Should You Outsource Your Web Pages or Do Them In-House?
Web Marketing Today, Issue 15, June 10, 1996
[Editor. Obviously we have a vested interest in this matter. So, in fact, do you, since a key part of Web marketing is high quality Web pages. Here's our perspective.]
It wasn't long ago you that had to hire a computer nerd to develop Web pages for your business. No longer. With the advent of Microsoft Front Page, Adobe PageMill, and other easy-to-use Web page editors, a great many people are now trying their hand at it. Many small- to medium-sized businesses are seriously weighing whether they ought to prepare their company's Web pages in-house. Here are some of the issues:
Possible In-House Advantages:
- Money savings
- Knowledge increase stays with the company
- Greater control over the final product
- Ease in updating
Possible In-House Disadvantages
- Can't spare key people to learn HTML to level of excellence needed.
- Don't have in-house graphics expertise or tools.
- Can't spare key people to develop Internet marketing strategy without outside help.
Remember when desktop publishing programs were new? Suddenly you could produce print quality materials on your computer. But even though the tools were wonderful, without graphic taste and experience, the products were sometimes pretty awful. You couldn't say anything, though. Just smile and nod and hand it back the product with some non-committal phrase like, "I can see you've certainly put a lot of effort into this."
But business Web pages are not a computer thing, they are a communications thing. The stereotypical computer guru often doesn't have much graphics sense OR marketing savvy. Presenting your company's image on the Web needs a careful blend of graphic skill and taste, marketing savvy, and communication skill. Too often, the individuals who might possess a combination of these skills are already too busy with core business needs to spare the time, and for some businesses the time investment in a team approach is prohibitive.
Rare is the small business which has all the skills in-house. An outside Web page designer becomes part of that team, bringing skills and experience in disciplines vital to the overall success of the project.
Let's examine money-saving for a moment. A professionally-produced6-page Web site from Wilson Internet Services (shameless plug!) will cost $995, including advertising to the Web search engines and updating for a year. What do you save if you do it yourself?
Time
"If your competitor seems to be pulling past you," the old joke goes, "give him a computer. And if you really want to put him out of commission, give him a free connection to the World Wide Web." I read this week, "You can learn HTML in 2 hours." You can't. Oh, you can make a Web page in two hours. But not well enough to present your business to the world.You need to assemble and learn to use the essential software tools: an FTP program, a graphics program, and, in your spare time, get a grasp of some basic UNIX commands. You also need a user-friendly cgi script that transforms forms input into e-mail messages. (User-friendly cgi script is an oxymoron.)
Do you really consider your time, or the time of your employees or partners, to be valuable? From a time standpoint alone, outsourcing may really present a substantial savings.
Cash
To do quality work you need quality tools. One of the most important tools -- Adobe Photoshop -- sells on the street for about $550. Without it your graphics will be lacking. Trust me; I tried to work without it for way too long. Other costs are for increased memory to run a quality graphics program, a color scanner, etc. You get the picture.
Effectiveness
You also need to understand the Web well enough to develop an effective Web marketing strategy. That only comes with broad experience. The Web is already littered with the bones of thousands of small business Web sites that don't have a prayer of being effective in growing the business.Every once in a while you see a business whose owner decided he was a pretty good sign painter. You can pick them out a mile away. "Looks good enough to me," he'd say. "I can't afford to pay what sign shops cost." How many customers won't even pull into the parking lot when they see his sign? But he'll never know how much business he's lost because of his hand-made sign.
One of my good friends, a publisher, started on the Web only a few months ago. He put up quick-and-dirty Web pages with PageMill. No graphics, different background color on each page. But he is generating business. I wonder how much and what kind of business he will attract when his Web site presents a first quality corporate image.
The Web is a great leveler. A small business of a few employees can compete on the Web head-to-head with the IBMs of this world. It's really true! But only if they look as good and professional and ready-to-do-business as IBM. Frankly, without professional assistance, you won't even come close to that quality unless you invest a great deal of time in the project.
Don't get me wrong. I understand do-it-yourselfers. I know about starting on a shoestring.
One of my grand mistakes occurred some years ago when the organization I headed purchased a computer. I had done just enough FORTRAN programming to be dangerous; it would be a cinch to convert a shareware accounting program written in CBASIC and modify it to suit our exact needs. A great many hours later I was finished. The program was pretty good. But when it didn't work right our treasurer would call me. Had we saved money? Yes, on paper. Had our organization made the best use of my unique talents for those months? Not at all. Did my effort help the overall organization? No, it hurt it, because it diverted my time from what I was best at to do something I was passable at. A year or two later we purchased Peachtree Accounting Software; we should have done that the first time!
A Better Way
There is a way to obviate the problem of paying for knowledge that doesn't stay with your company. Contract with a Web page designer to set up your initial Web site and provide maintenance for the first year. Then assign one of your employees to learn to use the Web page template and existing structure your designer has set up to create other pages that look as good as the initial Web site. Refuse to work with a Web page designer who retains copyrights, whose real designs are making you dependent upon him or her. Find someone who understands your mid-term goals to bring Web page maintenance in-house. An experienced Web page designer can: (1) quickly produce a high quality Web site, good enough to hold its own against the best on the Net, and (2) work with you to bring on-going maintenance in-house over the first year. Hopefully, your Web page designer is also competent to advise you on Web marketing strategy.When should you outsource your business Web pages?
- When you don't have the specialized skills, equipment, and experience in-house.
- When your quality standards are high.
- When you really want to leverage your limited dollars and time.
