without minimal outsourcing.

Here are some advantages of creating a website by yourself

• You have most of or complete control over the process of building the site. Not only you can build your website as you vision for your business but you can also change the direction of the project as needed.
• Maintenance and troubleshooting is a familiar process because you know what it took to develop and launch it.
• Low-cost. You save money in web development and maintenance.

Here are some disadvantages of creating and launching a website on your own

• It is not for everyone – creating and launching a website by yourself works best if you know what you are doing.
• Risk of poor-quality and/or insecure website
• May be a time-consuming process if you have to brush-up your technical skills
• You have one extra responsibility, in addition to running your business

Off the shelf website

If you want a fast website inexpensively, it is worth exploring prep-packaged websites. A prepackaged website is already built to mimic the needs of your business or industry. The reason a prepackaged website is a fast solution is because you simply are choosing a template that best suits your business requirements or objectives. Once you choose the template, you just plug-in our content. You are done. This approach eliminates the need for scripting or programming skills.

Here are some advantages to consider for using off-the-shelf products

• A website can be created fast and cheaply
• No coding or programming skills are required
• Variety of predesigned templates are available for every type of business.

Disadvantages of using off-the-shelf websites

• Prepackaged websites are simplistic or generic solutions, plus offer limited or no customization
• Functionality is impossible or difficult to extend
• Site design may not be search engine friendly. This means the site will need to be optimized; this task will likely be outsourced if you don’t know how to do this in-house.

Professional websites

If you care about the quality of your website, it’s a job for a professional web development firm. The most qualified firm will have the web designers, web developers, search engine optimization specialists, and other consultants on hand to build you a website to meet or exceed your exact specifications.

If you choose to hire a web development firm for your website project, it does not mean you not involved. Here are some tasks you may be asked to perform from the start of the project to its completion:

• Provide specifications of your business needs. This means you need to specify what exactly you want the website to do, if more than just displaying information. For instance, if you want a blog, or social features, you will need to specify these items.
• Provide content or pay for content writing services for your website.
• Review website deliverables

Advantages of having a web design agency create your website:

• Web design firm staffs the right people for the job. These people know what technologies and code to use to make your vision a reality. They do this every day.
• Professional quality work.
• Easy, speedy, and customized web solution, without the need for you or your staff to master web technologies.

Main drawback of having a web design agency create your website:

• This option is more expensive than the other two options: creating your website on your own or using a pre-packaged solution.

Final thoughts

By understanding the various options to develop a website, you can decide the best approach that suits business and needs and technical capabilities. Creating a website is not simple and should not be viewed as such as it is more than fitting the content into a pre-defined template. Before a business website is launched, focus should be broader enough to consider web security, web hosting, website monitoring, website maintenance, search engine optimization, data back-up, and so on. Web success is not possible without technical expertise on your side.

As a full web design and service agency, Techna Center, LLC's helps its clients launch websites according to the client's exact specifications and budget requirements. Get in touch with us if you like to use a web agency option for your web development needs. Whether it is your first or upgrade website project, we can help you get it right from the start.