Why it’s a bad idea having Uncle Malcolm build your website

We all want to save money when we start our business and finding a cheap solution to build your website can seem like a great idea – an idea that results in the following actions:

Take Uncle Malcolm up on his offer to set it up for you
Accept that service exchange with a business contact
Doing it yourself

I thought of these solutions too in my beginner days (opting for action number 3, so no judgment going on), but before you make that decision, I wanted to share with you my experience, and also those of my clients and people I talked to during my market research.

This is what very often actually happens with these tempting “cheap & pretty” solutions:

1. Uncle Malcolm

He’s a pretty cool guy (also to some equivalent to Aunt Mary, or any representative of that all-around helpful relative). He has set up a website before and seems to know the ropes.

What he can do:

Build your website

What he cannot do:

Make it look pretty, professional and exactly the way you want it to
Know what’s needed to attract the attention of your target market and ideal client
Ensure your website has the necessary tools to interact with and convert visitors into paying clients
Make it safe and stable

And even if he is an exceptional case, and can build your website with most of these things in mind, because you have signed up for my Website Planner, and given him a good set of solid instruction, will he be able to:

Do it for you quickly, or will you have to wait forever to get stuff done?
Make the changes you ask for after it is set up, or does he have no clue about the advanced stuff?
Be there for you in the future when things need to be updated or something goes wrong?

The fact is that there is a limit to favours when you don’t pay for someone’s time, and many of my clients have the experience that when they needed help the most, their relatives were not available to help them, leaving them with a mess they had no clue how to fix.

2. The service exchange

A service exchange may end up even worse, because maybe you have kept up your part of the deal, but they didn’t 🙁 .

A client shared her story with me, where she provided her contact with free services in exchange for website setup. She spent a lot of time and energy helping them out, but they never seemed to find time to build her website in spite of having agreed on the look and style.

She waited forever and felt stuck as she could not really start the business or print her business cards before the website was up. Eventually, she had to pay someone to do it, frustrated about having lost so much time in the process.

3. The do-it-yourself

…Is possible, but the price is the following:

You delay the activities of looking for clients and earning money
You waste a lot of time on learning techy stuff you are not that interested in (or you get really good at it, and become a web designer instead 🙂 )
You get stuck and frustrated all the time, and your focus is taken away from what you are really in business to do
You may feel you will never get your website to look exactly how you want it to

Build your website for a long-term business life

Think about the long term cost of what initially seem like quick and cheap solutions. If you are serious about your business and plan to make it grow, you need your website to be professional:

Looking great, reflecting your style and making you feel proud of it.
Having the elements in place that are required to attract visitors and make them want to keep in touch with you.
Being safe and stable, set up for a long term life online without continuous tech stress.

Invest in your business and in yourself, and start taking on clients sooner rather than later. The initial investment will soon be worth it 🙂 And if you are concerned about how to choose a web designer, read about that here.

Ready to take the first step? Get in touch for one of my website discovery sessions. It’s free and comes with no commitment.