Websites… If you’re looking for a website design for your company, you have so many options to choose from. From in-house designers to freelance web designers, DIY website builders to digital agencies there are plenty of places to go. However, the truth is that not all of them are created equally. Competition between agency vs DIY website designs is fierce. On the one hand, there are organizations that will charge the highest amount of money for their web design services while promising that your website will be built the way most beneficial to you, and on the other hand, there are DIY website builders like Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly. But how can you choose one over the other? There are many things to consider before making a choice.
Let’s first list the pros of designing your own website by using a DIY website builder:
- Very affordable. Sometimes they are as low as a few dollars for a month including domain, hosting, and website builder.
- You will have control over every step but don’t forget that you just have an idea. You don’t know how the actual system works, or what is best.
- They can be designed and developed in a few days. Yes, they can be designed and developed in a few days but that is because of the lack of content. At this stage, you may still want to hire multiple freelancers to research your industry and create some content related to your industry.
and now the cons of designing your own website:
- it’s not optimized for SEO and Speed. Speed is an SEO and UX-related issue and SEO is the biggest factor that can turn your potential customers into visitors. If you cannot make them visitors, you cannot make them customers. SEO makes them visitors and UX makes them customers. If you want to learn more about page loading speed, here is the “Ultimate Website Speed Optimization Guide”.
- Looks just like the others. Well, I’m sure you don’t need an explanation here. You are just using a template that may be used by 1,000s of people before you. Unique designs always rank better.
- Limited customizations. DIY website builders will only give you limited options to change. For example, most of the time you never see the back end of your website. You just drag and drop. Their SEO options are also very limited and if your market is a little competitive, that’s not enough to get you up enough where you want.
- You may be sued if you are not aware of copyright laws and accessibility rights. This is a very serious matter. We are creators too. It is not as hard as you think to find copyrighted content on the web. If the creator wants to find you and sue you, you are just a click away. This includes a video, image, text, etc. “Copyright.gov”
Let’s watch what U.S. Copyright Office says about this:
Let’s watch what U.S. Copyright Office says about this:
On the other hand, most professional web design services (at least our Online Presence Management Services) come as a package deal. You will get the custom design just done for you, possibly keyword researched and search engine optimized pages and articles, licensed rich media, fast loading speed, etc. Plus, hiring a professional web designer doesn’t have to be expensive.
There are only a couple of cons to hiring a professional website designer to work on your custom website project. Those are time and money. Professional designs take a lot more time than drag-and-drop websites. Think about creating all the content from scratch, color-coordinating them, wireframing, search engine optimization, content creation, and more and more.
Do you need a professional web designer?
This is something only you can answer. We always recommend our clients not see their website as an expense but see it as an investment. Websites are actual investments and if you haven’t had one yet, you should get one ASAP because you are losing money.
Some people think only eCommerce sites are making money. Yes, eCommerce sites are making money. Only the difference between regular business websites and eCommerce websites is the way they make money. E-commerce sites make money directly and regular business websites are making money indirectly.
Did you know 70% of people are making online research even before traditionally purchase an item or service?
Let’s make a small calculation 60% of people prefer shopping online. So you only have 40% left and 70% of that 40% make online research before their traditional purchase. So you only have 30% of 40% to make sales if you don’t have an online presence. That simply means you are only serving 12% of your potential customers. That is a total waste. Even though having an online presence itself cannot promise you that 100%, it will guarantee you the increase. How much it will increase is all about your business type, your customer service skills, the quality of the products, your competitors, etc.
Let’s be honest now, did you start your business just to stay away from home and make new friends? If that is the reason, congratulations, you are a successful business owner. But, if you are interested in making money, you must be online and you must be natural. If you are here and reading this, we assume you are serious about your business. You may start learning digital marketing, practice, build and run your own marketing strategy or hire a digital marketing agency to do that for you in a much better and more professional way.
So now we are clear about the importance of online presence. Now, I want to ask you your own question by knowing you are aware that you can increase your sales by up to 800% with a good online presence management campaign. Are you ok with giving away some of those sales by just trying to save money on your web design process?