Why You Should Design and Maintain Your Website Yourself? (3 Reasons You Should, Even If You’re Not A Techy)
Let me start by telling you this:
You do not need to have technical and/or programming skills for you to be a website designer.
All you need is the ability to use a computer to check your email, type your letter and copy files.
You can learn how to develop a website using Content Management Systems like WordPress and Joomla in 2 days by attending our FirstPlus WordPress Training.
Click here for details and registration of our next training.
Inside of you, there lies a lot of knowledge that you have acquired through different sources.
You may have acquired them through formal or informal education, reading, practicing and observing.
These generally make up your experience, story and passion. You have the ability to write and publish them on your webpages.
You also have the ability to gather information about any entity and publish it. The entity can be a person, business, organization, place or concept.
With these abilities, you can design your own website and maintain it yourself. Our website development cycle is explained here.
I have designed and launched in the internet over 20 websites using WordPress.
I accomplished this having only the abilities which I know you already have.
Basically, I started in 2012 from scratch without understanding what I was doing and without any training on WordPress.
I was basically doing trial and error.
Today I want to share with you the reasons you should design and maintain your website yourself and the benefits of doing this.
There are several reasons why I decided to do this…
But the biggest reason is to spread this message about website that I felt very passionate about.
1) Designing A Website Is A Skill You Can Master
Designing a website is a skill you can master with focused practice and repetition. Content Management Systems like WordPress is a computer program that you can use effectively by understanding its behavior, features, functions and nomenclature.
For you to understand this discussion quickly, you have to know what a website is, what a website can do to you, necessary skills that a website designer need to have and the process of designing a website.
You can click on these links to access them.
After reading the above, you may be convinced that you can be a website designer.
You may also tell me that even though you can be but you do not want to be because you are not interested.
You may argue that this write-up is against the Economics principles of Division Of Labour and Specialization.
Therefore, You do not want to be jack of all trade and master of none as the saying goes. You would like to be focused on what you know how to do best and you are not interested in being a website design.
I agree with you 100%.
But let us think back to early 1990 when the use to computers in offices and homes increased tremendously.
Before or around this period, you had typist who type letters and documents using Typewrites in offices and business centres.
Some upgraded their skills by learning how to use Word Processors to type their documents and became Computer Literate Typists.
You will agree that there is no such typist anymore. Rather everyone have acquired the skill by using Word processors to type their documents conscious or unconsciously.
Nearly everyone started typing by picking the letter and improve their speed through practice and repetition.
Remember, these Computer Literate Typists accepted the challenge and an opportunity to learn word-processing.
This made them to continue to be useful after the death of type writers.
I would like to inform you that as the Economics of the world is going more electronic by the day, the tools, resources and process of website design will be simplified,
On the long-run, website designer may be becoming instinct like typists are today.
On the short-run, the earlier you orient yourself and business to the “electronic business model” the better you begin to benefit from using the internet to improve your productivity by reducing cost and increased speed.
You need to move with the times, you need to start building your websites and maintain them now. You do not need to wait like the old typist until their career and employment became highly threatened before they adjusted.
2) Website designing requires creativity.
As the world is moving; everyone, business and organizations will have to showcase themselves and their brands in the internet through websites.
This is stiffing competition by the day. Therefore only business that are highly creative and innovative may survived. This creativity and innovation must also be presented in the website.
Therefore, part of your survival strategy will be to respond to the needs of your clients/visitors as quickly as possible.
This can be achieved quickly as you take control of writing and managing the content of your website.
If you have worked with some website designers, you will understand how difficult it is for both of you to communicate effectively.
The main reason is that most of them are techy people and may not understand your brand and how you want to present it to the world.
Furthermore, if you have good writing skills, you will write your contents yourself (or you may require the assistance of a copy writer and a graphic artist) and publish the webpage.
The simplest activity is publishing your content on a webpage in the internet. All you need to do is copy your write-up from your Word processor, paste it into the webpage and format it.
Why should you pay anyone for this?
If you want to use email marketing to sell your products, you may be sending a series of emails to your customers at specific times.
This will depend on your product marketing plan and campaign strategy. Most website designers may not appreciate the urgency of the mails and respond as quickly as required.
Most times, they will delay to make you feel their relevance. This might be expensive.
You may also pay your website designer to increase your cost.
I know that website designing requires some creativity. Believe me, most of the creativity is in writing the content.
A beautiful website looks nice to navigate but nobody visits a website just because it is beautiful but for the content. No search engines searches for beautiful websites.
They search only for content. Beauty is not in any criteria for assess websites.
A word is enough for the wise.
3) Designing and maintaining your websites is a cost effective strategy.
From a business perspective, designing and maintaining your website yourself is a cost effective strategy.
It helps you to build your brand and professional reputation online.
It will also assist you to promote and market your products and business better in the internet.
You need to make more profit by maximizing your revenue and optimizing your cost.
This strategy will definitely contribute to your bottom line. I have shared my thought on this issue.
My question for you is: Will you like to design and maintain your website yourself?
If you want to learn more about designing and maintaining your website, I will like to hear from you, leave a comment below.
If you want to acquire the required WordPress design skills, I would like to introduce you our FirstPlus WordPress Training.
Click here for details and registration
Thank you very much
Augustus ZEKARYAH, MCPN, MBA, MSC
Principal Consultant, FirstPlus Integrated Business Solutions
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About the author
Augustus has been developing and teaching website design (using WordPress) since 2012. His techniques and methods currently help over three dozens of website designers and businesses to be successful. Also, Augustus uses Moodle to develop e-learning portals. In the last 20 years, he has developed over 40 business plans for businesses in Agricultural, Commerce, Manufacturing and Petroleum sectors of the Nigerian economy. He has written many articles/blogs on website design, e-learning, business and others. Visit http://firstplus-ibs.com.ng to read some articles/blogs or send a mail to him through augustus@firstplus.com.ng
