---
title: DIY Vs Bespoke
date: 2019-04-09T06:00:00-04:00
author: Sean Smith
canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-10/diy-vs-bespoke/"
section: Podcast
---
<!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Guest Reuben & Sherri Johnson
Co-Founders of Fly Media Productions, a boutique digital agency specializing in unapologetic digital storytelling for badass brands.
[ ](http://twitter.com/FlyDuo)[ ](http://linkedin.com/in/FlyDuo)[ ](http://facebook.com/FlyMediaProductions)
Season 01 Episode 10 – Apr 09, 2019
50:24 [Show Notes](#show-notes)
## DIY Vs Bespoke
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[](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-01/10-Reuben-N-Sherri-DIY-vs-Bespoke-master-final.mp3)
In this episode we discuss the pros and cons of do it yourself (DIY) vs a custom bespoke design. We also talk about when DIY is the correct approach and when it may be time to switch from DIY to a bespoke website.
### Show Notes
DIY may be unpolished and unprofessional. With an established business that doesn't already have a website, DIY is probably the wrong choice as the wrong decisions could negatively impact your business. On the other hand a newly established business with untested premises and a limited budget DIY is probably the correct choice.
Choosing the correct DIY platform: Website builder or Wordpress
What is the best ROI on your time? Is it in DIY your website or is it spent serving your clients and building yoru business. There's a lot that the DIY person may not be aware of that goes on behind the scenes including UX, SEO and technical issues that are easily misunderstood or skipped entirely. As a website novice the DIYer doesn't know what they don't know.
Hosted platforms such as Wix or Squarespace will take care of security. Self hosted such as wordpress you are responsible for security update.
### Show Links
- [Shopify](https://www.shopify.ca/)
- [Magento](https://magento.com/)
- [Open Cart](https://www.opencart.com/)
- [Snipcart](https://snipcart.com/)
- [Foxy (Previously Foxy Cart)](https://www.foxy.io/)
- [Wix](https://www.wix.com/)
- [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/)
- [Weebly](https://www.weebly.com/)
- [Wordpress (Hosted)](https://wordpress.com)
- [Wordpress (Self Hosted)](https://wordpress.org/)
- [A Website is Like Owning a Car](https://caffeinecreations.ca/blog/a-website-is-like-owning-a-car/)
- [My Space (Yes really it's still around)](https://myspace.com/)
- [Who Should Use a Website Builder?](https://thomasdigital.com/2017/01/27/web-designer-vs-website-builder/)
- Struggle Free Podcast (no link yet)
Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology.
**\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hello and welcome to the website 101 Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Smith and I have two special guests, Rubin and Sherry Johnson from Fly Duo. Rubin Sherry, why don't you introduce yourself?
**\[00:14\]** **Reuben:** Would I go first? Okay, so I'm Rubin. Sherry, I'm one half, co-founder, fly media productions. Everyone always calls it fly duo because that's kind of like a hard, you know, that's our thing. Effectually known as FyDuo. I love it. I love it. It's a good thing
So I love it and we've got clients who still call call our company FyDuo and they're our clients So I think I feel like it works it fits us and everything
**\[00:37\]** **Sean:** I didn't realize I had the name wrong because all your social media handles are FyDuo. Yeah, exactly
**\[00:43\]** **Reuben:** That's what I'm saying. So that's not that's a good thing, you know, we actually got a trademark. So it works Wow. Yeah. Yeah, we got a trade so it's part of it's part of our brand and part of the business and everything
**\[00:55\]** **Sean:** Well, fly media in fly media productions. Yes, correct. And fly it through.
**\[01:01\]** **Reuben:** That's a mouthful. So, yeah, fly do is a lot easier to say. Oh, yes, for real. It's so much easier. I like it. It works. What's they going to say? Yeah, I mean, so I'll let Sherry introduce herself now or you want me to finish it off?
**\[01:16\]** **Sherri:** You don't even introduce it.
**\[01:18\]** **Reuben:** Oh, my bad. I'm Ruben. This is Sherry.
**\[01:21\]** **Sherri:** See, this part we weren't even ready for this problem. like this should be the easiest part and like, I don't know, Sean, I don't know.
**\[01:28\]** **Reuben:** So Sean didn't have to edit this part out. I didn't want to make it up there.
**\[01:31\]** **Sean:** I might just keep it in just to, yeah, it's fun.
**\[01:34\]** **Reuben:** It works. I'm cool with it. So I'm one half of fly media.
**\[01:40\]** **Sherri:** No, so you didn't introduce yourself.
**\[01:42\]** **Reuben:** And Sherry.
**\[01:43\]** **Sherri:** On the other half, I'm the design side. He's the tech side, I'm the design side. Yeah. We have a boutique digital agency out of the suburbs
**\[01:51\]** **Reuben:** of Atlanta. And we love working with bold on apologetic clients. Focus a lot in the fashion and beauty and lifestyle. Verticals.
**\[02:05\]** **Sean:** What is a bold, unapologetic client? What exactly does that mean?
**\[02:11\]** **Reuben:** That is a really good question. Clients that have a point of view and that are really confident in it. Clients that have a perspective and a point of view on how they want to serve their clientele, how they want to appear in their vertical. That's really, I mean, because bold can take on so many different, so many different, like, I just lost my words. It can look very different on different types of businesses, but usually businesses that are bold, they stand out.
