First thing first – we actually offer services to help you build your own website, so we’re not here to put across negative reasons about why you shouldn’t do this, and why you should use a website designer/developer, we just wanted to share some of our thoughts on the matter!
There are many practical reasons why we think it’s best to let a professional web designer take the lead on your website. Let’s take a look at what we believe are the top 5 reasons to employ a web designer.
1. What’s your online strategy?
A website is one very important part of your overall digital strategy. To work successfully and to support your business effectively, it needs to be part of a strong plan that takes into account things like brand identity, social media marketing, and search engine rankings. What are your thoughts on conversion optimisation? Don’t know what that means? It’s time to call in the experts.
Your website can’t simply be a standalone effort. It has to be a working part of the complete plan for your business. If you don’t know what your brand is, or about the importance of SEO, then you need to talk to someone who does. It’s also important for your website designer to understand where your website sits in this plan – what is its purpose? Will it be selling your items, or just giving people information about your services? Will you be pushing people to your website from social media, or the other way around? This is actually why we always ask for a meeting (virtual works too!) before we send a quote, because without understanding your business and the requirements of your website, it’s hard to quote with confidence.
2. You need a professional look
Think about your website as being your digital shop front. It’s one of the first places a potential customer will look before they even think about picking up the phone or taking the time to visit you in person. You need a website that reassures the visitor you’re reliable, efficient and professional. Part of this is an expert-looking website that functions smoothly, has good user experience and looks the part for your brand. I say this a lot when it comes to social media profiles, but the same is very true of websites as well – that first impression is super important, so your website really does need to look the part.
3. What do you know about SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is such an important part of any website design – here at Gwe Cambrian Web, we always provide basic SEO services for any new website, giving it a good chance of climbing the rankings of search engines as time goes on. SEO really is a huge beast though, and it’s something we always recommend you invest time in especially after your website goes live. But, why do we mention it here? We’ve always felt that people are a little afraid of SEO, but with a little understand it’s easy to grasp the very basics, which will help hugely when you launched your website at the beginning. This is things like making sure your pages have meta-data, images have Alt-tags etc. All stuff that web designers will usually do automatically as part of the project.
4. Responsive web design
Mobile search traffic will probably account for the majority of traffic your website receives – so it’s important to make sure your website works well on different screen sizes, especially mobiles. Responsive website design has been around a long time, and yet we still see new websites launched that aren’t! Anyone who’s ever accessed a website on their mobile phone only to find pages slipping off the edge will testify as to how quickly they bounce out of that site, and on to one that more effectively responds to their user needs.
It’s also important when it comes to your SEO ranking as well. If you do a search on your mobile using Google for example, it will prioritise websites that it views are responsive, over ones that aren’t. So, you could be losing customers without it.
5. How much is your time worth?
It’s often the cost of a professional web developer that makes people think about creating their own. But ask yourself this – how much is your time worth to you? How much time will you spend on developing a professional looking, responsive website that takes into account the requirements of search engine optimisation, user experience and your online strategy?
It’s not just about building the website either, you should also allocate time for the upkeep of your website once it’s live – not just in terms of adding new content, but also SEO and updates depending on the platform you choose. At the end of the day, you need to calculate if it might actually work out cheaper for you in the long run, to go to a website designer.
We admit we’re biased though! As web designers with over a decade of experience, we understand the benefits to our clients of a well-performing websites. They not only enhance your real-world brand, but they’re an enormously important part of a good business strategy. That being said though, if you do want to build your own, we are definitely here to help you as much as we can – and we already work with a range of clients who do just that.