As somebody who has worked on the supplier side of the web market since 1999, I can tell you that this is a roller coaster industry that has changed the answer to that question numerous times. Everybody knows somebody who has a kid who can design a web site or has a guy that can do one for $200 or something like that. Heck, Intuit brags that you can do it yourself for like $8 a month. But can you? and what is the result?
In 1999 when I started in the industry, the answer was Custom if you wanted it to work because there really wasn't canned and DIY was like asking me to perform brain surgery on myself. Then companies like the one I worked for popped up and started supplying canned packages for a thousand dollars or so.
And then the DIY boom hit. It seemed everybody was building their own web site. My mom worked for the library and they were building their own web site. The youngest employee was my mom at 58, but software like Dream Weaver was making it easy. We then found out that if you wanted to show up in the Search Engines, this wasn't going to cut it. ReLaunch the custom world.
When I went out on my own in 2004, the trend was definitely moving toward everything custom though the prices this time were much more affordable than the $20,000 when I joined the industry. The reason? Graphics software was giving you more options and it was the difference between me designing my custom cabinets or hiring a true carpenter. The quality look justified Custom.
Enter 2007. Canned caught up with custom and took charge again with custom looking designs at canned prices. But wait, canned got a new competitor - Word Press. It is canned for the DIY guy. It seemed everybody had a Word Press web site in 2009. We worked on a half dozen political campaigns and every one of them was using Word Press. Funny thing was, 2 of our clients were using the same template and were in the same race in different parties. I was rooting for them both to win so that we could watch the exact same web site compete against itself.
Well enter 2010/2011 and we are moving toward a more custom world again. Most canned have lost the ability to be viewed easily in a mobile environment. DIY'ers can't keep up with the technical changes in style sheets, javascript, mobile formatting, facebook apps and so on.
When deciding on a vendor, take your smart phone and look at one of their client sites and see if it stands up to the test. Look at their facebook options and ask yourself if you are comfortable with their canned or custom product.
Are you ready to redesign your web business? 2011 is a big year for technology changes in the web.
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