**\[02:46\]** **Sherri:** Not afraid to break outside of the conventional, do things differently and just kind of own it, only a bad ass area and what makes them unique and not try to be like everybody else.
**\[02:56\]** **Sean:** All right. It's sort of like yourselves. You guys are all so. Yes.
**\[03:01\]** **Reuben:** Yes. Thank you. We like to think so.
**\[03:05\]** **Sean:** Which ride? So I've interacted with Ruben or for I don't know, seven, eight, maybe nine years online. We're both members of the Expression Engine community. I have very active on Twitter. We've had a couple of video conversations before on Skype and stuff like that. So that's how I know Rubin indirectly. I know Sherry because Rubin and Sherry, they're one and the same. They go together. But today is the first time I've actually talked with her together. So this is going to be great. And our topic for today is do it yourself websites or bespoke custom websites. When is one better than the other and is one always better than the other or not? So just before we go continue, obviously all three of us run our own website firms. We have a vested interest in custom designs. But we also recognize that custom is not necessarily for everyone. So we're going to talk about when it's good, when it's bad, and perhaps when you should make the jump from one to the other. So thought about sum it up? Yeah, it definitely agree.
**\[04:29\]** **Reuben:** And sounds great over here.
**\[04:31\]** **Sean:** All right. So Rubin, Sherry, when would you recommend a do-it-yourself approach to somebody who who's looking for a new website.
**\[04:45\]** **Reuben:** Never. No, I'm just playing it. I had to do it. I had to do it.
**\[04:50\]** **Sean:** Well, I want to say never too.
**\[04:52\]** **Reuben:** I face myself a comedian, but for real. My son will laugh because he's always saying, you know, funny dad.
**\[05:00\]** **Sean:** Oh, my, my, my, both my kids tell me that. Yeah, so at least funny person on the planet.
**\[05:06\]** **Reuben:** Well, in all seriousness though, So I think that you got to look at what are you looking for for the end goal? So the things that I usually do or and and Sherry correct me if I'm wrong. What is your timeline? What are the stakes for whatever you're trying to do? What is your budget? What is your, um, what are the requirements of the project or what you're trying to do? Um, and who, you know, who is this for? What you serving is a commercial is it non-profit? Is it just a hobby for fun for kids family, et cetera? So I kind of look at those variables. So for instance, um, we had to do a bereavement site for someone. And I talked to a few people who had done bereavement sites who were not in the industry like all of us are. And you know, they, they do them DIY. They do it yourself with those because it's, it's not something that anybody really wants to have the overhead on and the cost and all that. So they just put it up there.
**\[06:13\]** **Sean:** On top of a funeral cost. Exactly. That's a lot of money.
**\[06:18\]** **Reuben:** And then on the other side, you've got things like, you know, we were involved in a hackathon for social good, for the local metro area in Atlanta down here. And in this big hackathon, it was to benefit a lot of different social causes in the area to help with gentrification, that kind of stuff. And so there were a dozen or so teams of I'm remembering right. And some of the teams that were helping the nonprofit orgs, we had to get this thing up really quickly, all the different ones. So some of them just went to DIY route because the website wasn't necessarily integral for the minimal viable product because this was kind of like a stage thing. They had to get it up there in stages, get some of them up really quick, Some of them required other technical lifts like native apps in iOS and Android blah, blah, blah. So the website wasn't as much of a key component in some of those projects. And where it wasn't and where they weren't focusing on marketing initially, they went to DIY route, which just made sense.
**\[07:20\]** **Sean:** Okay. But what about for, okay, so that was a hackathon. Yes. Where you're trying to get something done incredibly quickly, Yes. Usually in a few hours, maybe one day for a cause. But what about for somebody who's looking at their own business? When do you think a do-it-yourself approach might be the right time for them?
**\[07:48\]** **Sherri:** The first thing that always comes to mind is the first thing that even we hear from our clients when they're coming to us and hiring us for bespoke. It's usually budget. Budget's usually the first thing on people's minds. Absolutely. It's like, what can I afford right now? I know what I need. I know what I want, but what can I afford? And sometimes, especially for businesses that are just starting out, they just don't have the budget for a bespoke website or even somewhere between bespoke and DIY. So they are looking at their options for, where can they start and where can they start as little as possible.
**\[08:26\]** **Reuben:** And I would add also, if it's a brand new venture and you yourself as the business stakeholder or new to business, and if the business itself is going to be high risk for you and the website is going to be figuring into the business in a very low value way, at least initially, and you're already considering DIY, that's a point of, that's a point of entry where I might make a lot of sense for you. So for instance, you've got a day job and you start a business selling something, selling a whole lot.
**\[09:05\]** **Sean:** Selling homemade jewelry.
**\[09:07\]** **Reuben:** Thank you, selling homemade jewelry. You're new to business. It's an untested premise. The product might be untested. The market, you don't know the vertical really well. All those kind of things. then instead of investing heavily and getting a custom bespoke website done, DIY makes a lot of sense, because you can learn a lot about running a business first. Yeah, exactly.
