People visit your website first to learn about your business. Potential customers are hard-wired to make quick judgements, so you only have a matter of seconds to make a great first impression.
People are judging your website by its cover. What does your website say about you? Do words like credible, professional, and trustworthy come to mind?
Maybe your website comes across as an obvious quick DIY project that’s amateur and unfinished. That is not the right impression to give anyone.
While quality content is key to bringing visitors to your site, framing that content in really bad design could send visitors away before they even begin to read.
No one will ever know how incredible your services are if your website is turning them away because of bad design.
Are you sending them right into the arms of your competition?
Studies about visual complexity of websites found that websites with a clean design and familiar navigation styles attracted more users.
DIY Website: Bad For Business?
Your website is an important investment so it’s nothing to take lightly. Your business cannot afford to have a bad web presence.
Your website needs to look professional with a great user experience that’s easy to navigate. Your website needs to get visitors to contact you. You want your website to be found on Google.
Do you know how to design all of that?
There’s so much more to building and maintaining your own website.
- SEO: You think you know the basics, but in reality you’re leaving your search engine presence to chance. And talk about constantly changing! Search engines change their rules all the time. What worked last month might not work this month. (A pro understands search engine optimization and getting ranked well on Google.)
- Constant Updates: The web is changing and evolving. That means there are always new Google guidelines, critical security updates, and new design trends. (A pro stays on top of it and will make adjustments accordingly.)
- Support: Good luck with this one. A DIY website means you’re the support. You need to fix your website bugs. You need to manage updates… which usually results in more bugs. (A pro is your support and they handle the headaches, not you.)
- Cost: Most website builders advertise that you can build a free website. This fact rarely holds true. It might start out free-ish, but the next thing you know, you’re paying higher monthly fees than your budget can support. (A pro will charge a one-time fee to build your website and bill you only when you asked for their help.)
You Might Have Design Limitations
First off, design is not something you can simply pick up in an hour or two. You need to be creative. You need to have the right tools for creating appealing visuals.
Great images will help boost conversion rates, but there’s a catch: Not any old stock image will do. Most DIY site builders come with stock photos, but people don’t want to see those (again).
There has to be a real personality to your website, one that matches your brand.
- How do my visuals look?
- How do my images make people feel?
- Do my visuals build trust?
What About Your Competitors?
If your competitor paid a local designer to build them a professional website, their website probably looks better and works better than yours.
Your competitor understands the importance of quality and supporting a local business. That’s why they chose to pay a local web designer instead of doing it themselves.
If a competitor’s website looks superior, who do you think potential customers will contact?
Where Does Your DIY Money Go?
Your DIY site builder incurs some kind of fees which you pay without thinking twice.
But wait. Have you ever wondered which community your website fees are supporting? It’s probably not too local.
- Wix: Tel Aviv, Israel
- Shopify: Ontario, Canada
- Weebly: San Francisco, California
- Squarespace: New York, New York
Wouldn’t you rather put that money back into your local economy by supporting a local business?
Friends Don’t Let Business Friends Make Bad DIY Sites
I just can’t let my friends exert all their energy into building a website.
A business owner’s time is much better spent doing what they do best, and that’s running their amazing business.
As a web designer, I can offer a professional design, expert guidance, fast support, full control of your website content, and a site that gets noticed by Google.
Your high-quality website will generate enough traffic and income to pay for itself.
