What Sandy must do? Her family owns one large field nursery and few container nurseries. It’s their family business since a long time; now they want taking it to online space. There are too many customers out there in web. For that, they need a business website.
She asked few of her friends, who were into online businesses, and most of them advised her to do everything on her own starting from the design. That would keep the cost low. After all, website design is no rocketry; and they all did the same way. However, when she checked with an online web hosting consultant, he simply advised the opposite – go for a professional designer. What she should do? As a fresh business school pass out, her family values what she thinks.
Just like Sandy, too many of us suffer from similar dilemma. There are so many theme and effects and tutorials and free tools; do we really need to pay professional web designers? How they can add extra to our business sites that we cannot even think about?
We have 7 answers to this single question. Read on.
1. Participate in web design competition
In online business we need footfall or traffic, whatever you say. Any decent way, which brings in visitors, is welcome to us. Professionally designed websites have better chance to stand out in web design competitions and design galleries. The more visibility at galleries will attract visitors to your site. They might not be your direct customer at first, but if you sell something real useful they will share the information and bring prospects to your business.
2. Unique first impression counts
Every week we, on an average, visit dozens of new sites. Every day, hundred thousands of new pages are added to websites. We honestly don’t have time and patience to go through all of them. Instead, we try to remember only those, who interest us. Even among them, we narrow down the choice further to only useful and visually pleasant sites. So, your site has to be unique in design. Only true professional designers can achieve that feat.
3. Speak out your expertise
Following the last argument, we further narrow down our interest set to only those few who solve our problem with expertise. So, to succeed in online business your website must highlight your expertise; that’s the key to success. People facing problem don’t want fiddling with options. They want immediate and reliable solution. So, there is no point in cliffhanger statements. Come down straight to the point – what’s there for your customers. Only a professional can handle this challenge comfortably. Armatures often end up talking too much and conveying too less.
4. Better design bring in more sales
Between two similar products, we buy one which draws our eyes most. Better design takes care of customers’ eyes. Visitors, who find your website easy to handle, fast loading and friendly, would visit more often. That means you get more chances to convert them into customers. This is nothing but number game. Better the input, better the output would be.
5. Uniform browsing and least bug
We don’t know what prospects are seeing and how they are seeing. There are too many of web browsers and every one of them has some unique display features. One particular website might look dull on Chrome, but won’t look less than stunner on IE. As long as you don’t have control over visitors’ browser choice, it is better to design keeping all the browsers in mind. This is a professional task. Besides, with pro-designers you get least bugs and errors. That saves time.
6. Reduced maintenance time
Professionally designed websites are easier to maintain and clean up. So, you don’t need to waste time in bizarre web maintenance jobs. Instead, you can invest majority of your time in traffic building and content management. Least bug and easy maintenance keep your web pages running for most of the time. So, you never miss any visitor.
7. Search engine visibility
Every hardcore search engine optimizer agrees that design plays prominent role in any successful SEO drive. Well designed webpage bring in traffic. More traffic sends positive signal to search engines and they improve your page rank. This helps your organic SEO. So, professional designers save your marketing dollars on PPC campaigns.
We know Sandy handed over the task to a professional designer. She is happy with the result. What are you doing?
I agree with this article 100% pretty much everything you stated rings true. I work as a web designer/developer for a professional company and we get maintenance jobs all the time from clients who build there own sites. They can be an absolute nightmare! We always browser check and validate all of our websites as well as passing a ton of internal standards before our sites are deemed suitable! Sounds like a pain but it’s not to hard once you’ve been doing it a while.
First and foremost you go to a web professional because he is the professional. He has the knowledge and the experience to make the most out of the presence on the internet for you. If everybody used free tools, themes and such, there would be no web professionals today.
The other problem is clients are absolutely clueless and yet they believe they can make credible design decisions that ultimately hurt the purpose of the website and therefore their own business, as if you would go to your mechanic and tell him how to fix your car.
Web design competitions or “spec work” is bad for you if you are a client becuse the sole purpose of a web design competition is to impress you as a client. The website is designed to win your subjective approval and not designed for the best user experience of your target audience, your visitors. It is not designed to be funcional nor usable and those are the true goals of your website.
Web design is not about making pretty websites, web design is about solving business problems.
@Milan, I agree with you, and yes web design is about solving business problem, not just about pretty but it also functionality
There is nothing worse than know enough to be dangerous.
I made sites for clients with CMS so they can modify it, but most messy sites are the ones that people with low knowledge made themselves