Too many people start “nailing it” right away without taking the time to create a proper plan. But the point is, whatever job you’re doing (building a website, building a house, or starting a marketing campaign), you need to spend two-thirds of your time planning and only one-third of your time executing it.
Saving time without turning to a ui/ux design and development company, or at least this article, in the planning stage of the project leads to unforeseen errors, due to which the result is to redo some work.
No matter what kind of site you have in mind – a one-page or 15-20 pages – you should understand that it requires investments of time, effort, and money.
After all, it’s a kind of real estate – your private property, construction, and arrangement of which you are in charge personally. And your duty is to make sure that the site will be as good as possible and more convenient for customers.
The importance of site planning
In the construction of the house, before you grab a hammer, a saw, or other construction tools, it is important to think through all the details. The same applies to the Internet site.
So what should be considered when creating a website, and what steps are included in this process?
3 ways to develop a website
- development in a website builder;
- development on a CMS (WordPress is especially popular); and
- independent development, including the use of popular tools and frameworks (Laravel, Django, Spring, and so on).
1. Designer
Designer – a software solution (often online), which allows you to build a site in a modular fashion when the developer assembles the entire design using ready-made “cubes”, which provides a designer.
This approach allows you to create a website without any knowledge of web development and related skills. Most of all suits those who want to make a simple site about themselves or their company, without any pretensions to the quality of the code and speed of the site.
Also, the designers typically make simple web pages for small advertising campaigns. It is impossible to make a serious corporate decision or an online store with a constructor.
Why this is a good way
- Low price. Almost all constructors are initially free, and the cost of plug-ins is very low;
- Ease of use. In order to create your own site, it is enough to know how to use a computer browser and have a sense of taste;
- The whole routine is done by the designer. Large program scripts, plugging modules, hosting, and other hidden processes are done through an understandable control panel with a few clicks on the buttons.
2. CMS
In this case, consider the most popular content management system (CMS) – WordPress. It has various analogs that are not so popular but have a similar set of tools and features: Joomla, Drupal, and others.
CMS – a set of software tools to manage web content. In simple words – it is a basic framework and a set of additional tools and add-ons, which allows not only to create a website or web application but also to maintain its work, update the content and interact with users.
All CMS has a control panel with a relatively friendly interface. The main programming language is PHP. Any CMS can allow you to create even very complex solutions, such as online stores or large corporate sites with deep nesting pages, but they also have their own characteristics.
Why this is a good way
- Free access. Almost all CMS (except 1C-Bitrix) are initially free, and in addition, there are many ready-made website templates for them (especially for WordPress). Take whatever you like, change the design to suit you, and the site is ready;
- Convenient content management. With the control panel to manage the site easily and simply. When using a CMS, does not require any special skills to manage the content;
- Many ready-made solutions are also used in the team Dworkz. There are many modules, plugins, and add-ons for different tasks (from picture sliders to SEO-optimization and user support systems).
3. Self-development
The most creative and free, but also the most time-consuming process, comparable with tailoring a suit to fit. Writing a site or web application requires serious knowledge not only of the programming languages themselves, but also an understanding of the architecture, business processes of the client, and much more.
At the same time, by creating a website from scratch, the client will get a unique and personalized product, which will solve his tasks and will not waste time on unnecessary processes. Self-development allows you to create projects of any complexity and according to any wishes of the client.
Why this is a good way
- Freedom of choice. You can order anything you need to effectively solve business problems. All functionality will be tailored exactly to your needs, not adapted from any template;
- Wide promotion opportunities. Unlike CMS and designers, promoting self-developed websites in the natural search is much easier. In addition, in our studio, when ordering a corporate website or online store, the preparatory stage for SEO-promotion, is included in the cost of development;
- Individual design. Only clean code allows you to create the product you see and want to get. Separately, it can be noted that a competent approach to UI/UX can be only when using clean code because when using a CMS, the client is forced to refer to ready-made solutions that may not meet all their needs.
Final thoughts
So, at the end of the article, we would like to say which of the ways and when it is worth turning to.
If the purpose is to save time and limited budget, and the site is being developed for a specific task, for example, an advertising campaign for a particular group of products, to introduce a new service in the market, or presentation of a little-known product, then most likely you will be justified in using the designer.
Contact the Dworkz team, but if you have more complicated tasks, such as:
- make a multipage site with some number of nested structures (portfolio, services, blogs, and so on);
- to promote the site in search (Google); and
- get feedback from visitors, and so on.
