Many business owners, especially small business owners, have taken an interest in web designers as more companies have been moving or extending their business onto an online platform. As of 2021, 27.6% of the world population are shopping online. That may seem like a small percentage, but considering there are 7.74 billion people in the world, getting even 1% of digital shoppers to your site would bring your business to another level.
One thing that some business owners struggle with when moving their business online is getting people to come to their site. There is a lot of work that goes into creating, designing, and developing a website. When it comes to website building, business owners are often left with two options: Building a website by themselves, or hiring a web designer. This can often be a tough decision, which is why it is important to consider these four important aspects of building a website yourself vs hiring a website designer to help you and your business.
CONSIDER WHAT YOU WANT
When deciding on building a website yourself or hiring a web designer, it is firstly most important for you to know what you want your website to do. How many pages do you want? Do you want people who visit your website to be able to purchase stuff? Do you want to have a blogging platform? Do you need people to fill out a form or create a profile? Do you want a generic or unique looking website?
Build a website by yourself will require you to need a website building tool to work with such as Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress. These are the top three most used web design tools used by people who have built their own website, and web designers. You would need to learn how to use one of these website building tools in order to build your website. You can read this article to learn more about the website building tools and how to choose the best one for you and your website. After choosing a website building tool, you would then, depending on the functionalities you would like your website to perform, would need to learn how to add plugins that allow you to make a purchase, blog, or fill out a form if that is what you need for your website.
If you were to hire a web designer, you wont need to learn about website building tools that will work best for your website. You wouldn’t need to figure out how to add plugins to make your website function the way you wish. You would just need to know what you wish for your website to have. It is also a web designers job to know the ins and outs of website building, which gives a web designer the opportunity to give your website more of a unique look.
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU HAVE
The next aspect to consider when deciding to either build a website yourself or hire a web designer is time. Building a good effective website takes a lot of time, and even more if you have no experience with website building. If you are not going for the most unique and developed website, you can do the bare minimum and that wont take away much from your day. But designing and implementing a good website takes time and you would need to devote hours into tweaking, coding, and typing for your website.
What many people who’ve decided to build a website themselves have failed to realize is that after you’ve completed building your website, the real work begins. You will need to stay consistent with updates, weather that means daily blogs or keeping your product description up to date. You will have to take many hours out of your day to work on your website.
Will all of this work end up distracting you from running and growing your website? If yes, you may wanna reconsider hiring a web designer. A web designer builds and designs websites for a living and can, theoretically, have your website finished within a fraction of the time it would take you to do it yourself. This would possibly also give you the chance to focus more on evolving and growing your business.
SITE MAINTANANCE
The third point to consider is site maintenance. As mentioned in the point before, a good site requires continuous maintenance and updates to keep it fresh and trendy. To build a website yourself, you will need useful website tools to help you if or when your site starts having troubles. You will need an understanding of code errors, broken links, and corrupted database files if your website ever gets busy as these are common errors that occur.
Hiring a web designer allows you to not worry about the maintenance of your website because that would be their job as well. Most professional web designers are hired to design, monitor and maintain your business website, which can save you and your website visitors a lot of pain in the long run. Web designers perform more than one service and can quickly troubleshoot and resolve issues that might arise with your website.
HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO SPEND
The final and, usually, the biggest factor into deciding whether or not you want to build a website yourself or hire a web designer is finances. As most know, web designers are not cheap, but you can sometimes find a web designer or a web design agency that is capable of working within your budget.
That being said, building a website yourself would save you lots of money. You could use the free memberships of website building tools like Wix or WordPress. Then continue to use their free templates and plugins in order to get your website up and running. But while these free programs may work well in the beginning, if you are trying to build a professional business website, it will take a lot more than a “pick a template and go” motive for your business to grow. Your business’s website will be the face of your business, and it should have more to it then the generic templates and functions.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, building a website yourself will save you money and that is the only uppermost hand there is with building a website yourself vs hiring a web designer. You will need to dedicate endless hours learning how to use website building and designing tools, then many more hours maintaining your website on a daily basis. If you are only using free memberships and templates, your website will look very similar to sites across the web. Free plans give you a lot, but not enough for you to freely create the website you truly desire.
A web designer designs websites for a living. They have the time to devote to your website and because this is most likely their livelihood, they can accomplish what would take you many hours, half the time. Web designers will maintain your website for you so that you can focus on growing your business in other aspects. Hiring a web designer will bring more benefits for you and your business. Read this article to find some tips on how to choose the right web design agency for you or visit us at Caiden Media to get started today.
