When maintaining your website, do you invest in in-house staff or pay a retainer to web designers in Essex? We take a look at the pros and cons.
One of the most important aspects of developing your website and ensuring that it is a success is to know how it will be managed. Even the best website will rapidly lose traction if it is not kept up to date with fresh content, product listings, events or other necessary elements that are core to the business. SEO will also be compromised and the site’s ranking will rapidly diminish as competitors within the same space work to update their site, ensuring it is fresh and ever-evolving.
Cost considerations
For some companies, the prospect of investing time and resource into this work can be too much. An in-house team offers benefits but can be expensive and a fixed cost. An agency is more expensive on a cost per hour basis but can be engaged on a flexible or retainer basis, perhaps for a couple of hours a week, without any need for a fixed overhead.
Skills
A retainer can provide access to a broad range of skills on a flexible basis. In-house staff tend to be more generalist, as most smaller firms will be unable to hire copywriters, SEO specialists, digital strategists and developers for a permanent in-house team. A web design agency such as www.enovate.co.uk/ can provide all this and more.
The question of content
Using an agency will give you access to the latest expertise on a flexible basis; however, the agency will still need to be provided with content, leads, assets and information to carry out the website updates. Sometimes internal staff can find it easier to access these assets because they have an in-depth knowledge of the business. There are pros and cons and the ultimate decision will depend very much on the business’s own objectives, resources, budget and longer-term digital strategy.
Some companies will go for a hybrid approach − hiring a web content manager on a full-time in-house basis and hiring the skills of a digital agency on a flexible basis as required, such as for new website developments and digital strategy formulation. With an effective working relationship, this approach can be effective and powerful.
What factors will help your firm decide how to maintain your website in the future?
