Do It Yourself or Hire a Pro: How to Make a Decision

The way you represent your business to the online audience can make or break your company.

That’s why choosing whether to design the site yourself or to hire a professional is such an important decision. Chances are that if you’re considering designing your company’s website on your own, you’re familiar with HTML, at least one programming language, graphics software, artistic design, and the principles of site navigation. If you’re not, then your decision is already made – hire a pro! The results you’ll get from paying an expert will blow away anything that you could do with a template and a how-to book.

But if you believe you have the skills to feasibly design a sleek and functional website, read on for more considerations to weigh when deciding whether to design your company’s website on your own or hire the job out to a professional.

1. Budget

It will absolutely be cheaper to design your website yourself than to hire a professional, so financial considerations should definitely impact your decision. If you are able to pay for an expert’s help, thoroughly research the professionals that you’re considering. There’s nothing worse – and no quicker way to waste money – than paying for a professional web design only to receive an unoriginal product or run into constant and costly delays.

If you’d like to save money but don’t feel completely confident in your ability to design the entire website yourself, consider doing as much as you can on your own and then paying a professional to consult and perhaps tweak only the design or the navigation. This strategy will save you money while also taking advantage of a pro’s expertise.

2. Time

So you’d like to design your business’ website on your own, but you’re also the owner, chief financial officer, director of operations, etc. If you’ve got a one-person company or a similarly small business, chances are that you’ll struggle to fit the job of web designer onto your already full plate. Since you don’t want to shirk your day-to-day responsibilities or compromise on the site, it will probably be most effective to hire a professional.

However, if you could conceivably shift responsibilities to focus full-time on web design, then by all means go for it! As long as the person or people who are taking over your usual duties won’t be incredibly overwhelmed, the savings from doing it yourself will undoubtedly help compensate for the period of short-handedness.

3. Design Originality

One of the easiest ways to design your own website is to customize a purchasable, pre-fab template. But no matter how much you change the colors or the navigation options, a template is still a template. The risk here is that your site will end up looking a lot like many other sites, and that’s not good when it comes to making your company stand out. Paying a professional to avoid the use of templates will guarantee that your site design is unique and memorable.

But if you’re confident in your ability to build a site from scratch, then it doesn’t make sense to pay a professional designer. In this case, doing it yourself is the way to go!

4. SEO Familiarity

Search engine optimization, or the process of improving a website’s ranking in search engine results, has become a vital web design tool. If you’ve never heard this term before and you care about your website’s visibility, then stop reading right now and start looking for a professional. Incorporating SEO into your website’s design can be crucial to your site’s success, and an expert will know exactly how to go about this process.

However, there are plenty of self-taught SEO experts out there. If you’ve got the time and inclination, learning the principles of SEO prior to designing your website can make doing it yourself a much more viable option.

5. Marketing Familiarity

The whole point of a website is to sell your company and its products or services to an online audience. Incorporating marketing principles into your website’s design is vital, so if you’re unfamiliar with basic concepts then it’s probably best to hire a professional who has made a living off applying marketing techniques to website design.

But if you’ve got a marketing background, then it will be a snap to incorporate that knowledge into the design of your website. Just remember to be mindful of these well-learned marketing concepts when coming up with the artistic design and choosing the navigation features.

Choosing whether to design your website on your own or hire a professional is a big decision, but if you consider these factors and are really honest about your skill set, you’ll be guaranteed to make the right choice!