The year is 2024. Do you still need a website when there are so many other platforms to utilize to market your personal brand or business? We’re simply inundated by platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, and many others that one would think that the traditional webiste is old hat and passe. The answer is no in a nutshell.
The Main Reasons
The main reason that websites are not a thing of the past is that you have control of your website since you own it and design the site. You don’t have to comply to another platform’s terms and conditions. You can basically say what you want and how. The main question becomes how to accomplish designing and publishing a new site in 2024. That’s the mind boggling part.
Regardless, the biggest reason why you want to have your own site is to demonstrate who you are and what you have to offer. In other words, it’s an extension of your resume. It’s your portfolio and full expression of yourself. It all depends on what you wish others to know about you or your business.
Control of Content
Having your own site provides the freedom and ability to control the design and content of your site. With the other platforms, they are NOT yours. You need to comply to their terms and conditions, otherwise, you might find your page taken down. You site will always be there (as long as the fees are paid.)
Authority and Searchability
That doesn’t mean you have to abandon the other platforms. You can maintain them, but they can now become an extension of your main website. They can pass web traffic to your site through links and your site can have links to those outside pages as well. This all helps in site optimization with the search engines, and authority as well.
Choosing the Right Approach
Possibly the biggest question to tackle in designing a website for a brand or business is whether to DIY (do-it-yourself) or hire a web design professional to complete the project from beginning til end. Of course, the major difference will be cost. However, doing it yourself will require significant amount of personal time versus hiring someone who’s familiar with all the practices and current standards and comes with the accompanying price tag.
The DIY Appoach
All the platforms, can be accomplised from a DIY approach, but some do favor the professional designer wiith all the additional options and potential available that need to be configured. Designing a site over the past year has become much easier with AI driven tools that will build an entire site based on a few preliminary questions. However, even with the hand-holding that the platforms will give you from built-in functionality, it does still help to understand the sciences involved with design and optimization.
Going the Pro Appoach
For those who are not adept at design or simply just want to hand off the whole project to someone who can just get it done the right way, hiring a professional is always the recommended way to go. They will usually guide you towards which publishing platform will work best for your overall vision and goals. Unfortunately, each platform has their own community of professionals that isSq typically biased toward their preferred platform such as WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, etc.
Which Website Publishing Platform
Once you’ve made the decision to publish a website, one of the biggest decisions is what platform you will use to design and publish it. There are many players on the market including:
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Duda
- Weebly
- WordPress
- Shopify
Choosing a Domain Name
Your domain name is the common name or address on the Internet which people will use to reach your site. Traditionally, it was .COM, .Net, or .Org. But, in recent years, a whole new class of top level domains have been released and made available for purchase and registration.
Regardless of what platform you choose to publish your site with, you’re eventually going to need to have a domain name to associate it with. My recommendation is to register the name first and then associate it to wherever you will be hosting your site. It should be unique to you and what you are offering. And…it should be relatively easy to remember and type on desktop or mobile.
Explaing all of this is a topic for another article. So, let’s not digress.
You can visit one of a multitude of domian registrars such as:
- GoDaddy.com
- NameCheap.com
- NameSecure.com
- Hover.com
The registrar really doesn’t matter. They all do basically the same thing. In fact, they also sell website hosting services as well which is our next topic. The prices all are around the same range. There is usually an incentive for the first year and then is billed at the normal rate the following year.
Picking Your Webhost
This choice can be handed to you automatically or you will have some choice depending on the platform you chose. Platforms such as Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify are all a self-hosted. In other words, the company takes care of all the technical hosting issues. All you have to do is sign up with them. However, you are at the mercy of their infrastructure which could affect your site’s performance positively or negatively.
WordPress sites are different. Because WordPress is just software, it is available from a host of web hosting providers. The difference is you need to have a sense of direction for your site and this is where a consultant can be of assistance in the process. The demands on your site determine the amount of performance resources. However, for small blogs and businesses, the basic hosting packages from companies such as BlueHost, SiteGround, Hostinger, and others will be sufficient. The next level up would be from providers such as WPEngine, Liquid Web, or Kinsta.
Conclusion
So, do you still need a website in 2024? Yes. The question is which solution is best for you and your needs. Are you familiar with the process or do you need assistance with the whole concept? If you do have any questions, please feel free to reach out and I will gladly work with you to ensure that the right solution is picked.
