When it comes putting together the perfect business website, many hands-on entrepreneurs may feel the temptation to handle it themselves. There are more website building tools available than ever, with accessible drag-and-drop design that can create a functional online home for your business in no time.
So, why wouldn’t you design your own website? If you have seen some of the amateur efforts of well-intentioned business owners, you might already have an idea, but let’s get down to the nitty-gritty details of it all.
You could end up with the blandest website on the net
Drag and drop website builders allow you to quickly select pre-made assets and formats, apply them to webpages that you link together, and end up with a complete website. The only problem is that those same pre-made assets and formats are going to be everywhere. You can buy themes to customize them graphically but using them to create a truly unique website is not easy.
It takes more than a few days to become a design expert
Design is an art. If you needed professional photography, would you hand the camera to any old intern or would you hire a professional photographer? Website designers bring more than function, they bring expertise in how it looks, how it feels and, most importantly, what it prompts the customer to do.
Designers have an eye on user experience, not just how pretty it is
User experience is a different discipline and an art in its own right. Web users can be picky and impatient creatures. If you waste their time with odd link placement, hastily thought-out navigation, or content that’s too dense to read, they will turn tail and flee. Website designers approach the site from the user’s perspective, which can be difficult for a business owner to do.
An outsider’s perspective is important
While you bring the expertise of your industry and plenty of insight into your customers, it can be difficult to see beyond your own business. As a result, many business owners will fill their site with information that is, to put it bluntly, irrelevant to the customer. As an independent third-party, a website designer is focused on creating the best website for both the user and the client.
Avoiding those SEOh-nos
How are people going to find your website? Search engines play a key role in attracting visitors, but only if you know how to appeal to them. That’s what search engine optimization is all about. Website designers have an understanding of strategic keyword placement, backlinks, anchor text, meta-descriptions that have all become crucial to the success of the average website. Unless you’re prepared to learn the ins-and-outs of internal SEO, you won’t be getting the website you deserve.
The dreaded error prompts
What happens when a page or asset is broken and you don’t know why? If you’re designing it on your own, you either have to scrap it and lose your progress or spend hours looking for the right fix. Web designers are much more familiar with what breaks websites, not just what makes them.
Designers bring a whole range of tools to the table
A web designer won’t just use a drag-and-drop website creator alone. They will use software for illustration, image editing, analytics, SEO audits and much more to ensure that your website stands up to the most thorough of quality inspections.
You don’t have the time
If you’ve read this far, then you have come to realize that building a website takes a lot more than simply dragging and dropping different assets in the right place. The question you have to ask is whether you have the time to learn all the disciplines that go into it.
Your competitors are investing in quality
If you are spending the time learning how to do it all (or simply skipping it), then you will undoubtedly see your competitors getting their websites online sooner, and with all the quality that professional website designer brings to the table.
You have to adapt with the times
Website design and the tools used to design them change over time. If you aren’t prepared to keep up with the latest trends, your website will fall behind. A great example of this is found by looking at how many old, self-built websites are now completely unusable on mobile platforms like smartphones and tablets.
When it comes designing your own website, it’s another case of the age-old fable of only asking if you could, instead of whether or not you should. Greater experience with the tools available, the skills to create truly unique designs, knowledge of the market are what a professional website designer can bring to the table. Let them do their job so you can focus on building your business.
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