A topic that often comes up in our discussions with clients looking for technical consultation is – whether somebody without web design or coding knowledge, can put together a website for a product or event that they’re promoting, or to establish an online presence for a small business.
The short answer is usually – “Yes”. The reasoning for such answer is that in most cases – a website as commonly defined – is not what is needed in order to achieve the goal of promoting a product or business online.
In most instances, what is required is a “web asset” . A web asset could be, amongst other things – a single landing page, or an ebook – used together with an email marketing platform such as MailChimp to put together a mailing list of customer leads.
Making the distinction between website and web asset helps narrow the problem space and the scope of the requirements. In some instances a full-blown website may be the best solution for a particular type of business, and in such cases the necessity of whether design and coding skills are necessary, can be debated.
However, the more likely scenario is that a web asset is all that is needed. And to design and develop a quality web asset – a technical skillset is not at all required. The reason for this is that over the past few years a number of web-based tools have been developed that make the construction of web assets such as landing pages, ebooks, and other “lead magnets” easy for non-tech users.
Easy to customize, template-based tools such as Designrr – a tool we experimented with recently – allow users to create professional looking page layouts for ebooks and other lead magnets without the user having to write a line of code or worrying about things like CSS stylesheets.
Once created – the lead magnets can be added as promotional inventory to 3rd party sites, or stand alone as a web asset to which direct traffic can be driven.
The takeaway here – is if you are considering building, or hiring someone to build a website for you, first ask yourself – do you really need a full-blown website, or will a web-asset do. And if you decide on the latter , then take a look at some of the great web asset creation tools currently available.