**\[09:33\]** **Sherri:** Where you can make changes over time and it doesn't cost you a fortune. Or you may end up scratching it.
**\[09:39\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, yeah, because I mean, especially if you're on tested in business, there's a lot to learn just in operating a commercial venture.
**\[09:45\]** **Sean:** Oh, the business is the hardest part of running my business. Yeah, exactly. Not the coding or the client management. It's like all the business stuff of it. Like you said, finding your vertical, marketing, just all of the business stuff, not necessarily selling or making. It's the business. That's not far apart.
**\[10:06\]** **Sherri:** Yes. And a lot of businesses, too, even while established businesses that are not online yet, they know their side of the business very well, like the offline stuff. done that. They've been doing that for years, but they're not familiar with the digital space and doing, taking that same business and that same, say like atmosphere and all the, everything that they've put into their offline presence and turning it into an online presence. They may not be familiar with it or all of some people are not, don't use the internet outside or, you know, emailing their children or whatever. So for them, it's going to be a much different place, especially if they're trying to do it themselves.
**\[10:49\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, I agree. Because I mean, we've had a client tell clients who, like we had a client who did custom interior refurnishing. They've been doing that for years, but they had zero online anything. Their business was successful offline, but they didn't do anything online. So for them, they weren't interested in DIY approach because there was a lot of risk involved in doing it online and all that initially because.
**\[11:18\]** **Sean:** They could damage the reputation. Exactly, they had the establishments. They're already successful, they've got a good reputation.
**\[11:24\]** **Reuben:** Exactly.
**\[11:25\]** **Sean:** And if they put out this kind of like, amateurist website that doesn't function properly and yeah.
**\[11:32\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, and that's exactly why they came to us because they couldn't afford to do anything that was gonna damage what was working for them offline. But they knew that for them specifically was time for them to move online when they had come and approached us to out them out.
**\[11:51\]** **Sean:** So did this client that you helped out? Did they need e-commerce as well? Or was it more of a brochure site? This is the kind of furniture that we have and are operating hours and a contact form or something like that?
**\[12:03\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, it was definitely a more marketing focused site where it was about selling, visually selling the services that they were offering, the type of end results. So a little bit of imagery of the projects they had done and a little bit of testimonials from the folks that had hired them and that kind of stuff. But nothing transactional as far as commerce.
**\[12:29\]** **Sean:** All right, so yeah, it sounds like a good candidate for a custom site with a
**\[12:36\]** **Reuben:** client that's already an established business. Yeah, exactly. I think that's one of the things you make a good point to once you get into the space of making sales online, using the technology, if you're gonna DIY, and I know this is probably gonna ble- you know, this is bleeding to other questions, But if you're going to DIY, that's when you've got to be really smart about how you DIY. And that's when you really need to choose the right DIY platforms. Is there nothing wrong with that?
**\[13:06\]** **Sean:** I was going to lead in, I was going to try and transition into that. Yeah, so I have a couple of points planned out ahead. So the different types of DIY, we've got website builders such as Wix or Weebly or Squarespace, popular do it yourself option is WordPress and WordPress kind of straddles bespoke and do it yourself because a lot of DIY people do it but there's also a lot of other professional firms that use WordPress and they take a theme and they customize it. What do you feel is the advantages of a website builder versus WordPress versus
**\[13:55\]** **Reuben:** full on Facebook. So that's a good question. So if I were going to DIY, I recommend DIY, that we've recommended DIY when folks have come to us and asked us, you know, we want to do it ourselves. We'd love some recommendations based on y'all's professional expertise. What I would do if so I would break into two things. You got to know if you're trying to do commerce like e-commerce or not. If it's marketing focused, then I would look at so that you've got hosted options like Squarespace and WordPress has WordPress.org which is also hosted, but WordPress also has a self-hosted and what self and I know we all know this but for your listeners who may not be experts, so the difference between hosted and self-hosted is hosted is where the service WordPress.org or Shopify or Squarespace, they host all the technology. They keep the software up there that your website is on. And then when you're paying them to keep the website up, they're managing all that. Self-hosted is when the software WordPress also has a self-hosted where you download the software, but you're responsible to set up the technology stack and infrastructure that manages the software as your website. So you've got to set all that stuff up and understand the expertise to get the software installed, set up the database, the users, handle the security and all the other technical load that's on you. So what I would recommend first and foremost, understand if you want to do or be clear, I should say, whether you want to do e-commerce or more marketing focused. If you wanted to be e-commerce or both, yes correct. If you wanted to be either a mix of e-commerce or all e-commerce, I would recommend something like Shopify or Magento commerce because they dialed in the commerce side. And that would be if you wanted to be hosted. If you wanted to be self-hosted but still commerce, I would probably look at something like OpenCart.
**\[16:04\]** **Sean:** And I've also heard good things about Steak Hard.
**\[16:08\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, and SNIP card as well. SNIP card is interesting too because it lets you kind of like it floats in those lines between it's like SNIP card and Foxy card or some options where you can kind of like get running on something self hosted or a hosted and it will let you bridge the gap on the security side and the functionality for commerce.
**\[16:29\]** **Sherri:** Do those options come with like pre-designed templates and themes that people can choose from or do you have to have more experience.
