What are the risks of having a website built by someone with little experience in the field? In this article we explain why, sometimes, entrusting a site to someone with little expertise could cause you big problems.
Often companies, especially small or medium-sized ones, commission the creation of their website from unskilled people who know how to use tools such as WordPress in broad strokes: all this to save time and money. As a consequence, the little time and money are wasted anyway, since the site will be of no use if it is constructed in this way. In fact, this approach causes quite a few problems: it happens that the portal is not very usable (i.e. it does not comply with all the guidelines on website usability), not very secure or difficult to find by search engines, among other things.
Let us therefore examine in detail the advantages of having a website maintained by a professional.
1 – Quality
Unfortunately, people have the bad habit of perceiving sites as something quick and easy to do. This is actually not the case: creating a website is like building a house. If we want our house to be built well, we need an architect to take care of all the planning down to the last detail, and then skilled workers to build it. To professionals, in short. We would never turn to a friend of ours who saw on TV how to build a house and now thinks he is an expert. Unfortunately this is the case with websites: they are obviously not as important as a house, but if we want a quality website, we have to invest in it and turn to professionals, web architects and software engineers.
2 – Optimisation for search engines
As we've explained several times, it is not only important that Google indexes our site, but also and above all that our position on search engines is good if we want to be found by potential customers. To do this, we need people who are highly specialised in SEO or Search Engine Optimisation, internal site organisation and other specific technical skills.
3 – Update on current regulations
This is one of the most important points because there is a risk of losing a lot of money: if a website is not adapted to the regulations imposed by the privacy guarantor, it can incur very heavy penalties. Obviously, only professionals are constantly updated and have the technical skills to make the site compliant with the laws in force: a famous example is the Cookie-Law, a regulation introduced in June this year to which many sites have not yet adapted, risking fines of over 100,000 euros.
4 – Security
Keeping up-to-date also means knowing the potential threats to your site: if you entrust it to a team of experts, they will know how to protect it from any hacker attacks that might hit it, preventing them from stealing your users' sensitive data or managing to install malicious software on their computers via your site.
5 – Advanced technologies
Companies specialising in the creation of websites and web applications use very advanced technologies for the creation of their products (we at DevInterface use Python and Ruby), which quickly and efficiently allow them to be in line with market trends. For example, last May, Google penalised the positioning of non-responsive sites, i.e. those whose design does not adapt to the display of the device being used (which may be a smartphone or tablet, as well as a PC). When these sudden changes take place in the IT industry, it always helps to have competent people on your side.
6 – Control
The great advantage of today's websites is that they enable very accurate marketing and communication strategies: this is because we can measure the results precisely. However, if you do not have web marketing specialists in your company to take care of the Analytics part, this task can also be left to those who built your website.
In short, having the site made by your geek friend is often much easier, but it can lead to big problems or, more simply, it can be a poor job if you have to use it for business purposes.
Thanks for reading the article.
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