The Pitfalls That Business Owners Fall into when Building a Website Themselves

1. PAYING TOO MUCH & THE PROJECT TAKING TOO LONG

I have clients who come to me with quotes from other web development companies that are completely outrageous. On average, quotes for a 5 page site range between 3500 and 4800 dollars and will take 3-6 months to complete. I am about a quarter of the cost and once I have the content from the client, the project takes just about 2 weeks to complete (on average).

2. WRITING THE COPY THEMSELVES

Unless you're a talented writer with a marketing background, writng the copy yourself can harm your website if you're looking to market it. Copywriters specialize in marketing your materials to optimize them to help grow your business. Don't get caught in the trap. Invest in good marketing copy.

3. NOT KNOWING THE DIFFERENCES IN BROWSER PERFORMANCE (I.E. VS. FIREFOX)

If you're not a web design professional or you're not familiar with the coding and designing aspect of websites, you're probably unaware that different web browsers display the website images differently. Firefox is gaining a lot of ground in competing with internet explorer. However, what may look fine in IE, can look distorted in firefox if not adjusted correctly. For example,colors that are no web safe colors can look drastically diffferent, as well as cells can shift up in firefoxand can create a problem of graphics running into text. This is an example of how professional can save you from a disaster.

4. WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION FOR MORE THAN 3 MONTHS

If your website is under construction for more than three months, it is doing you nogood to even have it up. If you expect to work on numerous pages over a period of time, mpl upload the contact page and home page only... upload the rest of the pages later. They do you no good blank.

5. USING A SITE-BUILDER OR PURCHASING A TEMPLATE FROM A TEMPLATE COMPANY

Site builders are usually provided by hosting companies that allow you to build your own website. The problem is that you eitgher have to choose from a template from their gallery (templates are not unique to your company) or you have to invest all of your time creating your own template and then developing your site. Unless you have an abundance of free time, you'll probably end up with a site that is under construction for a longperio of time or with a desgn that is not specific to your company. I use a site builder you run the risk of blending in with your competitors...

The problem with "site builders" are that their templates are generic and available to anyone who uses the sitebuilder. Therefore, as an example, I was hunting through the chamber website for a CPA and 5 CPA's had the same EXACT templates, color and all. You can't tell one from the other... it confused me at first and then when I caught on that they were all using the same site builder, I was astonished that they didn't even check to see what their competitors sites looked like.

If you take a look at TemplateMonster.com you'll notice that they're known for creating cookie-cutter templates. Although it may look like a great deal, what you get for the price may be deceiving. You'll notice that they'll list two prices for their templates: "Price (?)" at $53, for example, and "Unique Price (?)" at $1710, for example. This means that "price" is what you pay for the template, but this same template can be purchased by anyone else who wants to pay the "price". "Unique Price" is what you pay to own the template (exclusively)... however, it's not what it seems... once you buy it, no one else AFTER you purchase it can own it. But what about those who purchased it before you? The possibly millions of people who purchased it before you? They still own it. I guess it's not so "UNIQUE". In addtion, the unique price still means that you have to build the site yourself. Why not pay someone else to do the job for you so that your site doesn't stay under construction because you're too busy doing your job?