**\[16:36\]** **Reuben:** That's a good question. Shopify certainly does. Magento does. OpenCart does as well. OpenCart is self-hosted though. So you'd need to have your server and stuff set up, but you can purchase themes or templates to run for an open cart store.
**\[16:51\]** **Sean:** OpenCart is like WordPress then that you can just you can grab a theme. Are there a free theme or commercial theme and just drop it into your self-hosted option and you're basically good to go.
**\[17:03\]** **Reuben:** Yeah. And I don't I don't remember exactly it worked with OpenCart a long time. I don't remember how challenging it is to switch the themes because it's been a while since I've done much with it, but you can change them over.
**\[17:16\]** **Sean:** Right. I mean, WordPress is marketed as it's available for anybody to use. It's really simple. And for the most part, it is, but there's a learning curve. And that's not a job at WordPress. That's a thing. It's new technology. There's a learning curve. Do you really want to spend time learning how to set up WordPress or OpenCart, code it, customize your theme, and make sure everything is working the way it needs to. When you could be spending that time operating your business, building your clientele, and generally making money.
**\[17:58\]** **Reuben:** Well, and that's, I think that's with any business, really, like where, where is your time most going to give ROI where you're investing it. Where is it going to pay you back? And you know, something like, because even if you invest as a store owner, say a hundred hours into doing the website, but you're going to get for a hundred hours, isn't it? It's going to be the same or even really on par close to what someone who does this day and day out is going to get if they gave you a hundred hours because they could do and probably a quarter of the time or less what it's going to take you 100 hours to painstakingly come up with. And there's going to be issues if you're doing it yourself that you're going to encounter, which is why if you're going to do it yourself, use a theme created by someone who's at least done a few websites. And that's why themes would be important because there's a lot of things that as developers and designers, you know, we, we understand how people use websites. We understand how to make things easy to get around, easy to reducing friction between transactions and products and all that kind of stuff. We understand how to approach all that stuff. We're thinking about that all the time. If you're coming at this as a novice, there's a, you are at the point where you don't actually know what you don't know. So you're not necessarily, you're not really serving the best interests of your business.
**\[19:25\]** **Sean:** I've been building websites since 2005 and I still don't know everything.
**\[19:30\]** **Reuben:** Yeah.
**\[19:31\]** **Sean:** And the technology and what's required is continually evolving. There is constant change. I always need to know and learn new things just to keep up coming in as a novice to build my site. How you're going to get a site up. You're using a theme. It's going to look probably look OK. But you might have other issues behind the scenes that you're not aware of that will affect your site speed, affect user experience of your clients. All of these things are more taken care of by someone who's helping you build your site. So, I mean, obviously not everybody is able to do bespoke right away, but if you can, or perhaps when your business is growing, and you need to rebuild your site at that time, you need to take advantage of a bespoke site or custom development of some sort.
**\[20:33\]** **Reuben:** I would agree. I mean, as your business grows, the stakes are higher, as the stakes are higher for you. And there's more money to be made or lost. That's when you really should be hiring someone who this is their expertise. Because they're going to often help you make more money than you realize you can make in the small changes the small features. There's just so much that someone who does this every day will understand that you just won't realize things from how to impact site speed and just the reality of the importance of your site speed and optimization.
**\[21:12\]** **Sean:** Do you know what critical CSS is? See what critical CSS is?
**\[21:17\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
**\[21:19\]** **Sean:** Okay, there's a little bit of jargon for the listeners. That's a thing that will help your page speed load faster and Google ranks your search results in part based on your page speed. So having critical CSS, it's kind of an important thing. Not every theme maker is going to use critical CSS. Some will, some won't. I use it. Almost every developer I know uses it, but again, some people don't. So yeah, you need to be aware of some of the advantages.
**\[21:52\]** **Sherri:** I was just going to say too. I think that when Ruben was talking about 100 hours using that time, where could it be best spent, especially if you're DIYing, I suggest leave the design and the development to the people like you guys were recommending that have already put that time into making themes and templates that are already like in a really good place to kind of get you go in, take the time to go through the themes and go through your options and find one that best suits your needs, and then use your time to create content that your customers need and want. And so many people like they just want, they put up pictures and they want a nice site. This is my logo and this is the picture of my company. But then you go there and you don't really get any information. That time into writing your copy and taking some photos of your products and even using some nice lifestyle photos that you can get from sites like Shutterstock and Unsplash that can just sign a set the mood and set the tone for your customers and leave the development and the site architecture part to the professionals who have given you these tools to begin with.
**\[23:06\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, you could, you know, if you want to go DIY, but you want to have something and be more assured, if you're going to have a more elevated level of professionalism, as well as get better results, even consider hiring someone to help to just recommend a few themes for you to choose from, who will go through, and because they have the needed expertise to curate through themes, and understand what's the best theme of the available theme for the platform you're looking at for you to choose from because a lot of folks don't realize they're definitely not all equal.
