877-490-8324With plenty of DIY web site builders to choose from, it’s easier than ever to set up your own website.
Is that the best move for your business, though?
It’s often a matter of budget. Many startups and companies with a limited budget would rather assign a low wage employee, family member, or even take time themselves to use one of the many “Godaddy’s” of the world. For some, this works…right? Think again.
Here are a few reasons you should consider hiring a Web design company instead of using a do-it-yourself website builder.
BRAND MAINTENANCE
Your website is the face of your company. Your website is your salesperson—someone to personally greet your customers as they walk through your virtual door.
What this salesperson is wearing, how they speak about your business, and what they say are completely up to you. This idea is sometimes lost when businesses are trying to set up their own web sites. They become more concerned with putting every service/product they offer on the homepage of a site instead of thinking about the actual customer experience. There’s a certain amount of professionalism that needs to be maintained with your brand and reflected in your web site.
EASE OF USE
How easy your company’s site is to navigate and use is just as important as the content it contains. Misleading, or dead links, can lead to a disappointing user experience, which directly reflects on the quality of the services you provide. The two may be unrelated to you, but to a customer they’re one in the same.
RESPONSIVE CONFIGURATIONS
In its most basic description, a responsive web site allows your content to adjust its layout based on your user’s viewing device (desktop, tablet or mobile device).
When not properly configured, it can render your site unusable on some devices – hiding navigation items behind links, images running off the screen and more.
EXPERTISE AND DIRECTION
When you open up yourself to becoming your own web developer, prepare yourself to receive a lot of communications and issues. Fake domain renewals, information about security protocols, and problems with hosting can leave you scratching your head. You may also be tempted to invest money where its least beneficial to you. Google AdWords sounds like a great idea for some companies, but for others, organic SEO is the way to go. How do you decide? Talk to an expert.
KEEPING FOCUS
There are people who like to do everything themselves. In the right application, there is value in that. A business owners time, however, shouldn’t be spent trying to learn HTML, graphic design, or how to manage a hosting server. Their focus should be on growing the business and managing the systems and people. How much is your time worth?
CUSTOMIZATIONS
Sure, you can find just about any type of code snippet, plugins and JavaScripts, to make your web site really hum. However, if you’re not technologically savvy, you could still run into problems reading through instructions on how to implement these coded features. Photo galleries, and a lot of other common website modules, are not built from scratch anymore. The Internet is filled with reusable code that you can use on your site. Finding them however, could be time consuming and understanding how to integrate it into your hosting environment is even harder. Which again brings us to the question, “what is your time worth?”
BETTER SUPPORT
There is NOTHING more miserable that waiting on hold for an hour with a company like Network Solutions (who provides cheap DIY web site solutions), trying to find out why your web site is not working or displaying properly. Or digging through hundreds of support forums trying to find that one person who’s having the same issue you are.
Most web design firms will assign your account a dedicated project manager. Someone whose job it is to keep you happy, help solve problems and know exactly what you’re talking about because they’ve already worked with your site. They know you and you know them.
The Solution
Find a web design company that you can get comfortable with.
The days of $50,000-plus web sites are over. You can find a small to medium, reasonably priced company to give you a world class web presence built on a relationship of trust and delivering on promises. AND, best of all, it won’t break the bank or require refinancing your business or home.