Do you dream of having a website to present your products or services on the web and are you considering using the services of 1&1 MyWebsite? In that case, I can only encourage you to think carefully before embarking on the creation of your web showcase, because it would be utopian to think that it’s possible to obtain a quality result without using the services of a professional. Here’s a brief explanation, which I hope will ultimately save you a great deal of time and money.
Too good to be true
The first thing to do when you see rates of €1.19, €5.99 or €11.99 incl. VAT per month is to ask yourself what the catch is. Indeed, how can you explain such a price difference with the usual web agency rates? Quite simply, the prices are different because the services offered are not at all equivalent. And any professional looking for quality results knows that if the service provider lowers the price, you can’t expect a miracle. Whether you’re looking for a supplier to provide the parts to assemble your car engine, or you’re looking for an expert in any field, it’s the same thing: an insufficient initial investment can only hide glaring problems in the longer or shorter term, and usually much sooner than anticipated. In the case of a poorly designed website, the results are usually immediate: poorly referenced site, unprofessional visual appearance, execrable navigation speed, etc. These aspects are only the visible part of the problem. These aspects are just the tip of the iceberg, but as you can see, in any case, your site won’t win you any customers, and even worse, it could lose you some by giving a very poor image of the services you offer. So, to better understand the added value a web agency can bring you, let’s take a quick look at the real costs involved in creating a web showcase.
Is building a website a long and complex process?
In France, there’s a tendency to misunderstand the work of web agencies. The business is either mystified or underestimated. As a result, a website becomes either a precious and extremely expensive object, or a piece of junk that’s been copied and pasted in a hurry and sold at far too high a price. Well, let me tell you, it’s neither. First of all, it’s not just a matter of cobbling together a site in a few minutes and pasting in some text and photos. Creating a website requires know-how and multiple skills, and even with the many CMS on the market today, it would be a mistake to believe that you’re going to create a website easily and free of charge on your own and without any knowledge of the web. While you’re tinkering away on your computer, you’re not concentrating on your core business, and so you’re wasting precious time that could be put to much better use. And if you end up with an amateurish result, you’ll probably end up turning to a web agency. Then you’ll still have to pay the normal rate for an effective website, after wasting weeks or months for nothing. While it’s difficult to estimate the turnover you could have made by having a professional website right away, when you can analyze your traffic statistics on your new site, you’ll probably regret not having acted sooner. But I’m not here to say “I told you so”, I’m here to explain the reality of a web agency’s work, so here are the basic steps involved in creating a good website. First of all, the design of the site involves the creation of a mock-up, which must take into account both compliance with the graphic charter and the ergonomics of navigation and the site in general. Then comes the choice of CMS, because choosing a CMS is really a function of your needs, and not something you tell yourself from the outset: I’m going to build my site with Joomla. The next step is to integrate your mock-up: this involves transforming the design created on paper (or on Photoshop, of course) into a web design with real buttons and all that goes with it. The next step is development, to meet your exact requirements. This requires a perfect command of certain computer languages and, of course, I’m not talking about the html basics your son learned at school last week. Then, to please the search engines, a long and time-consuming SEO job will be necessary to ensure that the achievement you’re so proud of isn’t seen only by you. In the end, if you want lasting results, you’ll have to pay for the service you get, bearing in mind that, like any other business, a web agency has fixed costs, taxes and contributions to pay, employees, etc. Your service provider is not a company. Your service provider isn’t there to ask you for the moon, but any serious web agency will offer you rates that are realistic in relation to the market, and a radically sub-standard offer can’t bode well. You wouldn’t buy a Ferrari for €1,000? Neither would I!