**\[23:46\]** **Sean:** You know that is actually something I've done with lower budget clients a couple of times. They had a budget for the development and they wanted a custom CMS either expression engine or craft which is what I prefer to use. But they didn't have enough budget to pay for the custom design so they saved all of the money on the custom design and I Directed them to a couple of sites and it said choose four or five themes that you like Let me look at it and then I'll tell you if I think that these are good and Why or why not and we went through and we built a couple I built a couple sites like that It was a good solution. So they got the best of both worlds. They've got some cost savings. They've got a sort of custom design, but they do have the custom backend that allows them the extroversatility of creating new features and sections that you wouldn't have available to you in something like Wix or Squarespace. You know, those the website builders, they have a lot of features and stuff like that, but if you need something truly custom, you can't do it. You only have what's available to you in those spaces.
**\[25:08\]** **Reuben:** You know, in your right, I mean, in the reality is, you know, and that's not a knock against Squarespace, Wix or whatever, but if you think about the millions of customers they have who are on that one centralized system, there's no way for them to realistically support all that customization, they can't create custom data models because how would that even work? It's not realistic. They just don't have the capability to support all that.
**\[25:35\]** **Sean:** When you're serving everybody, you have to be pretty generic. Exactly. They do a great job. They're awesome for somebody who needs a site, doesn't have a budget or doesn't have necessarily the time available to wait for custom design and development. The customer design and development does take time.
**\[25:55\]** **Reuben:** Yes, yes, it definitely does.
**\[25:56\]** **Sean:** The development phase for me is never less than three or four weeks. That doesn't include talking about your business needs and getting the design and stuff like that. So in general, a brand new website is probably at a minimum six to eight weeks from start
**\[26:16\]** **Reuben:** to finish. in reality is doing it like, and I mean, we're same thing. Everything, anything of quality is going to take time and anything that's built bespoke for your business needs and to serve your business goals, it's going to take time because that's the whole point of it is, you know, doing a custom data model for you, building out things that are going to serve specifically your business needs, solutions that are serving your business problems. I think one of the good things too is a lot of times folks might think, okay, well, if I do DIY, then I'm kind of stuck and I'm committed to that platform. You can look at DIY as this is your jumping off point where you're going to start DIY and then down the line, whatever you're doing as your commercial venture or nonprofit or whatever, whatever it's proven itself and now it's giving you a return on what you've invested, It's making some money. Then you can talk to someone about helping you migrate to something that's more bespoke. And taking with you. Absolutely. Absolutely.
**\[27:22\]** **Sean:** Absolutely. Like you said, it is a great starting point. But eventually your website or your company will probably grow beyond what you need with the do it yourself approach. It might be for a couple of reasons. It might be because you no longer have the time to do it yourself because your business is taking up more of your time and it's growing successful, you're managing more employees or whatever. It might be that do it yourself doesn't give you the custom feature that your business really, really needs. Like for example, a few months or about a year and a half ago, I built a new feature for one of my clients. They were a photography company and they wanted to enable their visitors to the website to select photos, drag and drop them in a certain order, add custom text and an email and a message that they could send off to somebody with an attached PDF. Good luck doing that with a custom build-in.
**\[28:33\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, they're gonna look at you and be like, no, this is not why you're paying us, you know, $20 or $100 a month. We didn't guarantee any of those features.
**\[28:42\]** **Sean:** No, no, you can't get that because it's so unique to that particular business. And you know, I knocked this out of the park. Is a great feature for the client. Yeah, so you can do that with custom, but you can't necessarily do that easily with bespoke That might be an opportunity for you to when your business grows
**\[29:09\]** **Reuben:** I think I think that at a certain size every business is gonna end up moving over to something more bespoke It just makes sense because like you said all their needs All of our needs are unique in what we do for a business and at the end of the day you've got a good trusted, competent, digital team, they should be saving you a lot of time on what you don't have to do. Not to mention you've got the other side of things. With Squarespace and Shopify, you're not going to necessarily have to worry about security risk as far as the software being out of date. with something like WordPress or any installable self-hosted system, you have to, I mean, if you're not keeping everything up to date and then you've got some concerns there. And with self-hosted, you've got the other side, which is your technology stack, so that you server all the server software, all that stuff. It's a lot of work just for people in the industry
**\[30:16\]** **Sean:** to keep up with.
**\[30:16\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, it is. And it's a lot of work and a lot of risk to open yourself up to an order to save a relatively small amount of money. Because with what you're opening yourself up to, and the more money your business makes and the more clientele you have, and the larger it is, that risk is getting larger. So you're opening yourself up to a lot of risk for like a low, low value benefit to yourself on the initial side.
**\[30:49\]** **Sean:** I just want to reiterate that that risk is more for running self-hosted things like WordPress or what was the shopping cart that you mentioned before.
**\[30:59\]** **Reuben:** Also like open cart.
**\[31:02\]** **Sean:** Yeah, open cart. But if you're using something like Wix or Weebly or Squarespace or Shopify, it's a hosted service. It's a software as a service. They're going to take care of all the security issues for you. Yes. Backing up your site and things like that. So there's a lot you're going to have to do. That overdo it over the whole, the complete do it yourself.
