Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
Is it Worth Investing in a Website Designer?
Show Notes
Does DIY Web Design Work?
What is your time worth and what is your skill level?
Imagine if you were given an old run-down car.
You could paint it, add some new tyres, tinker with the motor, add oil and petrol and the car would probably get you from A to B.
Would you risk putting your children in it and taking it out on the highway to run at full speed?
Then what about all the time you spent on it, painting, googling how to tune the engine, buying the tyres etc.
Was it a hobby project or should you have been working during this time?
That is what it is like building your own website.
What is your hourly rate? How long extra did it take you to do or learn to do than a professional website designer would have taken?
Pros and Cons of Building Your Own Website
Like all decisions, you need to way up the pros and cons of whether to engage a professional web designer or not.
Do you have the knowledge, skill and time to build your own?
Building your own website is only the first step.
Now you need to maintain it and make sure that it is in good working order. Plus is kept say from hackers.
“That won’t happen to me,” is a hacker’s favourite phrase.
Now that car has broken down and left you stranded on a dark cold night. You pop the bonnet, and you are not even sure where to start to find the problem.
That is what it is like when you wake up one morning and find your business website is suddenly not there. Not loading or has been hacked. Where do you even start?
Doing the Website Design
You have managed to do the design. You are happy with it, quite proud really!
Well done.
Did you know that the design is only the first step in your website?
Getting Found By Google
What was your plan? Did you think about the keywords.
Then what?
Keywords are the words that Google uses to list your website or to be more accurate your web page in Google.
Now you have your beautiful new shiny website you need to get Google to find you. You need to optismise your pages.
“Oh I don’t need that Google stuff,” one prospect told me.
Then how are you going to get traffic to your website?
Build it and they will come . . . sorry this is not a movie.
There are 175 new websites built every minute, 252,000 every day, over 1 billion websites on the internet and over 50 billion pages.
Unless you are a unicorn you are going to have to worry about that “SEO” stuff.
SEO - Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation is the art or science of building your website’s reputation so that Google will send you traffic. Without traffic, you will have a lovely design but no one will ever find you. Your website will become another relic in the Google graveyard.
Can you get traffic without optimizing your website?
Yes absolutely.
You will need to send traffic to your website, and this is usually done by paid ads. Landing pages are a great example of web pages that are not optimised and get their traffic from external means.
Paid advertising can be a great addition to your marketing strategy however if it is your only strategy then when the ads are turned off – you stop paying your traffic will stop too.
A combination of both paid and organic traffic can work well, particularly when your website is new, or you are in a highly contested category.
Can You Build a Website Yourself
Yes, however at the end of the day you need to decide whether you should.
Things to Consider When Building a Website
- What do you want the website to do – its purpose?
- Who is the website for – your target audiences?
- What do you want the website to achieve?
- How will your people access it, and from what type of device?
- Who is going to look after the site once it is built?
- Have you considered Google’s needs, load speed, new content, image size etc?
- What Search engine optimization (SEO) measures are you using?
These are all the type of things a professional website designer will take into consideration.
First Impressions Count
Inspiring Website Design Statistics for 2022
- 2.6 seconds is all it takes for users to make the first conscious impression of a website.
- 48% of users think that companies that don’t have mobile-optimized websites don’t care about them.
- Around 38% of website visitors don’t engage with unattractive web design.
- 94% of the first impressions on a website are based on its visuals and design.
- 88% of website consumers don’t return to a page if they have a terrible experience.
- 57% of consumers say they won’t recommend a poorly designed website.
- 50% of website visitors use web design as a defining factor when it comes to credibility.
- 44% of internet users will leave a website if the homepage doesn’t contain a company’s contact details.
- 68% of global internet users access websites using mobile devices.
- 91% of small business websites aren’t optimized for mobile use.
Is it Worth Paying for a Website Designer?
There are lots of things to consider when building, running and maintaining your business website. Is it worth paying for a website designer, if you don’t already have the skills then absolutely. If you do have the skills, ask yourself is that the best use of your time.
Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.
Hiring a web designer can be a great investment in your business. Remember to do your due diligence and make sure that the designer can do what they say they can and are a good fit for your business.
Find our more information and pricing about websites and web design at CATCO Enterprises.
Listen to Episode 171 of Small Business Talk for the full details.
Check out Small Business Talk on YouTube for videos and more.
