Getting away from it all

At the end of last season we bought a caravan second hand from a nice couple who seemed to know their stuff and appeared genuine, we chatted about getting away, what we needed and our love of this pastime before parting with our meager savings and towing it away. Since buying the van we have learned that it is rotten, terminally so – to the point of not even bothering to get a quote to repair the bad bits as there are few good ones. On top of this upon trying to light the gas on the fridge we were greeted with a fireball and we have now discovered that the pipe for the gas was the wrong size so at some point it was soldered onto a smaller one. If we had been trying the exercise with a full gas bottle, you may not be reading this post! Suffice it to say we decided that this would be a good lesson.

There are many folk who can build a website given a little training and direction, now there is a strange thing for a web design company to say huh?  When we are just starting out or running a small business there is a temptation to go for that cheap option like the caravan example above, we want to spread our wings but have little savings so we may go with ‘a mate who does a bit of web design and can do it cheap’ or one of the free* web design businesses out there and try and do it ourselves. Either way we eventually end up with a site that may look quite good on the surface and for a while we may even pat ourselves on the back thinking we dodged all of that extra expense, then comes the day you want to change something. Suddenly that mate or free* company are not so forthcoming or start talking about hefty charges to make one small change. You may find that the site is not view-able on mobile devices or completely invisible as it was written in the wrong code. You may try and do the changes yourself only to find that you are locked out or the code is literally another language! Finally your site may have vulnerabilities that leave it open to attacks and one day you log on to find it gone completely.

So what are the lessons here?

• It was cheap/free for a reason!
• Often those who ‘do a bit of designing’ do not know enough to produce sites that can be adapted as your business grows and secured from hackers.
• Without regular maintenance just like the van above, rot can set in and before you know it you have a site that is missing, unmanageable or damaged beyond repair.
• Finally as we have noted before in other posts, if you built the site yourself was all of that time you spent doing so really free?

Debayne Web Design build sites for small businesses, startups and charities that are secure, can be seen on all devices and can be updated by you whenever you want to – or alternatively managed for you – your choice. We do not charge the earth and will even break down payments if this is a sticking point. We have been in business for many years and plan to be around for many more, but will also give you peace of mind by providing you with all of the tools run your site from the moment it goes live. So there you have it you can take a chance on what might seem a great idea to save money, or you can read our feedback both here and on Which Web Design Company and make an informed choice over the future of your business online. We look forward to hearing from you when you have done that! Debayne Web Design – Weaving the Web Your Way.