Having your business online has lots of advantages including attracting customers from around the world. People gauge who you are and what your business is, based on what you present in your website and equally important is how you present your website. Sometimes, even if the information you provide on your web site is vital, people won’t pay much attention to websites that are shabbily designed or poorly maintained. Therefore, depending on your business or personal needs, it is highly essential to design your website elegantly, and keep it clean and clutter free with easy navigation.
The aspect
Now, coming to the design aspects, you can do it either yourself (DIY) or get it designed from a professional. Irrespective of which method you choose, you need to do your own little homework and educate yourself by finding out different platforms and technologies available out there for you. So in the later stage, even if you decide to hand it over to a freelancer or a web design company, you will know what is expected from a service provider. This can save a lot of time and energy in the later stage. Then, choosing between DIY or opting for a pro isn’t much difficult provided you understand the pros and cons of both the approaches.
Interest and inclination
If you have interest and inclination towards web designing and adapting new technologies, then the downside of DIY may not be a hurdle for you. If you are a starter, then DIY can be time consuming, as you need to learn a wide array of technologies and keep updating yourself as and when any new technology comes up. For instance, if the number of users to your website increases and if your web pages are loading slowly, then to fix them, you may have to port your website to an entirely new technology. This is quite contrary to desktop development where you define a set of technologies in the beginning of the product lifecycle and you stick to those until the end of the product with minimal changes in between. If you have enough time and energy, then DIY website designing shouldn’t be a problem for you.
Designing
With basic programming knowledge, designing a website wouldn’t a great deal for you, provided you do systematic planning. Moreover, there are also out of the box software packages like Joomla which can help you to design a web site with minimal knowledge. If you aren’t planning to spend too much of time, then you can just use Joomla and brush up some of the essential web designing skills like graphic designing, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, PHP, and Mysql. With Joomla or wordpress, you can either develop templates from scratch or buy templates from others and customize them. In any case, having knowledge of basic web technologies will only make your work easier.
When to seek professional help
On the other hand, if you don’t have much technical knowledge or wouldn’t like to learn or don’t have enough time to learn, then it is better to hire a professional. Even in this case, you need to decide your budget and go for either a freelancer or a web designing company as both of them have their own strategies of working. The key elements of outsourcing your work is choosing a right professional, working out a clean and clear budget at the beginning of the project, and by maintaining a clear communication.
Conclusion
Irrespective of which method you choose, it is highly essential to have little bit of creativity and aesthetic sense. You needn’t be an artist, but you need to go for a layout that is clean, clutter free and elegant, and have an eye for easy navigation, right color combinations and arranging elements, as these are some of the things that would help you in maintaining your website.
About the author: Alyssa Clarke is a blogger who also happens to be a tech buff. She loves splurging on tech stuff and recently bought a new BlackBerry Curve 8520, smartphone. She is a car lover too and her favorite is the BMW 7 series.
