With all the free and cheap website builders on the market, today should you even bother hiring a professional? Or is building your website yourself a better option f? We will answer that question and more in this article for you so read on and get your notepad.
What are Free website builders and build-it-yourself software?
Over the years many easy-to-use website builders have emerged. Wix, GoDaddy, and Squarespace to name a few. These companies host millions of customer-created websites yearly. Most of these website builders begin with free plans with the option of upgrading to premium paid plans for additional features. And best of all the interface for these builders is easy to use which makes it appealing to DIY’ers. (Do It Yourselfers). But is there a catch to this? Let’s clear this up a bit by looking at the advantages compared to the disadvantages.
Advantages of Building a website yourself
There are several advantages to building a website yourself. So, let’s look at a few:
- Cost
- Quick
- Easy to build
- You’re in control
Cost
The cost to build a website yourself can be a huge deciding factor for most. Some website builders can cost little or nothing to build a simple website with them. To as low as a few dollars per month.
Quick
Many website builders allow you to build a website rather quickly. Some, as quickly as minutes or just a few hours.
Easy to build
The interface for the free website builders is relatively easy to use. And as such many personal website users may opt to use them.
You’re in control
Building your website, yourself can give you that feeling of accomplishment, knowing you did all the work yourself. Or at least some of it yourself. If you like taking on new tasks and learning new skills, then this might appeal to you. But are there some drawbacks to these advantages? Let’s Have a look.
Disadvantages of building a website yourself
- Hidden Cost
- Bad Performance
- Poor Appearance
- Lack of Support
- Limited Website
- Time Consuming
Hidden Costs
Although many website builders promote free or low-budget services these are rarely enough to build a complete website. Also “free” may actually mean a free trial before steep monthly changes are applied later on. Additionally, there are costs to maintaining a website. This usually catches new web owners by surprise.
Bad Performance
Self-build or free website builders may affect you in the long run because they contain major design flaws. Not on the appearance side but on the performance side. Because they contain serious design flaws that affect SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Effectively making it difficult for customers or viewers to find your website on the internet. Finally, these DIY website builders are hosted on a cheap shared web host (to cut costs) that slows down your website. This means slower load times and poor customer experience for potential customers.
Poor Appearance
Remember the saying Don’t Judge a book by its cover? Well, most website visitors judge a website by its cover. To be more specific most users decide within a few seconds of visiting a web page if they are going to stay or leave. That is why it is important that the look and feel of your website truly professionally represent your brand.
Template website builders use a one size fits all approach that can leave your website looking Poorly designed. Or worse, looking just like other thousands if not millions of websites created with the same template. How would that make your brand appear to your customers/viewers?
Lack of support
When you build your website yourself you are essentially your webmaster. This means that all the technical support responsibilities are in your hands. You could seek support from your website builders. But don’t be surprised if this support is lacking or non-existent.
Limited website
Free website builders offer very limited design capabilities for building a website. This could leave your website with a basic design and functionality. This may be okay if you just want a simple website to put yourself on the market. But for professionals and businesses that may want additional features like bookings and eCommerce you will need more.
Time Consuming
It takes time to build a website. It takes time to edit and manage a website. And if you have never built a website before then guess what? It takes time and dedication to learn how to build a website. That’s if you want to build the best website possible to professionally represent your brand. Finally, building and managing a website yourself will take valuable time from working on other things. Like your business or producing more content.
As you have realized building a website yourself may be more difficult than you initially thought. Just like with other services sometimes it may just be best to get a professional to handle all the hassle. While you take care of other things you enjoy doing. But now that we know the advantages and disadvantages of building a website yourself. Let’s look at hiring a professional website designer.
Why hire a professional designer?
If your purpose in building a website is to represent your business or brand professionally. Then hiring a web designer is important. Your website designer should be able to work with you to bring your ideas to life the way you would want. While ensuring that your website will perform optimally and is readily accessible to Search engines. Here are a few advantages to hiring a website designer.
Advantages of hiring a Web Designer
- Custom designs
- Enhanced Performance
- Good Support
- Time
Custom Designs
A website designer should be able to provide custom professionally designed websites that provide a good user experience. This means that your website will be unique, easy to navigate, and incorporates your overall brand. A custom design will make your brand stand out to visitors and potential customers aiding in meeting your goals. Whether that is to drive more leads or gain more customers/clients your website designer should be able to work with you.
Enhanced Performance
Working with a professional designer has its perks. Your designer will know the best web hosting to use for your website. As well as how to structure your website for optimal performance. High-quality web hosting will allow your website to load quickly. Vastly improving your overall customer experience. Additionally, your designer will have some SEO (search engine optimization) knowledge. And will be able to firstly structure your website to be easily found by search engines. Secondly, your designer can advise you on the best practices or ways to improve your search rankings over time.
Good Support
When you hire a web designer if anything should happen to your website you can always contact them. They should provide support and fix the problem or help you walk through the steps on fixing the problem. This provides that added peace of mind in knowing that you have professionals on your team to help if needed. That’s of course if you’re on their maintenance package or website care package as we call it.
Time
Last but not least time. You may be wondering why hiring a website designer saves you time or how is time an advantage? Well considering all the time it would take to learn how to build a website yourself and then actively do the work. It could be very time-consuming. However, your website designer will already know how to get the job done in a faster time than you could. Additionally, hiring a designer will save you the time of designing a website. Essentially allowing you to focus on other more important tasks in your business or life.
Disadvantages of hiring a web designer
The disadvantages to hiring a website designer to build your website for you are:
- Cost
- Finding a good designer
Cost
The first disadvantage to hiring a web designer is cost. And it depends on how you look at it. Yes, initially you may be paying more than if you opted to build it yourself. But you will be paying for a professional service, just like if you hired an accountant or a carpenter.
Finding a Good Designer
Another disadvantage is finding a competent designer to build your website for you. Here is a short list of things to look out for when hiring a designer.
Look at their previous – Check out some of their previous work, if possible, to get a feel of the type of service they offer.
Ask questions – Don’t be afraid to ask questions during the initial interview a good web designer should be willing to share information with you.
Check reviews or other social proof- sometimes it helps to see what others think so check their reviews and other social proof.
Check their website – A quality website designer should have a professional-looking website after all. Stay away from web designers with no website or poorly built websites for themselves.
Avoid offers that seem too good to be true – Follow your feelings. If it feels too good to be true, often it is. Avoid designers that make impossible promises. Like guaranteeing to rank your website #1 on google.
Fortunately, if you found this article while looking for a competent web designer then you’re in luck. We offer professional web design services to get you online in style. Contact us for more information or visit our services page.
Conclusion
When it comes to building a new website for nonprofessional DIY it may be better to build your website yourself. But for those who need higher quality websites, especially businesses, hiring a web designer will be the best option. Both in the short term and especially the long term.
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