You might be ready to invest in a web designer right now and that’s a great move. DIYing your website is a common thing for business owners to do especially in the early stages of running your business.
You can read more about the pros and cons of DIY websites here, but in this blog post, I want to outline why you should invest in a web designer and why now is the right time.
It’s a smart move for a number of reasons, mainly being around the amount of time it can take to create a website if you’re new to it, why it will help your business to grow faster and why you shouldn’t be expected to know how to create a website for your business that will actually convert visitors into becoming paying customers.
So let’s look at all those reasons why you should invest in a web designer and why now is a great time to do it.
You can manage your own content
If you hire a web designer, you’ll be taking an enormous task off your to-do list and that’s a huge step in the right direction towards getting your business up and running and most importantly getting it found online by your ideal customers.
A website designer should also hand over to you when the website is built to give you the ability to edit things like images in a portfolio, change up parts of the copy on the text and add in your offers and latest news. Having the power to do this is so important so that you don’t have to call on your designer every time one small change needs to be made or your website can end up getting out of date and with no changes being made from one year to next. Making changes to your site is a good thing and it’s something Google will favour your site for in terms of showing it to potential visitors in searches (more on that later).
Of course, you might prefer to have your designer make those changes for your too which is why most website designers offer either monthly retainer work packages or website maintenance plans so that they can help their clients keep their websites up to date and current.
A responsive website is important
Think about how often you visit a site on a phone. According to this report, over 50% of all website traffic comes from phones. It’s so important to be sure that your website can be viewed and that it will be responsive to a number of different screen sizes. This is something that any website designer will ensure.
Create a great user experience
User experience on websites has never been more important than now. Think about how long people’s attention spans are these days. Not long! If you go to a website and it loads slowly, do you have the patience to wait around for it? If you can’t find the information you’re looking for quickly, are you happy to search for it? Or perhaps if there is a button that doesn’t work on a web page. Things like this put off users and turn us off from a quality point of view.
This is why user experience is so important to keep visitors on a page, keep them engaged and to help them find what they are looking for. No one wants to get to a website and be going around in circles and left looking for vital information. Again, Google will favour sites that are good at keeping visitors and the ones that are user friendly and give a positive experience. This is another reason why hiring a web designer is so important.
SEO and getting more visitors
Let’s talk a bit more about Google. As we all know, Google is the world’s biggest search engine and you need Google on your side to show up in search rankings to help show your site to potential visitors. You can have the most beautifully designed website that’s got the most amazing user experience but if it can’t be found on Google, it’s not going to bring you any business. The great thing is hiring a website designer means you won’t have to worry about this. Most web designers will help with at least basic SEO and guide you through how they are going to help get your website found, meaning more ideal clients landing on your site and more conversions.
A website that’s current and secure
This is a really important one that can often get overlooked. If you don’t have a website designer onboard you run the risk of your website going out of date and this means it’s more vulnerable to security issues. This is particularly true with WordPress websites, which is why any website designer should offer you an ongoing maintenance or website care plan that will take care of this so you don’t have to worry about your site going down or being hacked.
Create a website that will convert visitors into customers
There is a huge difference between creating a website and then creating a website that converts website visitors into paying customers. Hiring a web designer is crucial when you realise this. A website designer should know the ins and outs of how to convert visitors to a website and will dig deep into your website goals before they begin building your site, meaning that your investment in a web designer will more than pay for itself with conversions from the site itself.
Customization for aunique experience
A web designer will have the ability to create a highly customized site rather than using an existing template. They’ll be able to use code to add extra features to your site and improve the look and feel, the design and of course the user experience of the site too.
Added features to help you streamline your business processes
Your website can be a tool that will actually help you speed up the process of completing certain tasks in your business. This could be a page with access to a call booking system, an online menu or list of services clients can use to book online, email sign up and lead generation as well as forms and questionnaires to fill out through the process of working with you or online portals to send them to with access to information. The possibilities are endless! A website designer will help you identify which of these processes could help you with your workload and help speed up your processes. Imagine how much time this could save you!
So, in this blog post I have outlined why you should invest in a web designer now. There are so many ways that a website designer can help you identify ways you can improve the systems in your business, how you can get more clients organically all whilst still having full control over what you do on your website if you choose to have it.
If you’re a creative, ambitious female founder who is ready to invest in a branding and website designer to help you grow your business, get in touch to find out more about how I help my clients do all the above and more.
