In our time of rapid development and growth of Internet and Internet technologies more and more companies understand that presence of web site has beneficial influence on development of business. There is no doubt about that, but a question appears: “what should site be to positively influence business and not bring heaps of problems?�.

Answers to this question can be various, depending on the parameters of considering the question. In this article we want to analyse the parameter of how site is created. There are two major variants – you can get custom developed site or you can buy off-the-shelf ready solution for a site. Exactly these two variants of web sites appearing will be discussed in this article.

So, variant 1: you decided that you don’t want to be like all the rest and that your business deserves a lot and, constantly, your company web site should be the best in the whole world, especially if you consider it to be a very important constituent of your business. Welcome to the category of people willing to get a custom developed site (exclusive and perfect). Advantages of such a site are:

* custom web site development always allows taking into consideration current and future (which is the most important) needs of the market and customers;
* every field of activity and, consequently, target group has lots of details which you will be able to provide for;
* you will get exactly what you wanted as a result of custom web site development;
* if you want to get profit and benefit from your web site’s work, you will need to constantly develop and improve it (both content and functionality). It is difficult to do this with off-the-shelf solutions, but custom developed sites can be easily improved, developed and changed.

Unfortunately, this variant of web site development is not ideal. There are two big disadvantages: time and money. Custom web site development is labour-consuming and takes a lot of time (of course, time of development depends on, first of all, your requirements) and, therefore, it requires great expenditures. So, if you have time and big budget for the project, take this variant into account.

Second variant: you need to get site (probably, not the most special) as soon as possible and it is highly desirable that site should be not very expensive. You belong to people who need web site, so to say, pro forma. In this case, site will be used not for conducting the business, but will act as means of informing about the company, so it’s functionality can be very simple. If this is your case, there is no doubt that it will be better to choose off-the-shelf solution. We already listed the major advantages of such solutions; these are time and money savings. As for disadvantages, there are a little bit more of them:

* first of all, you will not be able to profitably realize unique aims and objectives of your business (if there are any);
* off-the-shelf solutions do not take into account all your needs and requirements, so you will have to manage your work with what the solution has;
* every time you decide to change or add anything to your site, you will have to turn to developers for help.

So, these are the basic advantages and disadvantages of two major ways of web site acquisition. Of course, we could give some advice, for example, not to create web site only for yourself, the site will be used by your clients and their needs and wishes are of the highest priority and other. But in general, you should decide which variant of those described above to choose. The main thing is to clearly define, why you and your company need a web site and for what you are going to use it.