The biggest issue I see in the website design world today is that businesses are trying to find ways to either get a free website or design it themselves. Sure it might save money or be a great skill to learn, but is the time put in really worth the result? Can your website do everything you need/want it to do? Your website is the face of your business. If it doesn’t look professional or have all the necessary functionality, then you may lose potential customers. Are you just looking for some tips to know how to design shopify website? Then again, why are you trying to design a website yourself? My father has this saying, “You wouldn’t hire a clown to fix a leak in the john.”. Which of course is his comedic way of saying that you always want to hire a professional. In your business, you wouldn’t hire someone who knows nothing about sales to sell your product in stores. You wouldn’t hire a person going through bankruptcy to be your accountant. You wouldn’t hire Bernie Madoff to be in charge of your employee’s retirement plans. Why then do business owners try to create their online experience without a designer, developer, or social media manager? Business owners have 3 reasons they avoid a professional website designer: cost, control, and impulse/speed. This is understandable, but with the right research, you can find cheap or free web design components like on Fontspace, where there are free downloads for tons of fonts that you can use to give a good first impression of your website to your customers.
1. Cost
The first, and biggest, reason that business owners avoid a professional website designer is because of cost. Business owners typically will find a “free website builder” or “choose a template” type of website for their company. These business owners believe that this is saving them a lot of money because they do not have to pay a designer. However, they don’t realize what they truly are getting: a basic design (that millions of others can use because it is free) and no functionality/features. Also, there is usually branding involved where your website will have some sort of advertisement on it. It’s usually something like, “Built at www.examplewebsite.com, get your free website like this person did today!”. Do you really want to have advertisements displaying that your company has a free website? If you were going to do that then you mine as well put something on there that says, “Our business doesn’t want to put in time or money into our online business”.
Business owners love that they get a website for cheap and that is exactly what the website is – cheap. Your website visitors will know this immediately. These “free website builder” or “choose a template” websites aren’t good for your business because they do not provide functionality. Sure, you can add your business information, maybe photos, maybe videos but can you accept payments? Can you sell online digital products? Can you entice potential buyers by showing them your products? (complete with dimensions, details, pricing, and coupons) Is the website responsive? (which is when websites automatically size themselves to the device that the user is on; whether it be a phone, computer, tablet, etc.) Are they going to charge you for domain and hosting? Do they set a limit on how much space your website can use? Can you setup email addresses for your company’s employees? Can you create logins and employee only areas on the website? All of these questions need to be considered because when you choose these free or template options you are taking those things away from your online business. If you take these extra things out then what is the advantage to having a website? It’s great for people to be able to find your location but what about repeat visitors? What about online sales?
Most business owners are worried about how much it would cost to have a website designed and maintained by a professional company. Website designers typically have two ways of charging for a website. The first way is a design company will charge for the design of the website (i.e. a “setup fee”) and then charge for the maintenance on either an hourly or monthly basis. Basically, “maintenance” is a term designers use for any changes you want to make to your website. The second way that website designers charge, which is how we do it here at Web Centre, is to charge a set monthly rate. This monthly rate saves companies a lot of money and makes the charges simple and easy to understand (One monthly rate that is paid each month and never changes).
I will never understand companies who want to save money on a website by doing it themselves. Would you try to construct the building you do business out of? No, you would hire a construction company – in the hopes that your location would be more attractive than your competitor’s location. So, why wouldn’t you do the same online? If you are thinking about designing your own website, it is a good idea to think about a web hosting service. There are many services out there for example, there are services like https://www.hostiserver.com/ that you might be interested in having a look at.
2. Control
The second reason that business owners avoid a professional website designer is because of control. Control is something a business owner always wants to have. I’ve had clients that will really want to control the website end-to-end. This means everything from header color and menu layout to photo locations and text alignment. Control is a hard thing to give up because as a business owner you want to be able to have things a specific way, be able to change these things whenever you can, and you want to feel comfortable with it.
Having a lack of control of your website is not an excuse in today’s world. Here at Web Centre we have websites in which the business owner and employees can login to the website and make edits to the website themselves. This is something that your website can implement because it gives you the freedom to add pages, edit pages, change out content, add blog posts, and much more. So, if you’re not hiring a designer because you want to maintain control over the website – that’s just an excuse, because it can be done.
3. Impulse/Speed
This doesn’t happen often, but sometimes you’ll be in a rush to publish a website for your company. This typically happens when you are a new company and just want to get something up for the world to see. This also happens when a company has been in business long before the internet came along and they just want to “get their toes wet” with a website. This is usually the biggest mistake I see companies make. 70% of my business that I have gained in the past few years have been clients with websites that haven’t changed in the past 2-3 years. They are business owners who are very unhappy with their website. This happens because when you publish something fast it is likely to be forgotten. Don’t let your urge to complete something force you to create or finish something that is inferior. If you’re purchasing a “Do-It-Yourself” website where you can “build it in 15 minutes”, like some of these places advertise, then how much care really went in to the designing and implementation of that website? Is it better than your competitor’s website?Don’t be impulsive and purchase a website just because you’ll be able to get online fast. When businesses publish these things fast, they end up not liking the result of their website. Also, if it is published in this fashion, it is likely that not much can be done with it in terms of functionality because of its quick development. You should never sacrifice quality just so you can produce something quicker. Your website is the face of your business and if you put something on the web very fast and it is not good then customers will know. So, being patient until you have a great website developed is the best bet.
I’ll leave you with this:
Your website is the face of your business. If it doesn’t look professional or have all the necessary functionality then you will lose potential customers. Your website is like any other important aspect of your business. For example, you wouldn’t risk not having a credit card machine at your physical location because that would limit the amount of business you could do. So, why would you sacrifice any detail on your website? If you are gaining website visitors, why not have a virtual credit card machine, or have all your products listed on the website, or offer them a coupon. If you would do it in your store, you need to do it on your website.
Clients of mine that have embraced their online business have made thousands upon thousands of dollars every month because they are doing everything to reach customers online. DIY websites, templates, and other means do not allow you to successfully gain new business and create a great user experience for customers online.
