You want a website. No, you need a website. But what’s the ideal way for you to get the best website you can? Should you do it yourself and use one of the web builders you’ve read about? Or is it best to hire a designer who can take your ideas and run with them?
It’s a conundrum faced by many professionals. Frankly, there’s no one way to come to an answer, either, except to look at the pros and cons of each situation.
The Pros of DIY Web Design
Let’s start with the pros of creating a website without any help:
- You get to learn all about web design. For some people, this is something they’ve always wanted to know. Now, you’ll have first-hand knowledge.
- You won’t have to spend any money on a design team. You can design your site on your own time and spend a minimal amount.
- You can make decisions on the fly and don’t have to talk to anyone.
- You can get your website up and running very quickly, particularly if it is only a bare bones site.
The Pros of Hiring a Web Designer
After considering the pros of going it alone, you’ll want to consider the positive aspects of hiring a web designer instead:
- You won’t have any type of learning curve. Your web designer will do everything for you.
- You can have a more professional-looking site and be guaranteed that it’s being built the right way.
- You can get all the bells and whistles you might have trouble doing yourself if you designed your site solo.
- You can be sure all the elements, such as the coding, are up to par.
- You can make sure your whole site has been checked by professionals.
- You can outsource other areas of your website design and development, like content writing.
The Cons of DIY Web Design
So what are the cons of trying to design and build a website yourself if you have little to no expertise?
- The whole process is bound to take longer than you might expect, and that can lead to frustration.
- You may give up and require professional help in the future anyway.
- Your site could wind up looking unprofessional, cluttered, and unattractive.
- You could miss opportunities to upsell and cross-sell to your visitors.
- Your site could be missing out on elements it needs to stand out and get better search engine rankings.
- You could unknowingly slow your site down due to poor navigation, incorrectly sized images, and other site design elements.
The Cons of Hiring a Web Designer
Finally, you should consider the cons of hiring a web designer:
- You will be spending money, usually several thousand dollars (at least), to have a sophisticated site.
- You will have to explain your vision to someone else, and then wait for a prototype.
- You will not be able to rush the process beyond what is reasonable for the web designer and/or web design team.
Which Choice Is Right for Your Needs?
Still unsure which choice is the right idea? Read on to figure out if you’re a better candidate for one or the other.
The best candidates for DIY web designing:
- Have very little money to spend on website design.
- Just want a website for personal use, or for a hobby that they don’t expect to make a lot of money on.
- Are willing to spend their time learning web design basics.
- Are not interested in building a site with search engine optimization (SEO) properties.
- Want a site with just a few pages.
The best candidates for hiring a web designer:
- Have money to invest in web design services.
- Want to rank higher for specific keywords in search engine rankings.
- Already have a website and want to revamp it.
- Are engaged in a complete overhaul of their corporate culture and need their site to reflect the changes.
- Have an ecommerce site.
- Anticipate the need for a website with a substantial number of pages.
- Want to spend their time focusing on building their business, not learning web design.
- Operate a mid-size or large company.
Recognize yourself in any of these traits? Then it’s time to get started! And remember, if you start a DIY design and find yourself having problems, you can always call a trustworthy web designer to take over.