Leap of Faith: Traditional Web Design or Website Builders for Your Design Career?

Elwyn takes a deep dive into the career pathways that you can take as a newcomer to the web design industry.

Starting a web design career? 

Today I will give you a glimpse of a crossroads many industry newcomers face. Will we dive head first into the detailed world of traditional web design or take the straightforward route with website builders? 

As an Authorised Trainer for Squarespace with nearly a decade of hands-on experience, you might think my advice would be straightforward: 'Just go for Squarespace.' But it’s not that simple. My experience has taught me that the best platform often depends on the individual and their unique journey.

Your personal history with design and coding, your aspirations, and the niche you aim for in the web design world all factor into the decision. Are you envisioning an independent career, crafting unique sites and building a personal brand? Or is your goal to become integral to a large digital marketing or software agency specialising in development?

Given these varied paths and objectives, it's clear that the world of web design doesn’t offer a singular 'best' choice for everyone. It's about finding the right fit for your vision and skills. Both paths have their perks and challenges. In this guide, we’ll break it down, helping you make the best choice for your career.

As you embark on your web design journey, it's essential to understand that this field is as vast as it is versatile. Your interests, skills, and long-term career aspirations will largely influence your chosen path. Here's a glimpse into some potential career paths for beginners in web design:

Freelance Web Designer:

Dive into creating bespoke websites for various clients. This role offers flexibility and the freedom to choose projects that resonate with your style.

UI/UX Designer:

Focus on crafting user-friendly interfaces and experiences. It's about marrying aesthetics with functionality to ensure users have a seamless digital experience.

Web Developer:

If code intrigues you, becoming a web developer lets you delve deep into the backend processes, bringing dynamic website functions to life.

Template Designer:

Platforms like Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress offer templates. You could specialise in customising these to fit specific client needs or industry sectors, blending convenience with personalisation.

E-commerce Specialist:

With the rise of online shopping, designing e-commerce platforms is in high demand. Here, you'd focus on crafting engaging and efficient online shopping experiences.

Web Design Consultant:

Use your expertise to advise businesses on web design best practices, strategies, and trends, ensuring their online presence is optimised and relevant.

Agency Designer:

Join a digital marketing or software agency as an in-house designer. Collaborate with a team to deliver large-scale projects for diverse clients.

Website Reviewer and Tester:

Offer fresh eyes to critique and test websites, ensuring they’re user-friendly, functional, and glitches-free.

Remember, each of these paths has its own set of rewards and challenges. As you grow your skillset in the industry, you might even blend roles or venture into new territories. The world of web design is ever-evolving, and so can your role within it.

Traditional Web Design Practices: An Overview

Traditional web design involves creating a website from scratch using coding languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It's a more hands-on approach that offers much more customisation and flexibility.

Advantages of Traditional Web Design

Here are some key benefits of starting a web design career using traditional methods:

Customisation: With traditional web design, you can tailor every detail to fit the client's needs. You have complete control over every site element from the layout to the functionality.

Performance and Optimisation: Optimising website performance becomes easier when you have full control over the code. This leads to quicker load times, a better user experience, and increased SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Website builders have closed the gap so the average customer is unlikely to see the difference. But if your client is in a highly competitive niche, then bespoke web design may well be the best way to go.

Unique Designs: As a traditional web designer, you are not constrained by templates. This means you can create truly unique designs that help your clients stand out from the crowd. Design wholly unique designs, one pixel at a time.

Limitations of Traditional Web Design

Of course, traditional web design has numerous advantages; however, there are also some limitations and downsides to consider:

Steep Learning Curve: Mastering multiple coding languages is a prerequisite for traditional web design. This can be a daunting task for beginners. Do you have a clear grasp of HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript? Great, that will get you up to speed as a front-end structure. But we still haven’t covered responsive web design, UX (user experience), database architecture and integration, SEO, and responsive web design (RWD). The smaller our business is, the more we need to become ‘ultimate generalists’; therefore, it can often be unrealistic to expect to know all of the above. Becoming a web designer is far more nuanced now than it was in the 90s when I first caught the bug.

Time-Consuming: Crafting a website from scratch is labour-intensive and time-consuming. Forward-thinking agencies will have structures and processes, essentially a bespoke toolkit, allowing their developers and designers to shave hours off the website build process, even days. If you are starting your own business in bespoke web development, you may want to consider this before going toe to toe with established agencies. 

