Business First Family Business, Accounting, Finance, Investing, Marketing And Management
There’s no disputing the fact that establishing a web presence is a necessity for businesses of any size, even a small, home-based company. However, the development of Content Management Systems (CMS) may make hiring a professional web designer an unnecessary expense, especially at the startup stage. There are quite a few reasons that hiring a professional web designer may be bad ROI; here are the top three.
Website Builders Have Improved
Previously, website builders were difficult to use. Today’s website builders are very user friendly, easy to use and well designed. If you think about it, your website is like free digital signage once you paid for hosting it. Depending on which platform you choose, you can create a DIY website for very little down while gaining access to thousands of themes. The key to making your website great is having images that will along with the theme of your choice. Using these improved website builders with plenty of design templates, you can certainly build your own website.
Design Isn’t Marketing
Many web designers know design, but they don’t know marketing. Web designers are, underneath it all, technicians. They know the coding, they know how to put various design elements together, and they may even know the basics of SEO. Where many web designers fall short is on the marketing side, and that’s where conversions are made.
As a DIY website designer, you can quickly put together a functional, attractive website that’s ready to go in a day. That leaves you more time to put into marketing and promotions, building your customer base and creating content that’s engaging. After all, nobody is going to do as much customer research as you are because it’s your business.
Saving On Web Design Counts
The money you save on web design can be invested in business building. When you’re first starting out in business, your resources are usually limited. One of the first things you must decide at the planning stage is how to allocate your time and financial resources. Open source technologies and web-building platforms make hiring a professional an unnecessary expenses for the majority of small business websites.
Those funds will give you a much better return on investment if you allocate them to elements like professional logo design, hiring a copy writer and product development.
DIY Website Engagement
DIY web design increases your engagement. When you get someone else to design your website, it’s easy to turn over all responsibility for upgrades and maintenance to the person who created your website. When you design it yourself, you have a much richer understanding of how it all works, and you can customize and upgrade the website yourself, which saves time and money. Furthemore, you can continue to modify the website to your various market segments as you grow the business. You’ll also gain a sense of accomplishment when you see what you can achieve using the tools that are available.
Something To Keep In Mind
One thing to keep in mind as a one man business though is the responsiveness of your DIY website. If you decide to use a DIY website builder, you want to be sure it provides responsive templates. The responsiveness of a website indicates that it will be optimized for viewing on mobile devices as well as desktops and laptops. If your website is not responsive, it will not rank on Google. That will make it difficult for you to increase online visibility for your business. Make sure you keep this in mind if you decide to go the DIY design route for your website.
When Should You Get A Professional?
There are still times when it’s worth the money to hire a professional web design company, such as:
- When your technical capabilities can’t keep up with your business
- When you need an especially comprehensive or custom design
- When your business is established and has a solid customer base
We’re not saying that good web design is unimportant for the small business owner. However, the tools that are available today enable small business web design that’s attractive, effective and easier than ever to do your self. There are a number of platforms and services that provide easy to use modules and advanced design capabilities that are virtually plug and play. You can always invest in upgrading or expanding your website as your business grows.
Image from https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/08/perfect-small-business-website.html
