Should you DIY your website or hire a professional agency?

Do it yourself, aka DIY, is a huge buzzword these days. People are doing everything from home renovation to 3D printing medical devices. Sometimes doing it yourself is a great idea. It can become a hobby, a passion, or even a career. Other times, however, it can lead to frustration, wasted time and money, and eventually hiring a specialist to get the job done. Just like building a piece of furniture from scratch, building a website on your own (especially for those without any knowledge or experience in the space) can have a steep learning curve. There are several considerations when it comes to building a website for your business that are often overlooked. Many businesses start with a simple one page site that they can build themselves on a self service platform. A logo, a contact form and some information like hours of operation are all you really need, right? At first, maybe that is true. Yet over time as a business grows, the needs from the website grows as well. Perhaps you want to start selling products on it and integrate with an ecommerce platform like Shopify. That’s easy enough. Then you want to add on a booking plugin for appointments. Eventually, the website can get trickier to troubleshoot when things go wrong. Things start to look like they don’t belong, since it is not always easy to style a plugin to match your brand.

Is hiring an agency right for you?

Time and again, the choice between building and maintaining it yourself or hiring a professional agency to do the work for you leaves one clear answer: agencies come out as the clear winner in terms of professionalism, legitimacy, convenience and efficiency. In this article, we will take a look at the advantages of hiring a professional web design firm over doing it yourself.

In this digital age, the last thing you want is to have a finicky online presence. Whether that means a website that is generally outdated, is missing critical information, or is just hard to navigate, your brand is being reflected by the quality of your site. While it can be better to have “something rather than nothing”, having an unfinished website or one that can’t be integrated with your third party tools like booking, contact forms, etc might actually be hurting your business! Having whole pages with broken links and/or widgets throwing error messages at your visitors while they are trying to check out from your store will deter people from doing business with you.

Your website might be the first or only interaction a customer has with your business. If it is not in tip top shape, then potential customers are receiving a less than ideal first impression and existing customers can have a negative experience. Creating your own website on a “DIY” platform such as Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, etc means that you are responsible for the design, initial launch of your site, making sure it is up to date, maintained, responsive, and trustworthy. Unless you have a background in the arts, computer science, or have actively built and maintained websites in the past, chances are that your website will have trouble competing with professionally designed and developed ones.

What can an agency do to help my brand?

An agency can help build and maintain your online brand and presence. A professional web development agency can ensure that your website is easy to navigate, beautiful, responsive to mobile devices, and functional for your unique business needs. If issues arise, they will be available to fix it immediately. That leaves you with more time to do what you do best, and less time trying to figure out error messages or plugins that aren’t working. In addition to keeping your site functional at all times, they will point out ways to increase brand consistency across other online platforms such as social media, review sites, email marketing and more.

Not only does a good agency come in handy when things go down, but they also help to make sure that things do not go down in the first place. You might not be a web development expert, but they are. A lot is to be said for getting it right the first time. Any professional web developer will be sure to put safeguards in place such as daily backups, regular checks on plugins and versions of things so that your site does not go down. A website is like a house- leave construction of the foundation to the experts. It is absolutely crucial that your website is built correctly so that it is scalable, consistent, and fully secure for your business and your customers.

Focus on your business and work with someone who has experience making brands look great

When you try to build your website yourself, you are limited in a multitude of ways. Are you going to design on the fly? Do you have photo editing experience? How about html, css, and javascript? Will you be able to translate the vision in your head into a live, functional website? Without knowledge of web development best practices, you will be stuck with a plug-and-play website builder with limited capabilities. This means you only have a handful of layouts, styles, and functionality to work with. Working with professionals gives you unlimited customization, where your only limit is your imagination. Focus on what you know best- your brand, and guide your web designers to showcase your company how you want to be seen by your potential customers. You will end up with a much cleaner, more structured, professional website that represents the brand you have worked so hard to build.

Working with an agency is an investment in your business

Hiring an agency may seem a daunting task financially, but, all-in-all, it will actually save you money. The up-front costs will be made back by the business you will attract and protect with your powerful online presence and marketing capabilities. You can focus on your business. People usually turn to an agency eventually, after trying themselves and losing business as a result of trying to DIY this all-important piece of their business function. When you DIY your site, you are gambling with your existing customers loyalty, and you are also risking your potential new customer base. People want to shop with companies that exude professionalism. If someone comes across your website and it looks like you put little effort into it (even if you put a lot of effort in but did it yourself with little expertise), they are extremely likely to pass your company by in favor of the next that they come across with a professional online presence. Regardless of the work you do, many customers will only ever see your storefront- in this case, your website. You should think of your website as you would a brick-and-mortar store. It is your literal online real estate, and should embody everything you want to convey to your customers about your company and brand. Leave it up to a professional agency when it comes to taking care of what matters most to your business- your image, presentation, and the convenience and efficiency that you offer those who do business with you.

Working with an agency is an investment in your business

If you would like to learn more about positioning your business to succeed in this digital age, please contact us at hello@rightbraindesigns.com. We would be glad to discuss everything you and your business needs to know about having a consistent and professional online presence.

Aaron Kaplan

Aaron J Kaplan is a student of the English language and its literature. A copywriter by day, at night he works on his more artistic ventures. He writes fiction and is a published poet. You can contact him via Instagram at AaronJKaplanWriter.