Higher Initial Costs: More time-consuming generally equates to higher start-up costs. Custom-built websites often come with higher development costs, which is great if you can get your proposal approved, but this may make your services more difficult to sell at the outset. However, the investment can be worthwhile for more complex projects or larger businesses. Again this is largely down to where you see your career going in the medium to long term.

Constructing your Career with Website Builders

Website builders are online platforms designed to make web design accessible to everyone, regardless of their technical skills. They offer a 'no-code', user-friendly approach, with features such as drag-and-drop functionality and pre-made templates.

Advantages of Using Website Builders

Here are some reasons why you might choose website builders like Squarespace to kickstart your web design career:

Ease of Use: Website builders are advertised to consumers with zero experience in the field, boasting that they are easy to pick up, learn and master. The fact that this is a white lie (website builders are indeed easy for us professional designers, but the platform can still be a minefield for novices), plays into our hands. At Pixelhaze, we have successfully built and grown our studio based on a promise we can easily keep. We bridge the knowledge gap between novices and website builders, enabling our clients (small business owners) to obtain an agency-level service without the agency price tag. 

Website builders are made easy to use, meaning we can recruit and train designers in a fraction of the time it would take to get junior designers up to speed with traditional web design practices. They take the hard work out of creating a website by providing us with familiar tools, much like using a smartphone app. They come with ready-to-use but customisable templates and a simple drag-and-drop system. Think of it like building with blocks: you pick what you like, put it where you want, and in no time, you've got a site ready to go. No coding is required.

Quick Turnaround: With pre-made templates and drag-and-drop functionality, you can set up a website in a few hours or even minutes. This allows us to offer a ‘rush’ (1-2 day turnaround) service allowing us to charge a surcharge whilst having a delighted client as we have successfully pulled them out of a hole. 

Cost-Effective: Many website builders offer affordable plans, making them a cost-effective solution for small businesses or personal projects. You can add on your own design or consultancy costs or think of imaginative ways of wrapping up the website builder fees into your monthly service plan, offering immense value within a straightforward offer.

24/7 Support: Small business owners cannot offer 24/7 support or bullish uptime guarantees. This is where platforms like Squarespace come in. They take all of the technical support, allowing you to orient your client and provide direct live chat and email support to the website provider. It is then up to you whether you want to add your services via enhanced support or a monthly retainer.

Limitations of Using Website Builders

While website builders offer a convenient solution, they also have limitations:

Limited Customisation: Despite the wide variety of templates available, they might not perfectly fit every brand or purpose. If your client has a unique requirement that the website builder cannot deliver, you may need to use custom code or embed 3rd party applications. This may do the job, but it really depends on the individual project.

Potential Performance Issues: Some website builders generate bulky code, leading to slower load times. Although there are ways to streamline this, and for many smaller websites, this isn’t a noticeable problem, it does mean that we should factor this in when quoting for a project.

Scaling Concerns: As your client’s business grows, you might find that the limitations of a website builder necessitate a shift to a more custom, robust solution. For example, Squarespace can comfortably handle 500 products in its store, but when we start creeping over 1,000 products, a bespoke solution may be the way to go. Bespoke means a much higher upfront fee, but could save countless hours of admin time for large e-commerce stores. 

Choosing Your Path

Your decision between traditional web design and using a website builder will depend on your individual needs, skills, and circumstances.

Beginners and Small Projects

If you're starting your web design career or working on a small personal project, a website builder might be the perfect solution. It's a quick, cost-effective way to establish an online presence and hone your design skills.

Businesses and Bespoke Needs

On the other hand, traditional web design would be more appropriate if you're aiming to create unique digital experiences or if you have specific functional requirements. It's also beneficial if you foresee rapid scaling in the near future.

The Hybrid Approach

It's also worth noting that a hybrid approach is possible. You can start with a website builder, using it to learn the basics and quickly create simple sites. As your web design career progresses, you can move on to more complex, custom projects using traditional web design methods.

Both traditional web design and website builders offer viable paths to start a web design career. The choice between them will depend on your needs, technical skills, and long-term career goals. Regardless of your chosen path, remember that continuous learning and skill development are crucial to success in the ever-evolving field of web design.

Whether you choose to become a Squarespace web designer or master the art of coding, remember that the web design industry offers almost infinite possibilities, and that’s exciting!

 Happy designing…