Recently, in the wake of mass discussions on the topic «Web studios are dying! You no longer need developers — enough constructor!», You might well have been tempted to follow this call. Not worth it. Otherwise, you will voluntarily put a straitjacket on yourself and on your business (unless of course you are creating a business, not a hobby). And now we will tell you why.
If you look at the web development market as a whole, then you can conditionally divide it into four segments: website designers, templates for popular CMS, web studios with a specialization in design, and web studios with a specialization in programming. Let’s quickly go over each of these categories separately, noting along the way their advantages and disadvantages.
- Site builders (lower price segment)
Representatives of this category are subscription-based online services. In this service, each user can choose for himself an acceptable design and customize the basic functionality. The simplest site on the designer can be created in a few hours.
Benefits: Easy to set up a basic site, low cost, all in a package from one source (domain, hosting, CMS, and sometimes SEO you get in one system).
Disadvantages: lack of flexibility, when you need to go beyond the standard structure of the site, and the basic functionality (or at least affect the speed of loading the site); if something happens to the service, your site will disappear from the Internet (as it happened with clients this service), and not the fact that you can restore it; if you cannot cope with the management of the site, then it will be difficult for you to find a specialist familiar with this designer.
- Website templates for popular CMS (lower +, sometimes middle price segment)
A huge web developer layer specializes in this area, as it allows you to quickly and relatively inexpensively make a fully working website, and, accordingly, sell it to a client.
Benefits: If you install the template yourself, the main advantage is the cost. Although the template is more expensive than the designer, but, in contrast to the license fee for the designer, here you pay one time. The second advantage in this scenario is the CMS (content management system, as an example, Drupal, Joomla, and probably the most popular, WordPress, which now works more than 26% of sites worldwide) on which the template will run. Popular CMS allows any specialist familiar with its functionality to make the necessary changes.
Disadvantages: You get a standard design available on dozens or hundreds of sites. Templates are rarely ideal for your site and its structure, as a result you get «Gucci», but one size larger or smaller than you need. And besides, among web developers, there are «craftsmen» who resell sixty-dollar templates at the price of 10-14 thousand hryvnias (in tourism there are those too, we will not point the finger).
- Web studios with a specialization in design and animation (medium and medium+ price segment)
Studios that make beautiful landing pages (landing pages) with pop-up elements, all sorts of gaming sites for major brands, contests, pranks and other examples of vivid interactive communication with the user on the network are working here with might and main.
Benefits: as a result, you will receive a bright unique design and site structure that takes into account all the needs of the business. Good contractors will take longer to ask about how you are working, than about what color to make an arrow to create a truly high-quality product.
Disadvantages: there is a risk of running into an unscrupulous studio, which will derail the deadlines and do its work poorly, but other representatives of our list, implying the influence of the human factor, are not deprived of this shortcoming. Website functionality will be weak, limited to standard CMS modules.
- Web studios with a specialization in programming (medium+ and high price segment)
If you need a non-standard solution, for example, daily automatic monitoring of competitors’ prices, linking requests from the site to CRM (customer relationship management system) and IP telephony, embedding a third-party API or creating your own, integrating with other services, programmatically adjusting prices on the site for certain templates, this category is for you. Especially if the work in their portfolio, in addition to functionality, is also beautiful!
Benefits: can solve any (and this word can be easily underlined) task that confronts your business. Not limited to either standard designs or standard CMS functionality.
Disadvantages: be prepared to invest more of your time and work than in previous versions, because to build a reliable house, you need a good drawing that takes into account all the features of your daily life (and without your help, no studio can create such a drawing). In addition, the initial budget may be exceeded if, as the project is constructed, your requirements will change.
When choosing a development partner, we recommend cooperating with those who delve into your goals, are interested in business processes and the future of your company (forecasting changes and preparing for them today). Choose the future of your business consciously!
Quick advice from ODEV: зask yourself and your studio a question:
- What if in a year we will open a second office?
- If in a year we will launch a new service or referral?
- If we seriously want to do SEO-site optimization?
- Will you be able to put on the site thanks or reviews of tourists?
- What if a manager comes to work in a travel agency who wants to write articles on the site?
Will you have to do it all over again in this case?