**\[31:24\]** **Reuben:** Yes, exactly. So yeah, and I should have been more clear. The complete do it yourself is very different. I mean, if you're doing anything commercially, you're going to DIY, I would not recommend it completely do it yourself. I would recommend if it's commerce, it would shopify. Go hosted. Yeah, if it's not commerce and it's more marketing focused go with square space That would square space would be where I would go over wicks or webly Yeah, and then there's also another one chirpy believe
**\[31:57\]** **Sean:** I haven't heard of that that's new to me. I believe it's a chirpy One of my favorite analogies for websites is comparing a website to a car Okay? Everybody has a car or if they don't have a car they've been in a car so they're all familiar with it and they know about the maintenance and everything that's involved in it. They do it yourself approach to a car. We just talked about two different ways here. We've got the hosted way. Well I go to the store or the dealer I buy my car, I get it fixed. If I want to custom color I tell them they do everything for me. If I want something maybe more cost me, I buy some cost of tires. I can put the tires on and off myself. Forty years ago, there was a lot more people who were backyard mechanics because cars weren't computerized. You could do that, you could change the transmission, check the oil, all that stuff. Now you can't do anything on your own. The complete do it yourself guy. What's the guy who's going to be building a car and driving in the fast and the furious?
**\[33:04\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, you're right. And really, what is it worth to you? I mean, for some people, that's like they, that's their hobby. They love working on their car. And all the power to you.
**\[33:16\]** **Sean:** Exactly. If you can do that, maintain a full, maintain your full-time job as the owner, operator of your business. Great. Go for it. You, sir, are amazing. Yeah.
**\[33:26\]** **Sherri:** you could learn each Chimell and build a little web page for yourself. Not really anymore. Especially if you want a responsive modern. Yeah, I look at Ruben does. I'm like I don't I don't know how you do all. I gave up trying to be a developer a long time ago. And like you just you could have that part and I'll just stick with the design.
**\[33:49\]** **Sean:** I want to know design and I've learned a little bit. I'm thinking I'm kind of okay but yeah I I always hire designers for my clients.
**\[33:59\]** **Reuben:** What we've always kind of the way we look at it is if you're considering it and you're going into it for your business, think about the site, the websites you use and engage with every day, not your own site, the other sites. What do they look like? What is the experience there? If you feel like you can genuinely create a finished product that feels as polished, as easy to use, and it works as quickly as the other sites you interact with on a regular basis, then that's what you should be shooting for. That's what you want. Because a lot of times we might be like, oh, we'll do something and kind of like when your little kids do something, oh, that's so great, that's so beautiful and nice. Look what I made, mine. Yeah, exactly, but it's not like, you know, you love your kids. But again,
**\[34:46\]** **Sean:** Watch me do a cartwheel.
**\[34:47\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, exactly, but like a stranger's not gonna walk up and be like with the cartwheel, you need to be in the Olympics. No, I mean, that's not gonna pass, you know what I mean? Like, no, if it's your kid, you might be like, oh yeah, yeah, you can be any Olympic. The strangest is gonna be like, did you see the same thing? I just saw like, were we watching the same cartwheel because that was not Olympic worthy? That's really how folks potential customers are gonna look at anything that you put out there. They're not gonna be as forgiving for the most part as we or our family or friends would be, when we, yeah, or impressed if we DIY. So that's kind of like look at it the same way. And if it's for anything that's business related, you really need to think about it that way, because those first impressions are a big deal. And I'm not saying you can't do it because you certainly can. And people have, you know, some people are savvy enough where they understand how to do marketing and hack that in a good way. they've made some really significant amounts of money off of some pretty lousy websites. So there's always exceptions to the rule and I would never say there aren't but I would say overall you know set yourself up for the most
**\[36:03\]** **Sean:** likely success as you can. Right right and I'm kind of dog-fooding here is those podcast websites is do it yourself. I mean obviously I mean in the industry but the design, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not a designer. I've learned some design, I think I did okay, but I'm not doing the podcast to make money. So I did the design myself. And you know, who knows, maybe it'll take off, and I can pay somebody to design it, and I'll make it even more awesome. But for me, the design is the cosmetics. What's more important is the content. And that's what we're doing here. We're building the content. I've got the functionality down because, hey, I know the code. That's my job. That's what I do full time. So yeah, I mean, I'm dogfruiting it. I would love to have a better design, but I also understand because of budget. I mean, yeah, I have a couple of designers that I pay to do for my client work, but I can't afford to pay for a personal project. Yeah. So, you know, it is what it is.
**\[37:14\]** **Sherri:** Yeah, even a lot of us in the industry are in the same place. We've seen, we've no other people who have done the same thing, used the pre-built services because either time or money for your own personal side projects that are not actually bringing in money. We've considered it. It's one of those things you kind of like if you're going to do your own, like with the one we're going to be launching a podcast soon too, and we have to do the site and everything too. We're like, we have to start with the landing page, we just got to start with that and then we'll go from there. We're just gonna build off of it, but we can do that because we know how to do the design and the code so we can do one page or one section at a time and just kinda roll it out over time.
**\[37:56\]** **Reuben:** But it still takes a lot of time. It still makes you consider, like,
**\[37:59\]** **Sherri:** should I go to Squarespace and just start it with that and then come back and build it later? And I got a little bit of time
**\[38:05\]** **Reuben:** and we can actually put it on our schedule.
**\[38:07\]** **Sherri:** Yep, and we know how to do the design and the development and still one of the things that you do think about. So there's definitely a place for it.
