So what is the harm in designing your own website for your business? If it saves you some money, then perhaps it wouldn't hurt to try to do it by yourself. Or perhaps it could cause more problems on the flip side. Here are 10 reasons that you should hire a professional web developer rather than trying to build your own website.

To save money and time - What seems easy may turn out to take longer than you expect. Let’s just say that you bill your clients at $100 per hour for the service that you provide. Let’s go ahead and also assume it takes you at the very least two hours per night for a week to build the website that you want for your business. Well in that same time period you could have made over $1,400 from billed hours and paid someone to handle the heartache for you. However, I have often spoken with small business owners who have spent many many more hours working on their own website to try and make it work or look how they wanted it. Many smart people are certainly capable of building their own site and learning the tools and the programming skills to make a website happen, though I would bet most small business owners could use that same time doing many more important things, without having to learn even the basics of another profession to accomplish something for their business. So the bottom line is that it is likely less expensive to hire a professional web developer than to take your valuable time to build your own small business website.

To take something off your plate - As a small business owner the last thing that you need is to wear another hat. As a small business owner myself I know that the wearing of many hats it is what tires me out the most rapidly. For instance, do you really want to figure out your own plumbing problems in the office? Or might it be resolved quicker and more accurately to hire a plumber to come fix the problem? There are some things that Small Business Owners must wear the hats for, but hiring someone to develop your website is an easy way to outsource something that really doesn’t need to be done by someone who knows the specific business inside and out as many hats surely do. And wouldn't it be nice to have someone else worry about the intricacies of your website, fix bugs, pull it all together, run tests, work on content, etc. So take something off of your plate and hire a professional web developer today!

To make sure you look professional - The best way to understand this concept is to consider that in our era, your website carries a similar weight to the front of your office / shop if not more. Would you try to build your own storefront? Well - if you were a contractor or carpenter perhaps, but for the most part this is not the best idea. You may know how to hammer a nail in to the wood, but you may not know the best way to support a structure or even what people are expecting from a contemporary storefront. Similar to this, while you may be able to build your own website, that does not mean that you should. The design and development of your website is vital to portray professionalism and “currentness”. You would not want someone to walk up to your office and run back to their car because it looks like it is falling down or even just because of an unappealing color - or what I like to call "keep on driving". To ensure that potential clients don’t click off of your website immediately due to a dated design or bug filled website, but instead your website would add credibility and professionalism to your entity, then it is best to hire a professional web developer. 

You get what you pay for - There are companies that offer a “professional web design” for $99 or a similar promotion. When you consider opportunities like this you should consider that you get what you pay for. A professional web design from a professional web developer will range from $1,500-$100,000 depending on who you hire, what you need done, and the requirements of the website. If you compare that to the offers for $99 then you would understand that you are not comparing apples to apples. For $99 you will not receive a custom design, but a template that many other people are using as well, that you just enter your data in to and put your logo on. Look at successful leaders in your industry and consider if they are running on a site that they purchased for $99. Additionally, these sites are likely not built on solid SEO architecture and many not fit your needs in only a little bit into the future. If your business expects to have a long life, and if you want your clients to think you are taking it seriously, then make sure that you invest in quality web development with a professional web developer.

It is a worthwhile investment - A professionally designed and developed website can last a really long time. I once had a client hunt me down after 10 years to add something to his website and he told me that it was amazing in 10 years he hadn’t needed anything fixed or changed on my end and that it was still looking good and running perfectly. While we want to compete and use some trends of web design, our ultimate goal is to be timeless and use preferences and styles that will last longer than the popular trends of this year. Therefore, if you are going to keep your website design for a long time (like my friend who is at 10 years and going), then you can see that the price you pay in the beginning can give you many years of a great website.

To make your site unique - Most people are doing their buying research online these days. If you want to be the one to win their spending dollars, then grabbing their attention on the internet is a great and easy way to do it. However, if your website looks like everyone else’s website then you will be lumped in the pack and will struggle to convert visitors to clients. If you hire a professional web developer, then you will receive a unique and custom website to represent the online presence of your business and wow your visitors into clicking on calls to action.

To be search engine optimized - While building a website is the big part of the puzzle, it won’t matter if no one can find your website. Building a website with SEO architecture and search engine optimized content is one of the biggest reasons that you should be running to your nearest professional web developer. While you can always purchase a monthly optimization service (and I recommend you do if you want to climb in the ranks at google), a monthly service is only as effective as the website that it is for. Without proper architecture and other optimizations, you may as well hang up your hat. Hiring a professional web developer will take this worry off your shoulders as you can be assured of having an expert managing your SEO worries.

To make money - In case you haven’t heard… 35% of consumers have admitted to not purchasing from a company due to a low quality website. That isn’t 35% of nerds or 35% of college students. That is 35% of consumers that were ready to make a buying decision and decided not to because of a low quality website. Consider how a professional website could increase your profits 35% - Consider your company’s profit last year and if an additional 35% would pay for the website in just the first year many times over. Remember - this is an investment - and your web design should last much longer than a year.

Staying ahead of the competition - If you are lucky enough to be in one of those industries where everyone uses homemade websites - then think about the difference web researchers would consider of you if you were the only one with a great professional contemporary web design. That should be an easy decision, as it would easily separate you from the pack. However, if you are not in one of those industries, you probably are already standing out if you do not have a professional web design, but not for the reasons that you want. Have you made it on my list of 13 ugly web designs? If so - give us a call and we have a special discount for you.

Bug Fixes - One of the most common issues is cross browser compatibility. Once the website is all set, you then need to take it to multiple browsers and multiple resolutions and multiple devices. You may not have the setup to complete these tests, in which case your website may not be showing up as you think it is to a good portion of your clients. In addition to the testing, would you have the programming knowledge to fix the bugs or want to take the time to learn? You can imagine why this is something that a professional web designer would be imperative for.

So - go ahead and hire a professional web developer - if you do not have one in mind, then please consider hiring us!