Do I Need A Web Developer?

When it comes to creating a business presence online, the question that people ask themselves is can I do this myself or do I need a web developer? The answer to this question depends upon you and the skill set within your company and also your aesthetic requirements for the website.

I believe websites fall in to the following categories of design:

Home built, from scratch, uploaded via FTP and no Content Management System (CMS). These are pretty rare these days. They are harder to update and really do require a knowledge of HTML, although the pages can be edited using a desktop editing tool such as Dreamweaver. This would certainly be the last thing I considered if I were trying to create an eCommerce site. Standard off the shelf CMS with an off the shelf template. eCommerce websites can be created quite cheaply using standard packages. If you are not really that interested in a whizzy website and just want to sell your products, this is probably the best solution for you. Off the shelf CMS with bespoke template. If on the other hand you want a bit more wow factor, you can hire a designer to create a unique template for you. Hiring a designer to install software such as WordPress and then creating a unique template for it based on your design requirements is a route many people go down. This will vary in price depending upon how much work you are off loading to the designer. If they are simply installing the CMS and making it look pretty, then that is one thing. If on the other hand, you are tasking them with creating all the pages and adding the content, the bill will go up. Bespoke CMS with a bespoke design. If your web presence is very important to you, and a simple off the shelf CMS solution doesn’t cover it, then you should consider contacting a digital marketing agency who will spend time analyzing your requirements and creating a website to match your expectations. Certainly if you require some unusual functionality – some game, interactive content or widget, and you don’t have design or coding skills yourself, you should consider approaching an agency.

When asking yourself if you need a web developer, work out what you really want from your website and how much work you are prepared to put into it yourself.


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