Why a Basic Website is Always Better
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008A new website is often a major expense for small start-ups. As a business owner, you are faced with a choice when considering your first website. Assuming you have a small fixed budget, you can spend your money on:
- A lower quality website with full functionality
- A higher quality website with limited functionality
How do you decide which option is best for your business?
How much functionality do you really need?
How important is each feature you would like your website to have? Revisit your website goal and try and drop as much as possible without losing the core functionality of your website.
For example, do you really need the system to be fully automated now? Could you manually keep a record of users to begin with? Often the number of users/buyers you will first receive will be easily manageable.
Develop slowly
A gradual approach to web design is the ideal way to go when you are not 100% sure of what your end product should be. Even when you feel certain what your website features you need before completing the website, you will find your opinion changing as you:
- become more familiar with the technological possibilities
- see and use the website in real life
- get feedback from testers and users.
- get new ideas as your website developments
By avoiding creating a full-blown complex system, you will reduce your costs and any losses you will incur if your business does not succeed. Once you are doing better, you may decide you need the automated functionality, but equally, after seeing how your visitors interact, you may decide that a different approach would work better. By starting simply, you have developed an improved functionality. If you had committed to a large, complex website, you may be unable to make significant changes without going back and spending much more money.
Good for SEO
Did you know that some search engines, including Google, give an improved rank to older websites? In fact the age of the domain is one of the most important factors involved. By getting your website established early, you will get a headstart on building your domain’s trust and rank.
You can’t go wrong
This does not mean you should ignore planning and launch your website immediately. Planning your website is still a crucial element of success. However, when planning your website you should consider the points in this article.
When in doubt, you cannot go wrong with starting small, and ensuring you have a solid base on which to refine and build additional functionality and features. A basic website that is of good quality with fewer features will always be a better decision than a cheap (or even expensive!) website with a wealth of features.
