Why you should hire a web designer rather than doing it yourself.

We all know that every business should have a website, well... not all, but that's a topic for another day. But why should you invest your hard-earned cash and pay a web designer to design and build your website rather than DIY'ing it? You’ve all probably seen those ads from web builders like Squarespace or Wix or heard them advertising on your favourite podcast (FYI, mine’s No Stupid Questions). So how hard can it really be? Well, I’ll tell you a secret, it’s not. Building a website with Squarespace is great, BUT, and it’s a big but 🍑. What they don’t tell you is why are you building your business a website, what is the website's goal, and does it align with your business’s? There is so much more that goes into building a website than just making it look pretty and chucking up a few images. Like;

Adding Credibility to your business

Have you ever visited a business's website and found it hasn’t been updated in years and still looks like it was built in the early 2000s? What was your initial thought about that business? Did you instantly trust them? Did you want to race out the door and throw your money at them? I would bet anything that you didn’t.

A thoughtfully designed website is a great way to show your customers that you are serious about what you do. It shows them you’re committed to providing a high-quality product and/or service and helps them trust you enough to hand over their hard-earned 💵 (cash).

Not another copycat website

Custom, well-thought-through, and designed websites are another way to help your business stand out in what is now a very over-saturated online world, where it seems everyone is after something from you, whether it be your attention or the contents of your wallet. So making sure you stand ahead of your competition is crucial to ensure your business succeeds. 

One of the biggest downsides of using a template-driven website builder, like Squarespace or Wix, is that all their websites look the same. There will be some differences in images, maybe the typography has been changed but the overall look and feel of the website are the same, and if everyone else in your niche does the same then you have no point of difference, no way of staying at the front of your customer's mind and are therefore nowhere near as likely to get them to come back and buy from you. 

It’s a sad fact that approximately 50% of new businesses fail, and I’m not saying that hiring a web designer to build your website will increase your likelihood of avoiding failure, buuut, I’m also not saying that 😝. No, but seriously, when hiring a web designer, you not only get access to a nerd that knows how to make your website look pretty and be functional. They can also help you understand your target market better, help you set up analytics so you can track and measure the success of your website or sales funnel and help you reduce any friction your clients may come across throughout the purchasing or lead generation process. This can help you outrun that 50% business failure statistic as it can directly correlate to qualified leads and sales. 

Higher Engagement & Conversion

Because we nerd out on websites, online stores and everything digital, web designers have an understanding of what keeps people engaged in your content and ultimately what helps websites convert visitors into buyers or leads. Understanding fundamentals like proper positioning of calls to action (CTA’s), using the right media, making sure your website works on all device types, how to attract the right kind of traffic, and ensuring your website aligns with your businesses goals and objectives is something that we live and breath.

There are designers out there that spend all their time designing the perfect button, the perfect navigation bar, and the perfect shopping cart flow all in an effort to increase their clients conversion. But the best thing about these designers is that they share their knowledge around the industry. So hiring a web designer that is up to date with current research and design trends is like hiring those perfectionists, we spend our down time reading case studies, research articles and pulling apart designs from some of the highest performing websites out there all in an effort to learn what makes them so successful, what makes them convert the way they do and how we can integrate that into our projects. 

Be found

Continuing on in the vail of being different, being found is extremely important for your business when competing online. Another reason to hire a web wizard (designer) is for SEO. 

If you want to learn more about what SEO is and why you should care about it, check out my article on it here.

While designing a website, a good designer always has Google at the back of their mind. Google loves websites to be structured in predictable ways, to have certain content, to be responsive to the device it is being viewed on and to meet their strict core web vitals. Suppose this is overlooked while using a web builder or not understood correctly. In that case, your search engine result position may be massively penalised, so even if you do have the best product around, no one will be able to find it. The investment in hiring a professional to ensure that your website is up to scratch when it comes to SEO will pay back increasingly larger and larger dividends the higher up the search engine results page your website is. So although it might cost you a little extra to hire a web designer, it’s not money that has gone to waste. You’ve not only gotten time back, time that you can spend on your business doing what you are good at, but you also can be assured that your website is working for you.

Being Kind

Reading back over the last few sections, it looks like I am bashing web builders, like Squarespace and Wix, but I hope you see I’m not. The technology they are built on is amazing, and some amazingly successful businesses have launched themselves using their platform. I still use Squarespace on some of my client's projects. Each technology has its place, and knowing best when and where to use them is almost a science in and of itself. 

What I hope I am getting across, however, is that when you hire a professional, you are getting someone that understands the online world, knows how to best leverage the underlying technology and can get the most out of it to benefit you and your business.

So if you are in the market for a new website or just want to get a professional's eye over your current website, please reach out. I love helping businesses succeed, and I would hate to see your business become one of the unlucky 50%.