For some organisations, undertaking a detailed and complex website design project may not feasible or even necessary – it is now possible develop an online presence using third-party web services.
These fall broadly into two categories: social media services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and template design services such as the Wordpress, Typepad or Blogger hosting services. There is of course a great deal of overlap between the two.
Such services are no replacement for a professionally constructed bespoke website, but they are simple, largely free and robustly developed. For sole traders, very small businesses or cash-strapped organisations that can’t afford to build complex and media-rich websites, creating an online presence through third party sites and web services may be an ideal approach.
The emergence of social media means most web services have content sharing and networking functions built into them. Again, access to the third-party developed social media utilities is more cost-effective than developing a proprietary system – hence the popularity of Facebook and Twitter for individuals and big business alike.
But there are a few things to consider when evaluating the use of third party web services over a bespoke design. Does your content site within the third party’s branding or your own (and does that matter)? If the site becomes unpopular, or the company running it goes bust, what happens to your content? How flexible is the system – does it really meet your needs? Do you need a more distinctive and ‘own-able’ online presence? And so on.
Many businesses and organisations use third-party sites to supplement the content and branding found on their own websites, rather than as a substitute for building a bespoke site. Reaching out through social media sites can often help to drive traffic back to a main site. The Tate, for example, measures the number of referrals from third-party sites back to Tate Online and has found the results encouraging enough to embed a third-party, social media strategy across many of the Tate’s different departments.
Off-the-shelf websites
Another option is to purchase an off-the-shelf site, which is a predesigned template into which content can be placed. There are many providers of web-kit templates online and it is a very low-cost route to launching a professionally designed (if not bespoke) website. Website templates typically include all the html, images, graphics source files and style sheets used by the site template.