Build a website yourself? Is this even necessary?
People often give me a disbelieving and puzzled look when they find out I built my own website. Despite the strong presence of social media, it is hard to deny that websites remain as relevant and important as before and will remain so in the foreseeable future. But it is the “why build a website yourself” that is the interesting question.
Why building your own website is important
First, it saves me tonnes of money. While I do have smaller vendors and gig workers quoting my company a few thousand, some of them quoted 10K or more. Every quid is paramount to the survival of a startup or small business. If you know how to do it yourself and the project is not time-sensitive, and you save big money along the way, why not?
Second, it saves me from vendors’ service lag and possible “ransom” situation when things go sour. Unless you have the technical know-how, chances are you have to rely heavily on their support and maintenance services, which basically leaves you at their mercy even for a trivial change request. Or worse, terminating or not renewing the contract ends up messy–Potentially losing the ownership and rights to your own website.
Third, it saves me from surrendering my business presence. Social media platforms, while powerful for marketing, cannot entirely replace a website. It is not uncommon for platform companies to suspend or ban accounts abruptly. Not setting up a proper website means you put your business or personal venture in jeopardy when your social media accounts go sideways.
Whether to build a website yourself is a very subjective matter. “Triple Constraint(time/cost/effort)” plays a big part in decision making: Achieve one and trade off the other two. But above them all, I see a critical fourth constraint: Ownership. We’ll talk about ownership at another time.