**\[38:15\]** **Sean:** I have been working evenings and weekends on this podcast since the end of August. Now brainstorming, designing in my design program, and then spinning it out, and you know, it's mostly coded out now. Now I'm doing the content, and we're gonna launch in January. So by the time you hear this, there'll be a couple of months after we've recorded it.
**\[38:40\]** **Reuben:** And there you go. I mean, that's a perfect example of there's a place for everything, but it's like if it takes all of us and we've all been doing this for years, a lot of time to do it. You know, it is, it's an investment of time. You're going to have to, it's got a requirement of that regardless of what service you use. Time is a requirement that you can't get around.
**\[39:04\]** **Sean:** Yeah, and There's a there's a there's time involved and it would probably be less time if you're using something like Squarespace or Wix or Reboot because you're not having to do the code you're gonna have a theme that you're not choose You're you just need to put in your content, but you still need to learn their system and As I understand it one of the downsides of using a content builder is there's no way to export your content Now, I don't know this for sure, but I've read this a few places. So if you build your website on a content builder and you outgrow it, you might not be able to export your content. You might have to just write it all over again.
**\[39:50\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, most of them as far as I know, you can't really export. Then...
**\[39:55\]** **Sean:** It's a good business model for them, but a bad business model for the end user.
**\[39:59\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, because well at the end of the day, you don't own it. Like you don't own the platform. That's why it's something that's self-hosted is so important. If you're set up to do it because you control it all, you own all that stuff. So changing over a migrating, exporting databases, and all that is within your control, because there's no friction there. There's nothing getting in your way. There are no walls. The only thing getting in a way is just your level of expertise.
**\[40:29\]** **Sean:** Well, yeah. And also, you don't, you have nothing to worry about if your service goes out of business.
**\[40:35\]** **Reuben:** Yeah. Or shuts down.
**\[40:37\]** **Sean:** Like, think about something like live journal or some of these other popular blogging platforms from the early 2000s. Blogger. They all disappeared. Where, where, where are they now? If you're onto a service that for whatever reason doesn't make money or decides to shut down, how are you going to get your business relies on this? Like, you know, Wix and Weebly and Squarespace, they all seem really big and that they're not gonna fail. But, you know, what was that popular social platform before Facebook that has disappeared? That looked really big too. Do you remember? I can't remember.
**\[41:16\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, my space.
**\[41:16\]** **Sean:** My space. Yeah. Where is it now?
**\[41:20\]** **Reuben:** Well, actually, they're actually back. I believe Justin Timberley bought it for, I guess he got what do they say pennies on the dollar? I guess he got a really good deal considering like what Robert Murdoch paid for it when he bought it from what was the guy's name Matt? I guess Justin Timberley probably got it for a song.
**\[41:40\]** **Sean:** I
**\[41:41\]** **Reuben:** asked for a song. Bring sexy back and I'm like, okay, we'll give you my space.
**\[41:47\]** **Sean:** I didn't know about that. So I just kind of want to I'm going to read a couple of points from an article that I printed up and then I'll link to it in the show notes. So this article is kind of long, but one of those sections is, who should use a website builder? And then they list four or five categories. And I actually agree with almost all of them. So the first category is a hobby. You're not making any money on it. You're a blogger. And they said, unless you have a massive audience and you're making tons of money, go with the website builder or the free service, and unfunded startup or new business. And that kind of hits a lot on what you were talking about earlier. You don't have money to spend 3, 4, 5, 10 grand on a website. Just get the free one up and then do it later. solopreneur, okay? So that would be somebody like myself. I am a solo guy, you guys are partners. If a solopreneur with less than 75,000 a year in revenue, I'm not sure if I entirely agree with it, but I definitely see it because if you're only making 75,000 a year, it's hard to put out $5,000 on a custom website. I'm proven concept, But you're a small nonprofit. A lot of nonprofits have custom websites. I know a couple of agencies that specialize in nonprofits. So I think for this small, it would have to be really small nonprofit.
**\[43:32\]** **Reuben:** Well, I think that's when someone has a passion for giving back and being in that space and they want to start something up initially, they might do it. And I feel like, yeah, we've done work with nonprofits before. And at a certain point, they all go commercial. They all go, sorry, but spoke for a reason. One of the reasons that they go, they don't, most, the ones we've worked with are not on hosted platforms is also with nonprofits. You've got multiple team members. You've got a hierarchy of team members. You've got the security concerns. than the clients of the nonprofit who the nonprofit is serving. And to often, you know, some of them need to log in and access whatever services. There's a lot of things with a nonprofit that are extremely important. And that's why they go with bespoke because bespoke is usually the best solution for them. After that nonprofit, whatever your organization does, has established itself, gotten traction. Maybe you've gotten to funding you needed you got the grant and the grant or grants and you can project out and you know that everything is going to be covered. It just makes more sense to have a hosted solution. I mean, sorry. What am I saying? A bespoke solution.
