Take a moment to think about how vital your website is for increasing your company’s brand awareness. The content you post goes a long way towards strengthening customer trust and loyalty, not to mention that it helps to establish you as an expert within your industry. But if the design of your website fails, your ability to do any of these things—and more—fails as well.
Now, it may not seem that difficult to put up a basic website, but trying to do this on your own and having it look good is not a simple undertaking. Here are some signs that you should hire a professional to create or update your website:
When you need a more professional looking website.
If you attempt to design a website on your own, you’ll be limiting yourself to a few basic templates, making your website look like thousands of other websites. A professional will be able to create a custom website that is tailored to your company, helping to design a unique and professional aesthetic that will provide visitors with a great first impression—something that’s incredibly important to keeping visitors from leaving your website right away.
When you’re tired of your current website’s technical problems.
If you aren’t a professional web designer or developer, odds are your website is going to run into all kinds of maintenance issues that you’ll have no idea how to fix. In fact, you’ll probably end up on Google for hours searching for solutions. A professional will avoid a number of problems that could arise in the first place due their knowledge and experience in the field, and even if they do run into any issues, they’ll know how to solve them right away.
When your current website runs too slow.
People do not have patience when it comes to the Internet. If the pages on your website don’t load within a matter of seconds, visitors will furiously click on the back button. Speed matters. But do you know how to make your website faster? A professional will be very familiar with numerous ways to make your website faster. They’ll know how to test the speed of your site as well.
When your website isn’t getting any visitors.
Part of a good website strategy is the use of search engine optimization. A good web development will know how to optimize your website properly in order to help increase the exposure of your company on Google’s search pages. The more people that visit your website, the more potential customers you have.
When your website needs to be mobile-friendly.
Mobile devices recently surpassed the desktop as the main way to access the Internet—not surprising considering how many people own smartphones and tablets and how often they use them. This means that your website needs to be optimized properly so that it can be viewed no matter what device it’s accessed from. Without responsive design, visitors are going to have all kinds of issues accessing your website from their mobile devices, from loading problems to text that appears way too small to the inability to click on links, just to name a few possible problems. A professional will ensure that your website can be viewed as it should be no matter what device it’s visited on by implementing responsive design.
When you’re ready to make a long term investment in your business’s success.
Time is money, which means that all of the time you are spending trying to figure out how to design your own website and dealing with the many problems that pop up during the process, you could be spending on business-related matters to help your company on other fronts. So really, you’re wasting time and money on the DIY approach.
By handing off the responsibility of your custom web design and development to a professional, you not only save time and money—you could potentially make more money as well. For example, a professional digital agency can set up your e-commerce page so that when a customer makes a purchase, you can upsell a similar or complementary product to them before or right after they check out.
While we can’t guarantee these results with every professional, we recommend that you do your research to make sure you’re making the right choice.
