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GETTING A WEBSITE STARTED IN THE WAY THATS RIGHT FOR YOU

Written by: Paul Lock

Article Overview: The pros and cons of doing it yourself, hiring a freelancer or appointing an agency

GETTING A WEBSITE STARTED IN THE WAY THATS RIGHT FOR YOU

CONTENTS

1. Could you DIY?
2. Work with FREELANCERS?
3. Work with a WEB AGENCY?


Great, you’ve decided to get your business online. How are you going to do it - DIY or hire somebody to help you?

If the DIY route is a non-starter for you, skip the next paragraph and explore the freelance and agency options below.

1. Could you DIY?

Building, marketing and maintaining your own website can be great fun, enormously satisfying and very profitable. So why doesn’t everybody do it?

Obviously you need time and patience - you may have colleagues who can help too. But it’s unlikely that you’ll be an expert at every aspect – copywriting for example is a specialist skill – so you’ll be learning as you go.

If you’re up for it, the good news is that with the tools available today, you don’t have to be a web developer, designer or search engine expert to do a lot of the work in-house.

Doing it yourself means you can test the market, learn about how your customers react and get a good grounding in the fundamentals of e-commerce. And if you decide to work with an agency or consultant in the future, you’ll be able to deal with them from an informed position.

Here’s some ways to get started.

You could start by reading Shelley Lowery’s brilliant book – Web Design Mastery. It takes you step by step through the process of designing and marketing an e-commerce site. Click here for details and reviews – http://www.ebookstarter.com/click.php?lid=3&af=incise.

You’ll then want an all-in-one design, marketing and maintenance package. A popular option is the automated design, marketing and maintenance package called the Site Build It programme at http://www.sitesell.com/nethelp4u.html. It’s recognised as one of the best DIY options on the market.

2. Work with FREELANCERS?

If you know precisely what you want for your website and its marketing, hiring freelancers has many advantages:

- The good ones are usually very responsive
- they have few overheads so they’re competitive
- they’re often experts in a specialist field
- they can be flexible.

In fact many agencies hire freelancers for these reasons.

The disadvantages are:

- being specialists in design, copywriting etc, you’ll need to hire one for each task, which means project management is critical. Web projects are complex, so unless you know what you’re doing, you’d be well advised to hire a professional web project manager too

- you may lose the freelancer! The flip side of their flexibility is that they may decide to work on a different project. Most are reliable though and you can mitigate this risk through staged payments, by having a reserve freelancer and by getting recommendations.

If you think this is the best route for your project, have a look at http://www.getafreelancer.com and http://www.elance.com where you can post projects and invite bids.

3. Work with a WEB AGENCY

The advantages of a web agency are:

- breadth and depth of expertise
- proven track record
- project management
- experience in handling more complex projects
- creativity – often provided by freelancers!

The disadvantages can be:

- overheads and the impact on cost
- key staff leaving
- inexperienced account handlers
- insufficient depth of expertise in all aspects of the project.

At Incise we overcome the cost issue by outsourcing our technical work to a dedicated offshore development centre. Our aim is to give best value by offering strategic input, creativity and project management here in the UK. We then get all the technical expertise offshore at globally competitive prices.

.

And you’ll find lots of agencies on the internet and in your Yellow Pages.

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