**\[44:55\]** **Sean:** Okay, so the article also goes on and mentions something about the Opportunity Clost. And I think we kind of hit on Opportunity Clost without using that word earlier when we were talking about all the time that you would be invested in learning and building your website yourself, whether it's in a hosted platform or something like WordPress or OpenCart. The opportunity cost is all of the time that you could have done building your business and running your business and managing your clients and your employees. I was just going to say to go along with what you
**\[45:33\]** **Sherri:** You were just talking on too, about as far as time working on your business and stuff. If you're spending a lot of time trying to create a website, imagine the time or the business that you could be gaining from that website already being live too. You may spend as much time on a DIY site as we would spend on a custom site where you could really just like I was talking about earlier, pick something that's pretty much done and get your content into it, get it up there. And then, you know, do we get to make it better over time?
**\[46:08\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, I agree with that.
**\[46:09\]** **Sherri:** Rather than waiting till it's perfect and just right because right focus on your content. I can ever perfect and just
**\[46:14\]** **Reuben:** yeah, they're ever evolving. They are. I mean, that's that's something that I think is changing to folks are realizing, you know, look at Facebook when it first came out. Facebook when it came out, I don't remember when Facebook came out. and then Facebook in 2018 look very different. They function very different. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, they're all different than where they were when they came out because the technology of the web, it just it moves faster than any other technology I can think of. Because you've got millions of people contributing to this technology and it's just getting so not only efficient, getting more powerful. So with that you can make websites keep up with what is now available whenever the technology moves forward and it seems to move forward in what you can do. Sometimes it feels like it's like a daily basis but when you're set up in the right way, you can kind of take care of that. I mean take advantage of that and kind of implement some of that into your own setup for
**\[47:27\]** **Sean:** your website. Awesome, awesome. Well, Rubin Sherry, this has been a really great discussion. I really appreciate your time and like to thank you for coming onto
**\[47:39\]** **Sherri:** the show. Thank you for having us. It's fun. Yeah, it's been fun. Thank you very
**\[47:43\]** **Sean:** much. Did you have any links that you would like to share? If you can't think of it now, let me know and I'll add it into the show notes. Specifically, what is your
**\[47:52\]** **Reuben:** podcast going to be about I'm gonna let Sherry take this one. It's gonna be called
**\[47:57\]** **Sherri:** Struggle Food Podcast and it's basically about the journey of entrepreneurship. It's the parts it's all the little parts that people don't really talk about. We hear a lot about like the oh where you can't where somebody came from but then it's always jumping way ahead to look at them now. They're so successful and yay but they don't we don't ever hear about the middle stuff and all the the the hills and valleys and everything that it takes to get from this crazy place to this wonderful place. And that's kind of where the conversations that we're going to have, we're going to do interviews like this where we're talking to people who have been through all kinds of challenges and struggles along their entrepreneurial journeys. And what it was like for them how they got through it and got to the other side.
**\[48:46\]** **Reuben:** What do you know?
**\[48:47\]** **Sean:** Wow, that sounds really fascinating. Do you have a launch date in mind?
**\[48:52\]** **Sherri:** We are trying by the end of the year. We keep promising and it keeps getting pushed back, but our goal is to have at least a few episodes launched by the end of the year if not definitely January.
**\[49:05\]** **Reuben:** Yeah, definitely sometime in January.
**\[49:07\]** **Sean:** Wow, you guys might be out before me. I'm launching in mind launches in January and doing all my recording in November and December and then launching in January.
**\[49:15\]** **Reuben:** Oh, that's all I can't wait to catch you guys too. We're I mean we're we're that's that's the goal That's the goal
**\[49:23\]** **Sherri:** Awesome, how it is with side projects
**\[49:26\]** **Sean:** All right, thank you so much Thank you for listening be sure to subscribe and share website 101 podcast with friends and colleagues You can find me at website 101podcast.com on Twitter These are named at website 101 pod Do you have a question you want to ask, a topic suggestion, or a guest host recommendation? Send me an email, Sean, S-E-A-N, at caffeinecreations.ca, or visit website 101podcast.com, slash contact, and fill in the form. You can find me personally online at my company website, caffeinecreations.ca, C-A-F-E-I-N-E, C-R-E-A-T-I-O-N-S dot-C-A. On LinkedIn with username, caffeine creations, hope you enjoyed this episode. See you next time.
Close Transcript
Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact).
[](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 01
- 1 [ Introduction to Website 101 Podcast](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-1/introduction-to-website-101-podcast/)
- 2 [ Planning, Structure, Goals](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-2/planning-structure-goals/)
- 3 [ Web Design Shortcuts You Should Never Take](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-3/web-design-shortcuts-you-should-never-take/)
- 4 [ Websites Benefit from Continual Development](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-4/websites-benefit-from-continual-development/)
- 5 [ SEO 101](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-5/seo-101/)
- 6 [ Unlocking the Secrets of PPC Advertising with Dan Wood](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-6/ppc-101-pay-per-click/)
- 7 [ PR & Marketing](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-7/pr-marketing/)
- 8 [ Designing Effective Landing Pages for High Conversion Rates](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-8/what-is-a-landing-page/)
- 9 [ Accessibility: Why Your Website Should Be Easy to Use for All](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-9/accessibility-why-its-important/)
- 10 [ DIY Vs Bespoke](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-10/diy-vs-bespoke/)
- 11 [ Season 1 Wrap Up](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-11/season-1-wrap-up/)
### All Seasons
- [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/)
- [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/)
- [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/)
- [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/)
- [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/)
- [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/)
- [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/)
- [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/)
- [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/)
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