To D.I.Y or Not to D.I.Y – THAT is the Question

Doing it right the first time and opting for a professionally-designed website can offer you a far greater ROI in the long-term, saving you considerable time, frustration, and most importantly money.
The obvious appeal of a Do-It-Yourself website is the initial saving you’ll make by not hiring a professional Web Designer and Developer. Nowadays, there are umpteen D.I.Y website builders that allow you to use a range of templates and colours combined with your company’s logo.

While a website builder may help you get your site off the ground initially, don’t forget that your website is one of the most important representations of your brand.

A website is an unmissable opportunity for your company to convey its professionalism to your client base. Very often it’s a simple statement of confidence; if you’re willing to invest in your company, then so too will your customers.

The question you really need to be asking yourself is: Can you afford not to have a professional website? While savings in the short-term are appealing, a poorly designed website can lose you customers and sales in the long-term, and often, that’s worth a lot more than the money you’ll spend getting it right the first time.

Here are our Top 5 reasons why a professionally-designed website will benefit your business in the long run:

1) You understand the importance of professionalism

A professionally designed website suggests a company which is successful (i.e. has a good client base and is doing well) – which feeds into creating a trustworthy brand image in the eyes of prospective customers.

At the end of the day, people are far more likely to trust and buy from a professional-looking website than one which has been slapped together.
2) You want to be found

D.I.Y websites are commonly ranked far below properly professionally constructed websites.

One of the reasons for this is that Google now recognises overused templates and recycled code which are routinely used in free or generic D.I.Y websites and punishes such sites with much lower rankings (as compared to websites with code developed specifically for its own purposes). The inefficient coding of D.I.Y websites also results in longer loading times, another measure by which Google ranks your site.

You might have great content, but it will be of little use if no one is reading it!
3) You want to stand out from the competition

A website is a great way for your business to stand out from competitors (and demonstrate your superiority!)

Opting to use a D.I.Y website-builder gives you access to a limited number of website templates, and you’ll be fishing from the same pool as your competitors, which means you’ll most likely end up with a website that looks just like your competitors.

Sure, you can choose colours and themes, but there’s even a fine art to picking the right colours to elicit a favourable response from your web visitors.

Which ties into the next point…
4) You want to engage your customers

Your customers often want a lot more than simple information about your company and its products/services.

They want to peruse, purchase, download and interact in a host of ways. Free website builders lack many of these functionalities, which customers have come to expect.

When you purpose build your own website, you can customise the User Experience (UX) and streamline the navigation to create a seamless experience for your visitors/customers; something you simply can’t achieve through generic website builders.

Are you losing sales and customer confidence because people can’t find the information they are looking for on your site?

And finally…
5) You Want to Own Your Website

When you use a generic D.I.Y-website builder, you own the content you produce, but often you don’t actually own the website. Therefore, if you decide to switch to your own domain at a later point, your website may have to be redesigned from the ground up.

—————————————————————————————————————–

Doing it right the first time and opting for a professionally-designed website can offer you a far greater ROI in the long-term, saving you considerable time, frustration, and most importantly money, by preventing the need to re-build your website over and over again to get it right.

Choosing the right application, design, framework and UX for a specific purpose is something that is best left to the professionals. Getting the best results takes years of practice and experience!

If you want what’s best for your business image and growth, then consider consulting with a professional before embarking on your online journey!