Should I Design My Own Website?

In this day and age of customizable website templates, online website builder software, and cookie-cutter done for you site layouts, you may be tempted to handle your own website design yourself, and become one of your own website designers. Let’s examine if this approach makes sense for the average small business owner.

First, if you have a heavy background in the following five crucial areas, the answer to the above question may be a qualified “yes.”

  1. Html and css coding
  2. Marketing and advertising
  3. Design
  4. SEO (search engine optimization)
  5. Writing

You see, those are the five most basic and necessary skills required to design and build an effective website that accomplishes all of a small business’s most vital objectives. After all, you want a website that:

  • looks attractive;
  • sells your product or service for you 24/7;
  • informs your site visitors about your product or service;
  • gives the search engines, like Google, exactly what they require to rank your web pages highly;
  • functions flawlessly so as not to frustrate your visitors.

Phew! That’s a lot for a website to have to accomplish, and these are the bare minimum requirements! Can you see that, even for someone who possesses all or most of the above skills, designing and building an effective website is an arduous and time consuming process? Honestly, it may best be left to a professional web designer, wouldn’t you agree?

Let’s look at each of the things you want your website to do, one at a time:

First, you want a site that looks attractive. For many of your customers, your website’s landing page is the very first impression they will have of you and your business. If the page is ugly, looks clunky, or just doesn’t fit the image you want to project, that’s not helping your business. This is too important to leave to anyone who doesn’t understand what makes a good looking webpage.

Second, your website will be a silent salesperson for you, working on your behalf 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Can you afford to leave it in the hands of anyone who doesn’t have a thorough understanding of internet marketing, or of marketing in general? Do you know how to motivate your visitors to take a particular action, such as to pick up the phone and call you, when they visit your site? If not, once again, this is a task best left to a pro.

Third, your website needs to inform your visitors, who are potential clients or customers, about your product or service. This is where writing comes in, and writing effective web content is a skill like any other. It can be developed with practice, but wouldn’t your time be better spent working on your business? After all, that’s where you are the expert.

Fourth, an effective website is designed with the search engines in mind. You want your website to rank highly for the search terms, phrases, and keywords that your ideal clients or customers are likely to be searching for, right? Knowing how to give Google and the rest exactly what they are looking for is the job of a professional who is trained and experienced in SEO.

Finally, building a website is highly technical, so your site works flawlessly and doesn’t frustrate visitors. This requires coding skills, experience, and technical know-how that most don’t have. Don’t make the tragic mistake of thinking you will “pick it up” as you go along. That can wind up costing you a lot more in lost sales than the upfront cost of a professionally designed and tuned website.

Hopefully, this article makes sense to you. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Tom Dunn at Lucidpage at 843-360-9658.